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Scheduled Plugin Updates

Use Scheduled Plugin Updates to select the exact time and day to check for and perform plugin updates for your website. This guide will show you how to schedule plugin updates, keeping your site up-to-date and secure with the latest features on your schedule. 

This feature is available on sites with the WordPress.com Creator or Entrepreneur plan.

About Scheduled Plugin Updates

When the scheduled update runs at the time you’ve chosen, our system automatically checks for available updates for the plugins in your schedule. If there are updates to run, the system starts the process, beginning with a health check to ensure your site’s stability. Each plugin is updated individually, with another health check after each update to confirm everything is functioning as expected. 

Should a health check fail, our system will automatically roll back the update, restore the previous version of the plugin, and, by default, send you an email notification. 

Schedule a Plugin Update

You can schedule different days and times for your installed plugins or all of your plugins to update all at once. 

  1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Plugins → Scheduled Updates or use the multisite update manager to simultaneously set up schedules for multiple sites.
  3. Click the Add new schedule button and select your desired update frequency: Daily or Weekly.
  4. Choose the plugins you’d like to include in the schedule. Check the Select all box to update all of your plugins on your schedule.

Any plugins that are not listed are automatically updated by WordPress.com.

  1. Enter the URL paths you want to test (optional). By default, your schedule will run a health check on your front page to make sure that the plugin update didn’t cause any site stability issues. In this section, you can add up to five additional URL paths on your site to test.
  2. Click “Create” to activate your schedule.

You can create another schedule for plugin updates by clicking the New Schedule button and following the steps outlined above to make the schedule.

The Scheduled Updates area on the WordPress.com admin area with an active schedule shown

Temporarily pause a scheduled update by toggling the setting under “Active” off for each scheduled update.

Configure Notification Settings

You can configure notification settings to receive an email when an update is successful or fails. You will receive email notifications at your account email address. By default, you will receive notifications for both successful and failed updates. 

You can change the notification settings by following these steps:

  1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Plugins → Scheduled Updates.
  3. Click the Notification settings button.
  4. Check the box next to the notification setting you want to modify and click the Save button. 

Edit or Cancel Scheduled Plugin Updates

You can edit an existing scheduled update or delete it entirely by following these steps:

  1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Plugins → Scheduled Updates.
  3. Click the ellipsis icon to the right of the schedule you want to modify. 
  4. Choose the Edit option to alter the date/time, plugins to update, and other details. 
  5. Alternatively, choose the Remove option to delete the scheduled update.

View Update Logs

You can view the update logs for each scheduled plugin update. To view the logs for a scheduled plugin update, follow these steps:

  1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Plugins → Scheduled Updates.
  3. Click the ellipsis icon to the right of the schedule for which you want to view the logs. 
  4. Click the Logs option from the dropdown menu. 

In the Logs, you can view when an update started and completed and any additional details about the update. 

Last updated: May 28, 2024

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