The media library WordPress is missing.

No. A folder is an assignment in the database, not a directory on the disk: every file stays where it is and keeps its address. Media changes a file in only three places, and each time only after a confirmation: when replacing, when renaming and when deleting files with no entry in the media library. Renaming changes the address. Media then updates the references in posts and meta fields, and only there: not in options such as widgets or the Customizer, not in other plugins’ own tables, in theme files or on other sites.

If you deactivate Media, the media library stays as it is, just without the sorting. The assignments stay stored, and once you activate it again every folder is back. Deleting the plugin also keeps everything by default. Settings, findings and folders only go with it if you switched that on beforehand under “Your data”. The image files and their alternative texts stay in any case.

Anyone who may upload files (the “upload_files” capability) may create, rename, move and color folders, which by default means authors, editors and administrators. Only files the user’s own account may edit can be sorted in; Media skips the rest and reports how many there were. Only someone who may edit every file directly inside a folder can delete it. Those files then move up one level, and so do subfolders; none is deleted. The “Kakapo Media” page with clean-up, alternative texts and replacing, on the other hand, requires the “manage_options” capability, which as a rule means the Administrator role.

From the media library trash. Media puts images with an entry there when you clean up, and WordPress never deletes them from there on its own. Because WordPress hides this trash by default, the “Clean up” area has the “Media library trash” card with the “Open the media library trash” button. In the list behind it you bring an image back with “Restore”. Files with no entry in the media library cannot be brought back: Media deletes them permanently from the disk after a confirmation.

From the image’s title, and only if that is missing or yields nothing readable, from the file name. Media does not look at the image for this, so the suggestion rarely describes what can actually be seen. At first it only sits in the input field: nothing is saved until you edit the text and leave the field, or confirm “Apply all suggestions”. An image that only decorates gets an explicitly empty alternative text with the “Decorative” button.

Not on its own. Folders, clean-up, alternative texts, replacing and the provenance check run on your server, with no AI service and no cloud. Media goes out to the network in only three places: for the license and update request to kakapowp.com, with a request you send yourself via “Help & support”, and to your own Remote Sites if you connect any. The connection to the Remote Sites carries the access credentials you enter there and, for the status, only numbers, switches, version details and the address, no image and no file name. An image only leaves the installation if you attach it to a support request yourself.