What a license adds

Scanning, detection, the unused list and every delete flow are free, and stay free — they are the plugin. Nothing in the free download is locked, limited, time-barred or nagged at. A license adds four things on top, and none of them deletes anything.

The four

The Used view. [Pro feature] Open any file that is in use and see every place it is used, not just the first few. Twenty references per file are stored by a scan (why); the Used view re-reads that single file on demand, so a file referenced in two hundred places lists two hundred. It is the feature that turns "the plugin says this is used" into something you can check and act on.

A WP-CLI command. [Pro feature] wp freshet-unusedmedia scan and wp freshet-unusedmedia list — the same scan, the same detectors, the same stored results, without a browser and across as many installs as you have. Full reference: WP-CLI.

An exportable evidence report. [Pro feature] Export the whole library from the Unused Media screen as CSV or JSON: one row per file with its status, its size and the places it was found referenced — the same evidence the attachment screen shows, for everything at once. CSV opens in a spreadsheet; JSON carries the references as structured data and adds the library totals. It is the file to send before anything is deleted, so the reasoning can be checked by somebody who does not have access to the site. Every row says which moment it describes — a read_at column carrying when the site the verdicts answer from was read, alongside the per-file scanned_at — and a row the plugin would re-check before trusting is marked awaiting_recheck rather than presented as a settled unused. Nothing is deleted, changed or sent anywhere — the file downloads to your own browser.

Space totals. [Pro feature] Two figures on the Unused Media screen, kept apart on purpose: what the unused files are holding now, and the measured size of what deleting them has removed so far. Both are measured from the files themselves and count the original file only, so a deletion that went through frees more disk than the number shown. Files that went to the media trash are not counted as reclaimed — nothing is freed until the trash is emptied — and files whose size cannot be read (an externally-stored library, typically) are left out rather than counted as zero. A file WordPress could not remove from disk is credited nothing and named as “left on disk” on the delete notice.

What that means for the free version

The four are additions, not limits on what is there. The command scans and reports, the report exports, the totals add up, and deletion stays exactly where it is: in the admin, behind a confirmation and the re-verification pass, free.

Used files remain visible for free — the Usage column in the media library shows the status of every file, and the Usage meta box on the attachment screen lists the references found, up to the twenty a scan stores. What a license buys there is the complete list, in one place, for every file.

Two downloads, and why

The version on wordpress.org contains no licensed code at all — not the features, not the license client, not the License tab. There is nothing in it to unlock, so there is nothing in it advertising a thing it will not do. The version downloaded from freshet.studio is the one that carries the licensed features, and it shows a License tab under Unused Media.

That build without a key is not crippled: it is the free plugin plus a place to enter a key.

Getting a key

A key is bought from freshet.studio, where checkout runs through Stripe. On payment the key is shown on the confirmation page and emailed to the address the payment was made with. A licence is a one-time purchase: it includes twelve months of updates and support, and nothing renews by itself. After that year the plugin keeps working; buying another year of updates is optional.

Activating

Enter your key on Unused Media → License and press activate. The plugin asks the license server to activate this site and reports the server's own answer.

Two behaviours worth knowing:

• A connection problem is never reported as a bad key. If the plugin cannot reach the server, it says so in those words. Only the server itself may call a key invalid.
• A brief outage does not lock you out. The answer is cached and re-checked periodically rather than on every page load, and an unreachable server leaves an already-valid site working for a grace period rather than downgrading it instantly.

With no key entered, the plugin makes no network request at all — not on activation, not on any admin screen.

Removing the key returns the site to the free feature set immediately: the Used tab and the licensed screens disappear, and scanning, the unused list and deletion carry on unchanged.

Next: WP-CLI.