Add media to a post/page – Block Editor

Option 1: Drag directly into the editor

While working in the WordPress Post/Page editor, drag in a file from your computer. When you see a blue line the file is ready to be dropped into the page. It will display where the line indicated.

If it’s an image, the result will be an image block. If it’s a video, WordPress will sense that and use a video block. 

Option 2: Click one of the + icons to add an image block

This action will present you with an upload button you can use.

Option 1: Recommended method using ProPhoto Galleries

In most cases, the easiest way to manage a group of images in a page or post is with a ProPhoto gallery, even if your goal is to have them display as full size images in single column. See Create and insert galleries for detailed instructions.

Option 2: WordPress Methods

If you have just a few images you can upload them one by one and insert them as single image blocks. That can get tedious quickly, though.

You can select a batch of images in a finder window on your computer and drag them into the post/page, WordPress will upload those images and display them in WordPress gallery block. You can then choose how many columns you would like and whether or not to crop the images or maintain their aspect ratio. Also important is that you choose the file size. We recommend full size.

Files are uploaded in the same order they appear on your computer – typically this is based on the file name. Click the Edit icon link to modify the order with drag-and-drop.

To learn more about reordering images, see our guide Reordering images . If you prefer to deal with a group of single image blocks instead of a bunch of images in a WordPress gallery block, there is a button to convert all the images in the gallery to single image blocks.

NOTE: All these converted image blocks will be set to the image size that was selected previously for the entire gallery. By default this will be the “large” WordPress image size. For best quality you want them to be at full size. That’s why we recommend selecting full size before the conversion to single image blocks. After the conversion, the only way to change the size of the image is to click on and edit every single image. This is one reason we find ProPhoto galleries to be the better choice, even for full size images.

This process is the same as described above except you will use the Media Library tab to view files you’ve uploaded before. Whether using a ProPhoto Gallery block, an Image block or a regular Gallery block, you will be presented the same Media Library button.

Select the file(s) you want to insert. For image blocks you can only select one image; both gallery block types allow for selecting multiple images if you use the shift + click or cmd/cntrl + click. When you are done selecting images, click select to insert them into your post or page.

Remember that you may insert anything you’ve already uploaded into WordPress – you do not need to upload the same images again if you have already uploaded them for another page, post, or ProPhoto gallery.

Choose alignment after insertion

There are four options for aligning images/media in your posts & pages:

• left – when there is enough space, text and other media will wrap around the right side of the item
• center – the image will be centered in the page with nothing on either side
• right – when there is enough space, text and other media will wrap around the left side of the item
• none – the item behaves like a character in a sentence, appearing inline with other text or items

Generally, you should insert images and other media as center aligned unless you have a specific need to wrap text or other items around the sides. After you insert a block, whether that be image or gallery, choose the alignment in the block toolbar.

Side by side images

A Column block is a simple way to get a few images side by side or text along the side of an image. You add the column block and then add blocks into those columns. This image shows to column blocks with paragraph and image blocks.

This does not work well for lots of images, though. In those cases, consider a thumbnail gallery or making use of composite images, described in our Composite side-by-side images guide.

There are four options for the display size of images in your posts & pages:

• full size – images will be inserted at the original resolution* of the file, e.g. an image 2000×1333 in resolution will be placed in the page at that size
• large – images will be inserted at the “large” size (1024px by default)
• medium – images will be inserted at the “medium” size (300px by default)
• thumbnail – images will be inserted at the “thumbnail” size, and cropped square (150px by default)

The default size of downsized images are found in the “Settings > Media” screen, and you can modify the sizing to suit special needs, seen here:

*Your images are loaded at the highest resolution possible, up to 100% size, but a downsized version may be created automatically if the browser window is much smaller than the 100% size. Learn more about automatic downsizing in our Automatic image downsizing guide.

Choose image size

You may select the size of image blocks after inserting them into your page. Once you click on a block find the size options in the sidebar.

WordPress will not save your size selection when you insert something into a page, so remember to choose your desired image size for each image block. Typically you will find that inserting images at full size works best for a responsive website layout.

There are four options for the linking of images in your posts & pages:

• none – the image will not link to anything, it will only appear in the page
• media file – the image will link to the original uploaded file
• attachment page – the image will link to the WordPress attachment page which is a display page for the image alone, styled by your theme complete with the normal page layout – the template assigned to the individual posts pages will be used for this special attachment page
• custom URL – images can be used to link to any URL that is pasted – within the site or on any other site

Typically images won’t be linked to anything, but if you want to link an image or graphic inside a page or post, these options can be useful.

Remember that it’s also possible to link images with the graphics module within your layouts.