Your WordPress site can quickly get cluttered with unused themes or even outdated themes. When you’re searching for the right WordPress theme you typically install a few to try them out. If you’re not using a theme it’s best to delete it from your WordPress site and only takes a few seconds.
Keeping unused WordPress themes can cause security issues since the code is still on your server. Additionally it can get annoying to constantly see updates for themes you never plan on using.
Here’s our quick guide on how to delete WordPress themes.
Using the WordPress Dashboard to Delete WordPress Themes
The fastest way to delete WordPress themes is through the WordPress admin.
Head over to the appearance tab and click themes. Appearance/Themes
After you’re on this page you’ll see all of your installed themes. This may include a lot of the default WordPress themes like Twenty Sixteen if you’ve been using this WordPress install for a long time.
Just hover over the theme you’d like to delete and hit “Theme Details”.
Once you’re on the theme detail screen you’ll see the delete button on the bottom right of this screen. Just click delete, hit accept and you’re done!
Just rinse and repeat for all themes you’d like to remove.
Deleting WordPress Themes with FTP
If you don’t have access to the WordPress admin but can access a site’s FTP/SFTP you can quickly delete themes this way as well. If you aren’t sure what you’re FTP information is you can contact your web host to get it.
Before you delete a theme just make sure it’s not your active theme since that will cause issues.
Connect to your website’s FTP/SFTP and head to your WordPress install’s themes folder. This is located in wp-content/themes here you’ll see all of your installed themes.
Depending on what FTP client you are using you can simply right click and delete unused themes.
And just like that you’ve deleted unused WordPress themes!
