How to run WP-CLI in the background

If you have a lot of images to resize, you can run WP-CLI in the background so you don't need to wait for the process to finish. In this quick guide, I'll show you how you can run the command wp media regenerate in the background:

  1. Install WP-CLI

  2. Open your server terminal

  3. Type the command nohup wp media regenerate --yes followed by &

$ nohup wp media regenerate --yes &

This will run regeneration in the background and print the process identifier number of the job:

[1] 22699

To view regenerated thumbnails log, type: 

$ cat nohup.out

To list running jobs, type the command jobs

$ jobs

The output will be similar to this:

[1]+  Running                 nohup wp media regenerate --yes &

To stop regeneration, use the command kill and the job number in [1]+

$ kill %1

Note: If you ended the terminal session, you will need to use the command ps -eaf | grep wp instead of jobs to list running jobs:

ps -eaf | grep wp

The output will be similar to:

501 22699 22389   0  3:19PM ttys000    0:00.14 wp media regenerate --yes

To terminate the job process, use the identifier number to terminate it:

kill 22699

Last updated