Schedule a plugin update

You can set a day and time in the future for a plugin update to run, ensuring that your plugins update when you’re available to monitor them for possible conflicts with your site. This guide will show you how to schedule plugin updates.

Scheduled updates give you peace of mind by ensuring plugin updates happen at a time that works best for you. When the scheduled time arrives, the system checks for available updates for all plugins included in your schedule.

If updates are found, the process begins with a health check to confirm your site is stable. Plugins are then updated one at a time, with a new health check after each update to verify everything is working properly. If an issue is detected, the system automatically rolls back the update, restores the previous version of the plugin, and sends you an email notification by default.

You can schedule plugin updates on WordPress.com in two ways: individually for each site using site-level controls, or across multiple sites using the multisite update scheduler. You can create up to two separate schedules, for up to ten plugins each.

You can choose to schedule updates for individual plugins at different days and times, or set all plugins to update at the same time.

Create a new schedule by following these steps:

1. Visit your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Plugins → Scheduled Updates.
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.
5. 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.
6. Click the Create button to activate your schedule.

You can create an additional schedule for plugin updates by clicking the “New Schedule” button.

You can temporarily pause a scheduled update by toggling the setting under Active to the off position for each scheduled update:

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:

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.

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

If you manage multiple WordPress.com sites, you can set up scheduled plugin updates for all of them in one place:

1. Visit your Sites list: https://wordpress.com/sites
2. Click Plugins on the left side.
3. Click “Scheduled updates“.
4. Click “New schedule“.

5. Select one or more sites where you want to schedule plugin updates. You can apply a schedule to a single site or to multiple sites at once.
6. 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.
7. Select your desired update frequency: Daily or Weekly.
8. Click Create to activate your schedule.

While you can select multiple sites at once, the multisite view does not support setting custom URL paths for health checks. If you need to configure specific paths to test, use the site-level scheduling controls instead.

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

1. Visit your Sites list: https://wordpress.com/sites
2. Click Plugins on the left side.
3. Click “Scheduled updates“.
4. Click the ellipsis icon (⋮) to the right of the schedule you want to modify. 
5. Choose the Edit option to alter the date/time, plugins to update, and other details. Alternatively, choose the Remove option to delete the scheduled update.