One of my friends asked me how to batch delete all of the posts on a Tumblr. There are some PHP and Ruby scripts on the internet that claim to achieve this, but they seem to be outdated in regards to the Tumblr API, or they require installing some packages.

Instructions

This will allow you to delete 100 posts at a time. Unfortunately, if you try more, Tumblr will give you a warning that only 100 posts can be edited at one time.

1. On the right side of the Tumblr dashboard, click Posts underneath the name of your blog.
2. This should bring up a link called Mass Post Editor. Click on Mass Post Editor.
3. You’ll be presented with your posts as tiles. Keep scrolling down until at least 100 posts (eyeball it) appear on the screen.

4. Paste the following code snippet in the URL bar. It should select the first 100 posts with checkmarks. NOTE: Some browsers will remove the javascript: in front of it. Double check that it’s still there, and if not, type javascript: at the beginning of the pasted part.

     javascript:$('.overlay').slice(0, 100).click()
   

5. Click Delete selected posts.
6. Refresh the page if needed, and delete another 100 posts!

If for some reason this doesn’t work, let me know in the comments. I’ll try to keep this up-to-date.

Last updated: December 29, 2013

Technical Details

Tumblr now uses jQuery. An older version of this post loaded the Protolicious library, but some time between May 2013 and December 2013, Tumblr switched JavaScript libraries.