# Dashboard/Files/Deletion

From XOWA: the free, open-source, offline wiki application

This page allows you to delete unused images in your image databases.

## Overview

(Press `Expand` to reveal more notes)

Wikipedia is constantly changing. Every moment, articles and images are added and deleted.

XOWA updates images on a monthly basis. However, these updates only add new images. They do not delete old unused images.

XOWA will soon move to a smarter update platform that will process adds and deletes automatically. In the meantime, you will need to process deletes manually.

## Delete images using a database

This is a two-step process (Press `Expand` to reveal more notes):

(1) Choose a file deletion database:

- These files are available at archive.org. For example, https://archive.org/download/Xowa_enwiki_latest/Xowa_enwiki_2016-03-05_file_deletion.7z
- They are only available for English Wikipedia. Other wikis are available on request.
- They have a format like the following: `en.wikipedia.org-file-core-deletion_db-2016.03.xowa`

(2) Press Delete.

- Note that this may take a few hours to run
  - For English Wikipedia, it will delete 400,000 images from your databases and compress your databases by 8 GB.
- You can continue to use the wiki during this time.
- If you shutdown XOWA, you can return and resume.
- When the deletion completes, XOWA will remove the deletion database

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