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Image, video and website previews

Zulip displays previews of images, videos, audio files and websites in your message feed. You can configure how animated images are previewed, or hide link previews on individual messages.

Organization administrators can:

Configure how animated images are played

Section titled “Configure how animated images are played”

In the desktop and web apps, you can configure previews of animated images to always show the animation, show it when you hover over the image with your mouse, or not show it at all. For large animated images, only the first part of the animation will be shown in the preview.

You can always see the full animated image by opening it in the image viewer.

  1. Go to Preferences.
  2. Under Information, select the desired option from the Play animated images dropdown.
Section titled “Hide or show link previews on a message”

If a message shows a website preview or a video preview from a site like YouTube or Vimeo that you’d rather not see, you can hide it just for yourself, without changing how the message looks for anyone else.

  1. Hover over a message to reveal three icons on the right.
  2. Click on the ellipsis ().
  3. Click Hide link previews.

Configure image and video thumbnail size

Section titled “Configure image and video thumbnail size”

You can configure the size of image and video previews for users in your organization. Smaller previews avoid disrupting the flow of conversation, while larger ones reduce the need to open the image viewer.

  1. Go to Organization settings.
  2. Under Message feed settings, select the desired option from the Size of images and videos in messages dropdown.
  3. Click Save changes.

Configure whether website previews are shown

Section titled “Configure whether website previews are shown”
  1. Go to Organization settings.
  2. Under Message feed settings, toggle Show previews of linked websites.
  3. Click Save changes.

Configure whether previews of linked images and videos are shown

Section titled “Configure whether previews of linked images and videos are shown”
  1. Go to Organization settings.
  2. Under Message feed settings, toggle Show previews of linked images and videos.
  3. Click Save changes.

Security

Section titled “Security”

To prevent images from being used to track Zulip users, Zulip proxies all external images in messages through the server.

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