Guide to Insert a Web Image Using the New Confluence Cloud Editor

[#1]

IMPORTANT: This DOES NOT apply to Confluence Server or to Confluence Cloud pages using the Legacy Editor.

Introduction

The new Confluence Cloud editor has a feature to insert web images, however, it can cause issues when dynamic images are required and need to be updated by an external source outside of Confluence and certain image types may not be supported..

There was an Atlassian Jira issue that should have resolved this: CONFCLOUD-65749 Ability to add Images from web in the new editor. However, as of October 2024, Atlassian has closed the above issue, as a feature has been added to consume a web image as a local file.

The next section describes the new feature.

Official Solution

The Adding images from links now supported in Confluence guide is a good improvement as it adds support to insert an image via an external source, however, from comments it does not allow all types and sometimes the image does not dynamically change when the external source is updated.

This feature does work for the most part as can be seen in the below screenshot where there are Zero Attachments on this page.

If this feature does not meet the requirements then please keep reading.

Unofficial Solution (Markdown)

There has been a lot of questions raised regarding this issue with no free solutions.
I wanted a definitive solution to exist on the Atlassian Community and so I prepared the following workaround:

1. Prepare the web image links using the following markdown format in plain text, e.g. a simple text editor, outside of Confluence:

   ![ALT TEXT](https://link.to/image.jpg)

   IMPORTANT: Copy-and-pasting image links will auto-format on the page and so will preparing the markdown text directly on the page
   NOTE: The ALT TEXT must have a value or the image will not render

   The following is a working example using Lorem Picsum that can be copied to the page:

   ![Example](https://picsum.photos/id/237/200/300)

2. Edit a Confluence page
3. Copy and paste the markdown onto the page

4. Verify the image is displayed on the page

After adding the web image to page, it is also possible to add a link to it by mouse hovering over the image to display the floating controls and clicking the link icon to enter a Confluence page or URL.

It is even possible to resize the image and update the position on the page from the in-line controls.

Enjoy having web images on pages again.

[Roman Konovalov]

This is a great workaround, thank you!

[dt0b35]

Clipboard content needs to come from plain-text editor (e.g. copy above from this web-site just pasts the pre-formatted info:

![ALT TEXT](https://link.to/image.jpg)

and not the image-markup.

In case you do not have plain/text editors (like notepad on windows) you can convert markup  to text/plain by pasting to the browser Address bar and copy it again.

Upcoming Confluence release may have a direct image-link functionality: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-65749

[Scott Beeson]

Is this dynamic? Will it update if the image updates? Or is it retrieving and embedding a static image? 

[Barbara Szczesniak]

Is this issue resolved by this upcoming feature described in this article: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-articles/Inline-images-coming-to-you/ba-p/2611260? 

[Joris Boon]

This workarround worked for us, but i'm not able to put external web images 'inline'; meaning that they can be put on the same line as a text or within a table cell.

Is there a fix for this?

[Daniel Carter]

This is great, i can confirm it loads the image from the remote site when viewing the page.  The editor does not take a copy into confluence to become stale.

[Adrian Schlatter]

I think this is exactly what I need but it does not work. I only get a box with "preview unavailable" while still in edit-mode. As soon as I save the page, even this is gone. After going back to edit mode, nothing is there anymore.

UPDATE: It *does* work. I had a weird copy&paste problem unrelated to Confluence that simply broke the link.