Your SEO audit just came back. 300 images flagged.
You ran a site audit. The report is brutal: 300 images with missing alt text. Your accessibility score dropped. Google Image Search can't index half your product photos. The fix? Open each image in the media library, type an alt text, save, next image. At 30 seconds each, that's two and a half hours of clicking.
Nobody has two and a half hours for this. So it stays on the to-do list. For months.
What most people do instead
The manual approach is why it rarely gets done.
A better way: use data you already have
Open the TrueCommander navigator. Type add images alts. Hit enter.
The command scans every image in your media library and fills in missing alt text using captions, descriptions, titles, and filenames you've already provided. No AI. No API keys. Just smart use of existing metadata.
Smart priority chain. Caption first, then description, then title, then filename. Generic names like "IMG_001" or "screenshot" are skipped automatically.
How it works
Uses metadata already attached to your images. No external services.
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Command name | add images alts |
| Batch size | 300 images per run |
| Source priority | Caption → Description → Title → Filename |
| Max alt length | 125 characters |
| Overwrite flag | -overwrite replaces existing alt texts |
| Skips | Generic names (IMG_, DSC_, screenshot, photo, etc.) |
| Can be used in |
Real example
You're preparing a WooCommerce store for an SEO audit. The store has 480 product images. You run a site audit tool and it flags 310 images with missing alt text.
You open the navigator, type add images alts, and hit enter. First run: 247 alt texts added, 89 already had alt text, 14 couldn't be auto-filled (generic filenames like DSC_0042.jpg with no captions).
You run it again. Second batch: 49 more updated. The 14 unfillable images are flagged with a warning. You open those 14 in the media library and add captions manually. That takes 5 minutes.
Total time from 310 missing alt texts to zero: under 10 minutes. Without this command, it would have been an afternoon of clicking through the media library.
Goes further with TrueCommander
One-time cleanup is a start. Keeping it clean is what matters.