🖼️ Media Management

Ketesa provides granular media controls at the file, user, and room level — useful for content moderation and storage management. You can quarantine harmful content, protect important media from accidental quarantine, delete individual files or entire user libraries, and purge the remote media cache.

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🗂️ Concepts

Operation	What it does	Reversible?
Quarantine	Blocks access to the media for all users	✅ Yes (unquarantine)
Protect	Prevents the media from being quarantined	✅ Yes (unprotect)
Delete	Permanently removes the media from the server	❌ No
Purge remote cache	Removes locally cached copies of media fetched from remote servers	❌ No

📝 Quarantine and protect are mutually exclusive states for a single file. A protected file cannot be quarantined, and an already-quarantined file cannot be protected until it is first unquarantined.

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📄 Per-file Operations

Per-file actions are available in two places:

• User edit page → Media tab — shows all media uploaded by the user, with per-row action buttons
• Room show page → Media tab — shows all media uploaded into the room, with a per-row delete button

The following buttons appear on each file row in the user Media tab:

Button label	What it does	When it appears
Quarantine	Quarantines the file, blocking all access	File is not protected and not already quarantined
Unquarantine	Lifts the quarantine on the file	File is currently quarantined
Protect	Marks the file as safe from quarantine	File is not quarantined and not already protected
Unprotect	Removes the protection flag	File is currently protected
Delete	Permanently deletes the individual file	Always visible

📝 The quarantine button is replaced by a disabled "Protected" indicator when the file is safe from quarantine. The protect button is replaced by a disabled "In quarantine" indicator when the file is already quarantined.

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👤 Per-user Operations

Location: Users → select a user → Edit → Media tab

The Media tab on the user edit page shows all media uploaded by that user, with per-file action buttons (see Per-file Operations above).

At the top of the tab, bulk action buttons are available:

Button label	What it does	When it appears
Quarantine all media	Quarantines every media file uploaded by the user, after confirmation	Always visible
Delete all media	Permanently deletes every media file uploaded by the user, after confirmation	Always visible

⚠️ Quarantine all media affects every file the user has ever uploaded to the server. This cannot be undone in bulk — you would need to unquarantine each file individually. Use with care.

⚠️ Delete all media permanently removes all media uploaded by the user. This cannot be undone. The dialog runs in the foreground — do not close it until deletion is complete.

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🚪 Per-room Operations

Location: Rooms → select a room → Show → Media tab

The Media tab on the room show page lists all media uploaded into that room. Each row has an individual Delete button.

At the top of the tab, bulk action buttons are available:

Button label	What it does	When it appears
Quarantine all media	Quarantines every media file uploaded in the room, after confirmation	Always visible
Delete all media	Permanently deletes all local media in the room, after confirmation	Only for unencrypted rooms

⚠️ Quarantine all media affects all files uploaded to the room by all members. Use this for rooms with reported illegal or harmful content.

⚠️ Delete all media permanently removes all local media in the room. Only local media from unencrypted rooms is affected — media from external servers and encrypted rooms is excluded. The dialog runs in the foreground and shows live progress — do not close it until deletion is complete.

📝 It is not possible to delete media that has been uploaded to external media repositories. Only media hosted on your own server is affected.

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🌐 Purge Remote Media Cache

Location: Statistics → Users' media → toolbar → Purge remote media button

When your server federates with other Matrix homeservers, it caches copies of media (avatars, images, files) from those remote servers. Over time this cache can grow large. The purge remote media action removes these locally cached copies.

📝 This action only affects your server's local cache of remote media. It does not affect media uploaded to your own server's media repository, and does not delete the originals from their source servers. Remote users can re-fetch media after a purge.

Dialog options:

Field	Description
last access before	Only purge remote media that has not been accessed since this date/time. Leave at the default (epoch) to purge all cached remote media.

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🗑️ Delete Local Media

Location: Statistics → Users' media → toolbar → Delete media button

This action deletes local media from your server's disk, including thumbnails and downloaded copies of remote media. It does not affect media uploaded to external media repositories.

Dialog options:

Field	Description
last access before	Only delete media that has not been accessed since this date/time
Larger than (in bytes)	Only delete media files larger than this size. Step size is 1024 bytes.
Keep profile images	When enabled, profile avatars are excluded from deletion (default: on)

⚠️ Deleted media cannot be recovered. Files that match all specified criteria are removed permanently from disk.

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🔒 How to Quarantine a File

1. Navigate to Users and open the user who uploaded the file.
2. Click Edit, then open the Media tab.
3. Find the file in the list. The Quarantine button appears on rows where the file is not protected and not already quarantined.
4. Click Quarantine. The button changes to Unquarantine immediately on success.

💡 To undo, click the Unquarantine button on the same row.

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🛡️ How to Protect Media from Accidental Quarantine

1. Navigate to Users and open the user who uploaded the file.
2. Click Edit, then open the Media tab.
3. Find the file in the list. The Protect button appears on rows where the file is not quarantined and not already protected.
4. Click Protect. The button changes to Unprotect immediately on success.

💡 A protected file cannot be quarantined — the quarantine button is replaced by a disabled "Protected" indicator. To remove protection later, click Unprotect.

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🗑️ How to Delete All Media for a User

⚠️ Deletion is irreversible. All files are permanently removed from disk. There is no undo.

Single user:

1. Navigate to Users and open the user.
2. Click Edit, then open the Media tab.
3. Click Delete all media at the top of the tab.
4. Confirm in the dialog. The dialog runs in the foreground — do not close it until complete.

Multiple users at once (bulk):

1. Navigate to Users.
2. Select the users using the checkboxes on the left.
3. Click Delete all media in the bulk action toolbar that appears at the top.
4. Confirm in the dialog. A summary notification reports how many succeeded and how many failed.

Server-wide delete by age/size (Statistics):

The Delete media button (found in Statistics → Users' media toolbar) deletes media server-wide based on age and size filters:

1. Navigate to Statistics → Users' media.
2. Click Delete media in the top toolbar.
3. Set a last access before date to target old unused files.
4. Optionally set a Larger then (in bytes) threshold to target large files only.
5. Toggle Keep profile images off if you also want to remove avatars.
6. Click Delete media to confirm.

💡 Run with conservative filters first (e.g., a recent cutoff date and large size threshold) to limit the blast radius before doing a broad sweep.

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🚪 How to Delete All Media for a Room

⚠️ Only local media from unencrypted rooms is affected. Media from encrypted rooms and external servers is excluded. Deletion is irreversible.

Single room:

1. Navigate to Rooms and open an unencrypted room.
2. Click Show, then open the Media tab.
3. Click Delete all media at the top of the tab.
4. Confirm in the dialog. The dialog shows live progress and runs in the foreground — do not close it until complete.

Multiple rooms at once (bulk):

1. Navigate to Rooms.
2. Select the rooms using the checkboxes on the left.
3. Click Delete all media in the bulk action toolbar that appears at the top.
4. Confirm in the dialog. Encrypted rooms are skipped automatically. A summary notification reports the result.

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See also: User management · Room management · Server statistics · Documentation index