If you’ve spent time tweaking the Images module in AWP — adjusting AVIF quality, capping maximum dimensions, disabling image sizes you never use — you may have also noticed a button that undoes all of it in one click: Reset All Settings. It’s a small button with a big effect, and before you click it, it’s worth knowing exactly what happens.

This post explains precisely what gets reset, what stays completely untouched, and when this action actually makes sense.

What “Reset All Settings” does

The Images module keeps every configuration choice you make — AVIF quality level, custom maximum width/height, which image sizes are enabled or disabled, and any media-library rules you’ve set — in a single settings record in your WordPress database.

Clicking Reset All Settings deletes that record. The moment it’s gone, WordPress falls back to the module’s factory defaults for every one of those options. There’s no partial reset and no picking-and-choosing: it’s a clean wipe of your configuration, replaced instantly with the settings AWP ships with out of the box.

Concretely, this means:

• AVIF quality returns to its default level, undoing any custom quality percentage you had dialed in.
• Maximum dimensions you set (for example, capping uploads at a certain width) are cleared, so the module reverts to its default dimension handling.
• Disabled image sizes — any WordPress image sizes you’d switched off to save storage or processing time — become enabled again, matching the default set.
• Media-library rules you configured (which folders, sizes, or behaviors AWP should apply) go back to their original, unmodified state.

Because this happens at the database level, it’s immediate. There’s no processing queue, no waiting — the settings panel simply reloads showing default values.

What it does NOT do

This is the part worth being precise about, because “reset” can sound scarier than it is.

Reset All Settings never touches your actual image files. Any AVIF variants the module has already generated and saved into your WordPress media library stay exactly where they are, in exactly the format they were created. The original images you uploaded are also completely unaffected — nothing on your server’s disk is deleted, converted back, or modified in any way.

Think of it this way: the reset button clears the instructions AWP was following, not the work AWP already did. Your media library keeps every AVIF file it has generated. If you want to remove those files, that’s a separate, deliberate action elsewhere in the plugin — it does not happen as a side effect of resetting settings.

This distinction matters for a simple reason: images are often the largest and slowest part to regenerate. Keeping already-created AVIF variants in place means a settings reset doesn’t cost you server time or bandwidth re-processing your media library. You’re only resetting configuration, not undoing optimization work.

When you’d actually use this

A full settings reset is a deliberate “start clean” action, not something you’d reach for casually. A few realistic scenarios:

• You’ve tangled your own configuration. Maybe you tested a few AVIF quality levels, disabled some image sizes to troubleshoot a theme issue, and now you’re not sure what’s actually active anymore. Reset gives you a known, documented starting point instead of trying to remember what you changed.
• You’re troubleshooting a display issue. If images look wrong on the front end and you suspect a setting is the cause, resetting to defaults is a fast way to rule configuration in or out before digging further.
• You’re handing the site to someone else. If you’re passing site maintenance to another person or agency, defaults are a sensible, predictable baseline for them to build from, rather than leaving behind a custom setup they’d have to reverse-engineer.
• You simply want a clean slate. Sometimes the fastest way forward is not auditing every toggle individually, but wiping the slate and reconfiguring only what you actually need.

In all of these cases, the key reassurance is the same: resetting settings is not destructive to your media. You’re free to click it, see the defaults, and reconfigure calmly — nothing about your existing AVIF files is at risk while you do.

Reconfiguring afterward

Once you’ve reset, the Images module behaves exactly as it would on a fresh install. You can go back through each setting — AVIF quality, maximum dimensions, which image sizes to keep active, media-library rules — and set them up again to match what your site actually needs. Because the module documents sensible defaults, many site owners find the post-reset defaults work fine as-is, and only fine-tune a setting or two from there.

If your site also uses AWP’s personalized optimization (via the AWP Exchange Server), that’s a separate layer — it decides image sizing and critical CSS per device based on your page’s public output, and it’s not affected by an Images-module settings reset. Resetting the Images module only changes the local, at-upload-time behavior: AVIF conversion, EXIF stripping, dimension caps, and image-size management.

The bottom line

“Reset All Settings” in the AWP Images module does exactly one thing: it deletes your saved configuration and restores the defaults, instantly and completely. It does not delete, convert, or otherwise touch any AVIF files or original images already sitting in your media library. That makes it a safe, low-risk way to clear a confusing setup and start reconfiguring from a clean, known baseline — without losing any of the optimization work AWP has already done for your site.