How to directly link or embed Dropbox images

Nov 11, 2014 | Et Cetera

Have you ever tried to embed a “public URL” Dropbox link in an <IMG> tag—as you might for a blog post, forum post, or any HTML file? If so, you’ve experienced the problem that Dropbox “public links” are not direct links to the image file itself, but rather to an interstitial page that frames the image and gives you options for downloading the file, etc. Not embeddable at all.

Here’s the solution:

After you copy the public Dropbox link to your clipboard, just change ?dl=0 to ?raw=1 at the end of the URL.

If you leave the link as ?dl=0, although it will look like a link to an image, it will really link to the interstitial non-embeddable Dropbox page that frames the image or invites people to signup for Dropbox.

For example, the screenshot you see above is in fact hosted on Dropbox like this:

<img src="https://www.dropbox.com/s/mn5smjgwtlbndqu/dropbox-dropdown.png?raw=1" />

If I had left the link as ?dl=0, although it would have looked like a link to an image, it would really have been the link to the interstitial non-embeddable Dropbox page that frames the image or invites people to signup for Dropbox.

Pro Tip

Did you know Dropbox will let you automatically share screen captures? Just look in your Dropbox settings / preferences:

On a Mac, type shift+command+4 to screen capture any portion of your screen. Dropbox will then automatically add the screen capture to your dropbox, and copy the Public Link to your clipboard. This puts you one step away from pasting the link (don’t forget the ?raw=1) into a forum post or email.

76 Comments

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Sophie on March 30, 2017 at 4:30 am

Thank you so so much for your instruction. Almost hopeless without finding your site
Tom Nguyen on June 2, 2017 at 10:09 pm

I was searching Google for a way to embed an image on Dropbox and arrived at your site. Thanks for this info. It worked like a charm.
Can on July 1, 2017 at 2:45 pm

Hello all,

some days ago photobucket stopped their 3rd parts image hosting service and I am looking for another provider.
I just came across this page and i understood that 3rd party image hosting with direct links in Dropbox.

In photobucket it was very convenient that the direct link was based on the filename. For example a picture with the name pic1 got the link http://i327.photobucket.com/albums/k467/USERNAME/pic1.jpg

So it was possible to know the direct link only by knowing the file name. This is possible with Dropbox?

I just tried Flickr and it was not possible 🙁

Thanks for your help
Bill Shope on July 20, 2017 at 6:28 pm

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I’m an 81 year old who has wasted a day after photobucket changed their policy.
Laura on August 4, 2017 at 11:55 am

Thank you! Still working a few years later!
Brian on August 17, 2017 at 5:55 pm

thank you!
Mac on September 26, 2017 at 1:47 pm

This work nice => ?dl=0 to ?dl=1
Valarie on October 19, 2017 at 3:44 am

Canton, Thank you so much! I really appreciate you for this. 🙂
marco on December 20, 2017 at 2:59 pm

thumbs up. Thank you!!!
Eric Daneau on January 30, 2018 at 3:21 am

Merci !
Qayyoom Khan on April 19, 2018 at 12:44 pm

image loading is slow from dropbox link than other links, how can we make it faster to load.
memet on May 12, 2018 at 6:30 pm

also it works with android Glide
Imtiaz on May 14, 2018 at 3:55 pm

Thank you so very much.

I was at my wits end trying to understand why the urls were not working
Regards
charlotte on May 17, 2018 at 4:42 pm

THANK YOU THANK YOU
hanneke on July 9, 2018 at 2:42 pm

thank you so much for this tip! i was so frustrated about trying to embed a dropbox image and thanks to your advice it is working now!
Favito on July 23, 2018 at 7:06 pm

Gracias!!
Hank Warner on August 16, 2018 at 12:24 am

thanks very much, this is extremely helpful!
Anwer Ashif on August 24, 2018 at 9:24 pm

such a pleasuring post. you saved my ass. 😉
Doug on November 8, 2018 at 5:46 pm

Thank you for this!!
Dave on December 4, 2018 at 10:01 pm

Thank you for the tip, this is exactly what I was looking for.
Sue on December 5, 2018 at 5:53 pm

What about embedding a dropbox folder of images and show it as a gallery? Anyway I can use an iframe code for this? That’s what I’m looking to do!
Anny on December 18, 2018 at 9:39 am

Thanks a ton for your tip!!!!
Amanda on February 13, 2019 at 5:10 pm

You’re Amazing!! THANK YOU FOR SHARING!!!
Stefan Kasala on August 13, 2019 at 6:02 am

Thank you. You saved my precious time!
Neal on August 21, 2019 at 2:07 pm

Thank you! This worked for me today! It’s so hard to find an image host for eBay.
Ahmed seif Eddine BOUHLEL on September 2, 2019 at 10:45 pm

Great, thank you so much for this help!
Ahmed on September 2, 2019 at 10:45 pm

Great, thank you so much for this help!