Disable Media Sizes
View on WordPress.orgScores higher than 81% of indexed plugins
About
Provides options to disable the extra images generated by WordPress.
What It Does
Disable Media Sizes gives you a settings panel to stop WordPress from generating the multiple thumbnail and scaled image sizes that ship with the core, plus any custom sizes added by your theme or other plugins. Once disabled, only the original upload (and whatever sizes you keep checked) is stored on disk, which directly cuts down on storage use and upload processing time. It does not delete images already on your server, so existing thumbnails stay unless you clean them up separately.
Who It's For
This plugin is aimed at site owners who upload a lot of large images and are running out of disk space or dealing with slow uploads on constrained hosting, such as photographers, digital asset libraries, and content-heavy publishers on shared or budget servers. It is also a fit for minimalist designers who deliberately want only one image rendition served and are comfortable editing theme files if a hard-coded size breaks. Developers managing many client sites will appreciate the quick way to tame media bloat without writing custom mu-plugins.
Who Should Skip It
If you rely on your theme's built-in image sizes for responsive srcset output, hero crops, or retina display sharpness, disabling those sizes will visibly degrade image quality on your site. Casual bloggers with a handful of posts and modest photo galleries will see little benefit and should leave WordPress defaults alone.
The Bottom Line
Disable Media Sizes earns an 80.41 out of 100 and does a narrow job well: it gives you direct control over which image sizes WordPress generates, which can save meaningful storage on media-heavy sites. The trade-off is real, since disabling sizes your theme depends on will hurt responsive image quality, so this is a tool for users who know what they are turning off. With solid maintenance, perfect ratings, and minimal support baggage, it is a safe pick for its target audience, just not for everyone.
Related Plugins
Pick Safe SVG when your priority is allowing SVG uploads safely rather than controlling image size generation.
Choose Classic Widgets if you need to restore the old widget editor, as it solves an unrelated interface problem.
Pick Autoptimize when your main concern is front-end performance through CSS, JS, and font optimization, not media storage.
Choose FileBird when you need to organize existing media into folders rather than reduce the number of files WordPress creates.
Pick WebP Express if converting images to WebP for bandwidth savings is your goal, since it addresses delivery format rather than upload bloat.