Disabling a Plugin with FTP or File Manager

If you are troubleshooting a WordPress fatal error, and you need to disable a plugin without access to the WordPress Dashboard and you cannot use WP-CLI to disable the plugin, you can follow these instructions to deactivate a plugin using your FTP or web host’s File Manager.

1. Navigate to your Web Host’s File Manager or login via FTP using your Web Host’s instructions to do so.
2. Navigate to the WordPress root directory for the site that you are troubleshooting, then navigate to the wp-content/plugins directory.
3. Rename the plugin directory to something easy to remember, such as pluginname-back, where “pluginname” is replaced with the actual name of the plugin.

Congratulations! You now know how to disable a plugin using a file browser, or FTP.