Clean Image Filenames
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About
This plugin automatically converts language accent characters to non-accent characters in filenames when uploading to the media library.
What It Does
Clean Image Filenames automatically strips language accent characters from image filenames the moment they are uploaded to the WordPress media library. So a file named "café-lunch.jpg" becomes "cafe-lunch.jpg" without any manual intervention. It is a set-and-forget utility that handles one specific chore at upload time.
Who It's For
This plugin is best for site owners who regularly upload images with filenames containing accented characters, such as photographers, travel bloggers, news outlets, and multilingual content teams. It is especially useful for anyone building URLs that should remain clean, ASCII-only, and safe for legacy systems, CDNs, or email clients.
Who Should Skip It
If you only upload images with English filenames, or if your workflow already includes manually renaming files before upload, this plugin adds no value. It is also unnecessary for sites where every media file is processed through a CDN or asset pipeline that already normalizes filenames.
The Bottom Line
Clean Image Filenames does one thing, does it well, and the maintenance signals and rating are excellent for a 30,000-install utility. The only real caveat is the lack of any public support history, so if you run into an edge case with an unusual locale or character set you may be on your own. For multilingual sites that care about clean, ASCII-only media URLs, it is a low-risk install worth trying.
Related Plugins
Pick Safe SVG instead if your main concern is sanitizing SVG uploads rather than renaming accented image files, as it solves a completely different problem with over a million installs.
Choose Autoptimize when you need broad front-end performance tuning such as CSS and JS aggregation, since it does not address filename cleanup at all.
Go with FileBird if organizing the media library into folders and subfolders matters more to you than standardizing character encoding in filenames.
Pick WebP Express when your priority is serving next-generation image formats and reducing image weight, which is a performance concern rather than a naming one.
Choose Responsive Lightbox when you need polished gallery and lightbox presentations, since it tackles display rather than what the file is called on disk.