10+ Best Plugins to Organize Your WordPress Media Library
Today’s websites have a tendency to take up space to display more images and use less text. A great number of media files like audio, video, and other multimedia items are also included to strengthen text content. But here’s the thing. Imagine that you are gonna upload about 10 or 20 images per day. If we multiply that by tens or hundreds of posts, the quantity of files in your Media Library is insurmountable!
Frankly, WordPress does not offer enough tools to help organize your media files. That’s where WordPress media library management plugins come in. These plugins make your life easier when dealing with files in the WordPress media library. You can add features, choose multiple files, and create or delete folders in a matter of seconds.
In this post, we’ve rounded up 10+ handy plugins to help you better manage your WordPress media library and keep it neat and organized.
1. FileBird – WordPress Media Library Folders
FileBird is a great file manager to help you organize your WordPress media library professionally. This smart plugin saves you tons of time on WordPress admin dashboard.
FileBird comes in free version and premium version. Both are super easy to use and include powerful features. The most noticeable function is the smart context menu that allows you to quickly right-click to create, edit or delete folders to organize your media library. Also, with the help of a drag-and-drop interface, moving files around or uploading files directly from your desktop is easy-peasy. Pretty cool, right?
Some of the top features include:
- Smart context menu: right click to multiple actions
- Drag-and-drop interface: arrange any files and folders in a blade
- Full compatibility: with all popular page builders and image optimization plugins
- Fast migration: import all folders from Enhanced Media Library or Media Library Folders
- Upload files to a specific folder
- Multiple languages support
- Browse files in image block via FileBird UI
- And many, many more!
And FileBird 5.0 comes with even better performance and accessibility.
- FileBird Document Library: Publish your entire list of documents as a modern document gallery in grid or list styles.
- Multiple themes: Bring your favorite folder interface to WordPress media library
- Color-coded: Easily customize your folder appearances
- Sort files by size
- Import/export FileBird folders for backup, sharing, or migrating
- Smooth drag and drop, folder name on hover, file location, and so on
So if you’re an active blogger, photographer, publisher, e-commerce business or digital agency, FileBird media library folders plugin is a must-have. Check it out now!
2. CatFolders – WP Media Folders
If you’ve ever had trouble finding a file that was buried deep within your media library, WordPress Media Folders can be a great solution!
WP Media Folders by CatFolders is a lightweight plugin to categorize media files by folders. And it comes with lots of advanced sort options that you can’t find in the default condition of the WordPress admin dashboard!
You will get extra ordering thanks to the following options. Technically, you will have two modes of ordering: default and temporary. Firstly, default ordering allows you to choose a specific way of sorting, eg. sort by file name, date, modified date, or author. Secondly, the temporary mode allows you to sort the files right in the current moment, and if you refresh the page, it goes back to the default ordering. Other features include:
- Drag and drop user interface: Works in both WordPress media library menu and the media modal when you upload or insert files to your page/post
- Initialized folder: Dynamically get back to the previous folder or always open a certain folder
- Multiple languages supported: Works with WPML, Polylang, and other third party plugins
- Bulk select: Works in media list and grid mode
- Compatibility: Use CatFolders with your favorite theme and page builders like Elementor, Gutenberg, WPBakery, Oxygen, Divi Builder, Visual Composer, Slider Revolution, etc.
- Price: Annual license for unlimited websites starts from $199. Early users get 50% OFF by visiting CatFolders home page today! But there is a free version you can try.
3. Real Media Library
Real Media Library is a very useful WordPress plugin that helps you with media management. You can organize thousands of uploaded files into folders, collections and galleries. It is a real file manager that allows you to manage large amounts of files in WordPress.
But Real Media Library does not come alone. There are a few free add-ons and the premium add-on Real Physical Media available. Real Physical Media basically uses the folder structure you created with Real Media Library to SEO-optimitze your uploads and bring additional search engine traffic to your site. This is very helpful from many perspectives!
Top advantages of Real Media Library:
- Folders, collections and galleries to organize uploads
- Shortcuts to avoid duplicates in your media library
- Runs with great performance even with > 10.000 uploads
- Automatic reordering of upload (e.g. A-Z by filename)
- Integration with popular plugins like FooGallery and Justified Image Grid
- Compatibility with all major page builders, themes and a lot of plugins
- Translated into nine languages
- SEO benefits from physical file reordering (with Real Physical Media add-on)
4. Media Library Assistant
The Media Library Assistant is another great media library plugin that allows you to manage your media files. Plus it can also be used to add not only images but other media files to your posts.
The plugin allows you to add slideshows, thumbnail strips, and special effects to your new galleries without facing any problems. Also, it’s similar to the way you use the default WordPress media library, no need to worry about learning a new process.
5. Media Library Organizer
The name says it all. Media Library Organizer will not let you down with its simple-to-use UI and powerful features. It helps categorize and filter photos, videos and other media types in your WordPress media library.
Some of another fascinating and noticeable features of this plugin include:
- Sort files by date or name
- Work with all media library views
- Import and export data from library or WordPress
6. Folders
You’re looking for a WordPress media library management plugin to keep media stuff as organized as possible. So let’s give the next plugin a shot, it’s called Folders. The plugin allows you to quickly organize all of your pages, posts and media files in folders.
