How To Embed An Image From Google Drive

Angus Kidman

Published 8 years ago: February 12, 2013 at 9:30 am -

Filed to:google

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You can store photos and other images on Google Drive, but Google doesn’t offer an easy option for embedding that image on another web page (as it does for videos or PDF files). Google Operating System outlines a URL hack which allows you to include pictures stored on Google Drive in other pages.

If you edit an uploaded picture, you’ll see a URL in the form

https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILEID/edit

where FILEID is a very long sequence of characters. Edit this so it reads

http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=FILEID

Note that this will only work if you set the access permissions on the uploaded image to be public; a private file (which is the default) won’t work. It’s unlikely you’d permanently store images on Google Drive for use on a web site, but it could be useful in some circumstances.

Permalinks for Google Drive Images [Google Operating System]

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Angus Kidman

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Angus Kidman | Lifehacker Editor

Angus has been writing professionally about technology since 1994 and breaking it for even longer. He is based in Sydney but spends a frankly unhealthy portion of his life on the road, tracking down the latest stories. In 2011, he won the IT Journo Award For Best Consumer Technology Journalist and Consensus IT Writers Award for Best Technical Writer for his work on Lifehacker; about time too.

Comments

Gerry says:

February 12, 2013 at 1:36 pm

Interesting idea. What do you mean when you say that you can embed video and pdfs on another web page? How is this done?
Thanks

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barb says:

February 12, 2013 at 2:27 pm

So wait, if I do this, I basically get free image storage with no transfer charges to me, off of Google?

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mr_safety says:

February 16, 2013 at 5:14 am

Thanks for the info. I embed photos from my Google Picasa Web storage now. What are the advantages of using Google Drive vs Picasa Web?

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ibanez654 says:

December 17, 2013 at 11:45 am

Thanks a lot for this. I needed this info…

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benk says:

December 29, 2013 at 11:18 am

You can use gdriveurl.com, it got updated and now allows users to log in with their google drive account and share the list of files instantly, getting for each file “View” & “Download” short permalink.

There’s also the old solution (login to Google Drive, set everything to “Public on web”, copy share link, convert it into the gdriveurl.com textarea in the homepage), but it’s just a waste of time, you should try “MyDrive” api.

You should write a post about it. It’s more user/mobile friendly and complete.

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MrH says:

September 1, 2015 at 4:38 am

2 years later… Thank you.

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thebasilisk says:

February 1, 2016 at 3:21 am

I could not get this to work for me, but this discussion from 2012 worked for me so well.

“Yes, it’s possible. Provided that you put your files in a public folder, you can get any file in a folder by this URL:

https://googledrive.com/host/FOLDERID/FILENAME”
– stackoverflow

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