What this plugin is
VergeLabs Media Library gives WordPress a folder tree over the media library, plus categories, tags and custom taxonomies, MIME type management, configurable filters, galleries built from folders, a duplicate finder, and an optional AI layer that describes images, files them for you and plans a folder tree from what they show.
It is a maintained fork of Enhanced Media Library by wpUXsolutions, GPLv2 or later, with the WordPress 7 media toolbar repaired and the PHP 8 warnings cleared.
Current version: 4.1.0. Works on WordPress 6.5 to 7.1 and PHP 7.4 to 8.5.
The one design decision everything else follows from #
WordPress has no folders. Every plugin that adds them has to decide where the filing is kept, and that decision is the whole product.
Your folders are media_category terms. They live in WordPress's own terms
and term_relationships tables — the same place your post categories live.
That has consequences you can check yourself:
| What you can do | How |
|---|---|
| Your theme can read them | wp_get_object_terms( $id, 'media_category' ) |
| The REST API can read them | media_category is registered with show_in_rest |
| Other plugins can read them | Any plugin that reads the media_category taxonomy sees the same folders |
| WP-CLI can read them | wp term list media_category |
| They survive uninstalling this plugin | Deleting the plugin removes caches and cron jobs, nothing else |
Plugins that keep folders in a private table (FileBird's fbv and
fbv_attachment_folder, for instance) can do the same things at the UI level, but
your organisation only exists inside that plugin. This one is designed so that
leaving costs you nothing — which is also the reason the importer, the CSV export
and the ZIP export exist.
What runs where #
The product is two halves, and it is worth knowing which is which because the answer to "does this send anything anywhere" depends on it.
The plugin does the folders, the tree, the smart folders, the filters, the search, the galleries, the MIME types, the importer, the duplicate finder, the set-aside list and the CSV round trip. All of it runs on your server. No account, no key, no outbound request.
The AI service at https://ai.vergelabs.nl/v1 does the image descriptions, the text
embeddings and the folder plans. It runs on our infrastructure, it holds the model provider
keys, and it meters credits. The plugin talks only to it and never to a model
provider directly.
Nothing reaches the service until you enter a licence key and start a run. See What leaves your site for the exact payloads.
No build step, no framework #
The plugin ships plain ES5-compatible JavaScript and hand-written CSS. Nothing here compiles, bundles or transpiles, and there is no React runtime to load. That is a deliberate constraint rather than an accident of age: FileBird ships roughly 765 KB of React into your admin, and the measured cost of that shows up on every media screen. See Performance for the numbers.
The screens #
The plugin adds one top-level admin menu, VergeLabs Library, and draws its own navigation inside the page rather than in the WordPress sidebar.
| Screen | Slug | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboard | vergelabs-media | Where things stand, and the next useful action |
| Folders | vergeml-librarian | Describe, plan or propose a tree, confirm it, fill it |
| AI | vergeml-ai | Three tabs: Describe, How it describes, Search |
| Duplicates | vergeml-health | Copies, and the space they take |
| Import folders | vergeml-import-folders | From another plugin, or a CSV |
| Settings → Licence | vergeml-licence | Your key, plan and credits |
| Settings → Folders and categories | vergeml-taxonomies | Which taxonomies act as folders |
| Settings → Library settings | vergeml-library | Ordering, filters, uploads, search |
| Settings → File types | vergeml-mime-types | What may be uploaded |
| Get help | vergeml-help | Known issues for your stack, and support |
The WordPress sidebar shows only the top-level entry; the screens are reached from
the navigation inside the page, and Get help from the Dashboard's Open Get help.
Addresses from earlier versions (admin.php?page=media-ai and the rest) redirect to
the vergeml- ones, so a bookmark keeps working.
The folder tree itself is not a screen. It sits beside Media → Library in both list and grid view, in the editor's insert-media panel, and in the media modal of the page builders listed under Compatibility.
Where to go next #
- Installing it for the first time: Install and first run
- Coming from FileBird or another folder plugin: Migrating
- What the folder tree can do: Folders and the tree
- Turning on the AI: How the AI layer works
- Letting it plan your folders: Plan my folders
- Building against it: REST API, Hooks and constants, AI service API
Written from version 3.15.0 of the plugin. Last updated 2026-10-02. All documentation · Legal · Support