Folder is a simple-to-use tool that enables you to create sub-folders for different content and keep things in order. The prominent feature of Folders is that you can easily drag and drop files anywhere and change the folders tree view as you want. Additional features include:
- Bulk select images and media files and drag them to any folder
- Add and remove folders menu from pages, posts, and media
- Minimize the folders area if you need extra space
7. WordPress Media Library Folder
The name pretty much explains it all, with WordPress Media Library Folders, you can create folders in the media library to keep your images or other files organized. This plugin is ideal in case you want to add categories to your media files.
Features at a glance:
- Add and build new WordPress Media library folders
- Move, copy, rename and delete files and folders with drag-and-drop interface
- Regenerate thumbnails
- SEO Images to specify ALT and TITLE attributes when uploading
8. Organize Media Library by Folders
The name of this plugin is pretty self-explanatory. Organize Media Library by Folders is kind of a supplement to your WordPress dashboard that allows you to create different folders for your content. Additionally, it’s a whole lot easier for you to know where exactly to find media items if you make different maps.
Also, you can use new URLs that you create for your folders in the content and it’s greatly beneficial for bloggers or online journal/ magazine owners. Additional features include:
- Organize files into the specified folder
- Can create folders
- Can filter searching by folders
9. Media Library Categories
This powerful Media Library Categories plugin enables the ability to use categories more flexible in the WordPress Media Library. You will be able to change, add or remove the category of multiple items at once.
Using this plugin, you can organize media categories through admin the same way as you control post categories. It also allows you to filter media files in your WordPress media library using custom taxonomy in both list and grid views.
Features at a glance:
- Change the category of multiple items at once with bulk actions
- Categorize options & management in the Media Library
- Filter on categories in the media library
10. WP Media Category Management
WP Media Category Management is a free and easy-to-use plugin that will relieve your anxiety when it comes to media categories management, including bulk actions.
You can organize media categories via admin just like you control post categories. The plugin also allows you to sort media items in your WordPress media library using taxonomy in both list and grid views. While uploading media files, you can choose a default category. Additional vital features include:
- Bulk toggle any media taxonomy assignment from Media Library via admin
- Use new or existing shortcode to filter the media on galleries in posts
- Use a default category while uploading
11. Enable Media Replace
The final member in our today’s list is from ShortPixel with a free, lightweight and super easy-to-use plugin, Enable Media Replace. This plugin allows you to easily replace an existing image or file in your media library with a new one. No need to delete old files, rename or re-upload them from today! Easy enough, right?
The plugin works pretty well in case you want to replace or update more photos in your media library. You do not feel tedious and irritated any longer whenever you delete a file and then upload a new one with the exact same name every time you want to update something. Such a great time-saver!
Images, videos and other media take up a vast amount of space within a WordPress website. Keeping your WordPress media library organized with folders makes managing images so much easier. This way you can avoid uploading the same images twice, or find and replace banners for your sidebar. The aforementioned media plugins will absolutely help you better manage your WordPress media library and keep it clean and tidy. They help to classify and add taxonomies so that you can search and sort out the images a whole lot easier.
Are you using any of these plugins or any other plugins to manage your media library? Please share your experience in the comment section below.
I’m building a new site that will have tons of files to manage. Unfortunately, I installed a plugin that was not supported to WP5.x so I had to start the search all over again. Thankfully I found this site and kept my search right here on one page. Thanks!
Not quite what I’m looking for. I’m looking for a way to replace photo upload date with the creation date.
You could try the free Media Library Assistant plugin. With this installed and active, under Media you’ll see a new “Assistant” section. From here you can edit/quick-edit your media just like you can for regular blog posts including the “Uploaded On” date.
So what the folks from Ninja Team don’t tell you about Filebird, is that they only support it for 6 months. If there’s a problem, you have to shell out more money to get their support.
While this might be a great ongoing revenue stream for them, it sucks for website developers.
Will be looking for a different app for media management, since the new release of Filebird seems to be buggy, and they aren’t supporting it without more money. In fact, the 3.9 release seems to be buggy too.
You can still contact them via email or Facebook chat even when support time expired (only their ticket site requires license check), see here https://ninjateam.org/support/
Now they have FileBird 5 version which works great for me. Their support is helpful for both free and pro users.
You and the other reviewers need to research options that don’t follow the handicapped vs. pay model. There are lots of completely free plugins available, but I get really frustrated trying to find them. Not only that, but lots of reviews, like this one, don’t make a clear distinction that these are handicapped versions.
Actually, while the first two plugins on our list are premium the other 9 are free. And yes many of the free plugins on WordPress.org do have premium versions (which is how developers can make a living while also supporting their free plugins), but the free versions are fully functional and still great options.
In addition to the above plugins, there is also the plugin called iFolders. It can be used to make directories not only for the media library, but also for pages, posts and custom post types. This gives great possibilities for organizing site data. It is also distributed on the freemius model, but its price is the most democratic of all.