It’s easy to amass unused themes in your WordPress install. Each year WordPress releases a new theme, and you get it automatically when you update WordPress. Additionally, there are the themes you used to use, the themes you tried but abandoned, and so on. So, you may ask, what’s the harm?
There are a couple of reasons why you don’t want to keep unused themes around, cluttering up your WordPress install.
1) Themes are subject to vulnerabilities. If the theme developer is NOT issuing updates, your site is vulnerable. If the theme developer is providing security updates, then you have to keep the theme updated to be safe. Updating unused themes is a waste of keystrokes, so I like to remove them instead.
2) Themes take disk space (which may or may not be an issue) but just by being there, they will slow down your backup routine and INCREASE the size of your backup file. Not good.
So, now you have two good reasons to delete unused themes. But here’s why I never delete ALL my unused themes, and always keep the newest WordPress-developed theme around, even if I’m not using it: troubleshooting.
One way to troubleshooting pesky WordPress problems is to switch themes, and see if the problem goes away. If you don’t have an extra unused theme all ready installed, you now have to install one. Depending on the problem you are having, installing a new theme may be difficult. (FYI, another troubleshooting tip is to deactivate all your plugins. But I digress.)
So, now you know why to delete all but one extra theme. Deleting them is easy. Here’s how.
Go to Appearance / Themes and click on the theme thumbnail. When the Theme Details popover appears, look in the lower-right hand corner for Delete (it’s in red).
IMPORTANT NOTES: If your active theme is a child theme that requires a parent theme, the parent theme will NOT display a Delete button. Also, your active theme will never display a Delete button. Just like plugins, in order to delete a theme, it must be inactive.
Just adding another alternative, if you have shell acess to the server you can user WP-CLI:
wp theme delete $(wp theme list –status=inactive –field=name)
and for plugins:
wp plugin delete $(wp plugin list –status=inactive –field=name)
Thank You For providing This Information it helped me to free up some of the space
Your tutorial helped me solve a problem i was having with SSL mixed content. I installed Twenty Seventeen theme and boom i had the green padlock. Figured the problem was with the theme i was using and i deleted it.
Thank you very much for sharing this stuff with us.
ahahah it didnt work, i deleted it then it said theme deleted but it still there
What makes you think the deleted theme is still there? Have you cleared your browser cache, and looked again?
you should update it, and stop wasting time of others
Thank you very much. Should i delete default WordPress theme? Twenty Sixteen.
http://chuksguide.com
I always keep the most recent WordPress theme. So, yes.
i would like to delete my two inactive themes and i will install a new wordprsee theme. thanks for share this information.
Another vulnerability with unused themes is viruses and bot attacks. I had a major problem with something that invaded one or more of my sites and the tech suggested that it could have been an unused theme. My sites are clean now, but….
Thanks for sharing, Anne. Yup, unused code is better off removed!