{"id":926,"date":"2024-05-07T11:45:46","date_gmt":"2024-05-07T11:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/docs\/i-cannot-empty-the-backup-folder-what-solutions-do-i-have\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T08:40:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T08:40:11","password":"","slug":"i-cannot-empty-the-backup-folder-what-solutions-do-i-have","status":"publish","type":"docs","link":"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/knowledge-base\/article\/i-cannot-empty-the-backup-folder-what-solutions-do-i-have\/","title":{"rendered":"I cannot empty the backups folder, what solutions do I have?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>There are generally two possible reasons why you cannot\u00a0empty <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/plugins\/shortpixel-image-optimiser\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ShortPixel Image Optimizer<\/a>&#8216;s backup folder:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The backed up files do not have the correct permissions and\/or\u00a0ownership. This can happen when the website is moved from one hosting provider to another: The permissions may be kept, but the ownership of the files may be the old one, so the images won&#8217;t be able to be removed. <strong>Contact your hosting provider directly<\/strong> and ask them to either remove the files for you or set the proper permissions and\u00a0ownership\u00a0for the backed up files.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There are many images in a backup folder and the plugin times out when trying to remove them. A solution that usually works is to install the <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.org\/plugins\/wpterm\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">WPTerm<\/a> plugin and then from the command line simply go into the backup folder and remove all the files as in the example below. <span style=\"background-color: transparent; color: var(--theme-text-color); font-family: var(--theme-font-family); font-size: var(--theme-font-size); font-style: var(--theme-font-style, inherit); font-weight: var(--theme-font-weight); letter-spacing: var(--theme-letter-spacing); text-transform: var(--theme-text-transform);\">Please do this only if you are familiar with the command line.<\/span><br><figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/file-Ta69GG2H9z.png\"><\/figure>Alternatively, you can always contact your hosting provider and ask them to help you with this.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are generally two possible reasons why you cannot\u00a0empty ShortPixel Image Optimizer&#8216;s backup folder:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"doc_category":[37],"glossaries":[],"doc_tag":[],"class_list":["post-926","docs","type-docs","status-publish","hentry","doc_category-shortpixel-image-optimizer"],"blocksy_meta":[],"year_month":"2026-04","word_count":173,"total_views":"1551","reactions":{"happy":"0","normal":"0","sad":"0"},"author_info":{"name":"admin","author_nicename":"admin_mdli53m5","author_url":"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/author\/admin_mdli53m5\/"},"doc_category_info":[{"term_name":"ShortPixel Image Optimizer","term_url":"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/knowledge-base\/category\/shortpixel-image-optimizer\/"}],"doc_tag_info":[],"knowledge_base_info":[],"knowledge_base_slug":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/docs"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2325,"href":"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/926\/revisions\/2325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"doc_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doc_category?post=926"},{"taxonomy":"glossaries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/glossaries?post=926"},{"taxonomy":"doc_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kb.shortpixel.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doc_tag?post=926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}