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.
Thansk!
Hi, Thanks for ?raw=1 tip. When copying link using iPad App there already was another ? parameter (?dl=0) which I had to delete before adding ?raw=1
The photo was a jpg but I do not think this will make any difference.
Thanks for sharing this solution!! Very useful!
Thanks so much! I have been searching for ages to figure this one out and nothing worked til now!
Thank you for this. You have saved my sanity!
I had the same ?dl=0 when using the share link on the web. Thanks for the tip!
Hi! I would also like to thank you for your tremendous Image Embed Tip! The image web host, IMGUR, has apparently dropped all my image hyperlinks on eBay. Will re-code all my eCampaigns using your method attach at the end of the image filename. I too had no problem applying the extra code to a JPEG file.
Dropbox accounts created after October 4, 2012 no longer have a Public folder.
You can find direct link of “Links”
http://www.dropbugs.net/index.php?app=freetools&page=06
or get a account inv Public folder
http://www.dropbugs.net/index.php?app=freetools&page=03
ty so much!
yey!!! thank you so much!
Thanks for the TIP I was looking for a way to get Filemaker Pro to take a dropbox link and convert the link into file that can be inserted into the database. With the example you provide I can now do this! Thanks
thanks
Thank you very much,
adding the ?raw=1 at the end along with [IMG][/IMG] around the link worked for me
This helped me a lot ,thank you
THANKS!!!!!!!
Thank you! It worked like a charm! Youre awesome.
Great tip, thank you.
Thanks! I was told about the auto-saving screenshots feature today, but I couldn’t make the link embed right in my Markdown documents. This was exactly the tip I needed.
thank u
Thanks, Canton. You truly rock.
Am I right in thinking that you cannot resize these embeded images? Continually having problems trying to find a cheap image cdn which is hassle free.
Change ?dl=0 to ?dl=1 will do the same trick.
thank you, its work
hello,
please give me some knowledge about how i give online image link in source code
Thanks
You can get the screen capture using just shift+command+4, no need for the “control” button.
Thanks for this 🙂
Thanks a bunch for the hot tip 😀
I cannot add anything to the link in the clipboard on my imac.
Nor can I edit the hotlink I placed in the forum of a use group.
When I click on the link that I created in a forum message I go to the correct place
and can view the photos I placed in the dropbox. However some who also subscribe
get an” page not found message.”
Any help for me? Thanks, Jim
Thanx bro… it works..
I was looking for this quite a while, super great tip!!!!
Tried the main URL from the source but always resulted in a download
This doesn’t work for me!! Whenever I click on “Copy Dropbox Link”, I get a link that is dropbox.com/xxx.jpg. This takes me to the dropbox website with all the other options. I don’t get dl.dropboxusercontent.com, which is what I’m looking for. How can I get this kind of link for my pictures?
Still works — regardless of what the URL is, just make sure it ends in xyz.jpg?raw=1
Exactly what I was looking for, thanks for the tip!
thanks a lot OP.. this saves me from a lot of work uploading the same content to another hosting provider such imgur.
?raw=1
Working great for me, thanks!
?raw=1 pro tip thank you!
Thank you sir. Nowadays, it’s dl=1.
Working great man, thanks!
Ace work Canton. Ridiculous that Dropbox doesn’t enable this as a matter of course…
Stop working now. Neither raw=1 nor dl=1. First redirects to another url, second changes dl=1 to dl=0. Any workarounds more?
@AB: Still works for me. Just add &dl=1 to the sharing URL. It will redirect to a funny looking URL, but the result will be an unencumbered image.
thank you!
I had some trouble getting DropBox to work with Windows 10 and creating the Public folder.
the ?raw=1 worked for me once I had the Dropbox permissions figured out
Thanks for your help! Worked like a charm.
Rad, thanks!
Thank you!!!! &dl=1 works beautifully.
Thanks dude!
Helpful, thank you very much!
Thanks a lot! I needed to create an img element on my test page and really needed a quick fix.