In this guide I will show you how to delete a theme in WordPress. One of the security recommendations for WordPress is to only have the theme you are using and the most current WordPress theme installed at one time. This is for performance and security reasons. Each year as a new WordPress theme is released you will need to delete the previous years to meet this requirement.
Before Deleting
Before deleting it is very important to know what you are deleting. If any customizations have been done to the theme you are about to delete and it is not backed up anywhere, those customizations will be lost forever. Make sure to have a local backup before removing the theme if needed.
Delete Theme Process
To start the deletion process we first need to be logged into to our WordPress dashboard. Once logged in on the left hand menu click on Appearance then Themes once the menu expands.
You should see the themes that are installed on your WordPress site. Below I have the Twenty Twenty and Twenty Twenty-One themes installed. Since I do not need or want both I am going to remove the older Twenty Twenty theme. As you you can see outlined in red, click on the Theme Details button that shows up when hovering over the theme you wish to delete.
A modal will open up with the Theme Details. Look at the title and description and make sure this is the theme that you want to delete. Once you have confirmed click on the Delete button on the bottom right hand corner of the modal.
Once you have clicked on the Delete button. You will get a final Alert Box asking you to confirm that you want to delete the theme. Once you click ok there will be no going back. If you click the Cancel button, no changes will be made.
Now that we have confirmed we want to delete the Twenty Twenty theme, you can see once the page refreshes that it is no longer installed on my WordPress site.
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