Imgur plugin for pasting images

Hi. Just recently released a simple Imgur Plugin which pastes images from your clipboard to imgur.com instead of local filesystem.

obsidian-imgur-plugin-demo

To use it, you will need a client id generated for your imgur account. The process is described at plugin’s readme

I personally missed this feature a lot when switched from HackMd to Obsidian. I’m used to make screenshots while taking notes from video lectures/talks. And in case of Obsidian I need to manage such images on my own, because they are stored locally in vault. But with this plugin I do not need to take care about images.

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Hey there, nice plugin! Just one question: isn’t it risky posting anonymously instead of inside my imgur account? From what I read, it says it stores images forever, but idk :thinking:

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Thanks @Kir for the awesome plugin.

For anyone interested I made a video on YouTube showing how to use this plugin.

I discussed some of the pros and cons of uploading directly to Imgur.


This plugin is a huge time saver (as well as storage saver), highly recommend it!

Here’s my video on it:

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Thanks @santi, great video! I think it could be a nice addition to README.md

1.1.0 released today. You can now drag-and-drop which enables pasting animated gifs and uploading multiple files at once.

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awesome @Kir the new update is awesome! Great, feel free to link my video to the README of course

Thank you for the awesome plugin! Does it work with videos too, since Imgur supports videos?

Hi @Dangal,
no, it does not. And I am almost sure is impossible with copy buffer: the clipboard does not even copy the whole animated gifs, let alone the whole video file.

Maybe it is possible with drag-and-drop if the API allows such anonymous uploads. But does it make sense? You won’t be able to see it in a preview-mode embedded to Markdown document. The following is simply not supported:

![](https://i.imgur.com/vXVkFfN.mp4)
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Amazing! It would be amazing if images could stay in our private Imgur accunt …

It’s not possible to use it on mobile on android, right?

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@1dan I never copy/pasted images on mobile and I do not have Obsidian mobile app, so I can not tell you.

Just tried copying image: I can copy an image using Chrome on Android (there is a context menu). But I do not even know an example app where I could paste it.

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About videos upload support… I said above that there is no Markdown syntax to support videos, but I just noticed that you can simply use html like this:

<video draggable="false" playsinline="" autoplay="" loop="" class="" style="width: 488px; height: 290px;"><source type="video/mp4" src="https://i.imgur.com/X5k7sEP.mp4"></video>

So I will consider videos upload support

Just released v2.0.0:tada:
Now you can sign in with your account and upload images tied to this account

This was made possible by solving the problem of getting complete data from Obsidian protocol URL

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1 Idea for Imgur plugin improvement:

→ Everytime you paste an image, 2 options apear:
- paste with imgur
- paste in media folder

WHY? (and some thoughts on imgur reliability)

Imgur plugin is great for some good reasons, however…
It doesn’t seem as safe as to keep your notes in your folder. You probably don’t want to risk to loose dozens or hundred of images you had inside your hardworked notes.

Have you check their terms of consent? (see intelectual property excerpt bellow)
Imagine you upload a screenshot of a book content for example, an image of the book, a chart, or whatever. Even it is just for you, without the intention to share. If you have it tied to your imgur account and there is some intelectual problem with one photo, it may put in risk your account and the access to all your other uploaded images no? And they will stay with your images even after you delete it. I’m not that pessimist but we never know what future will bring, an AI system could eventually easily recognize if an imgur image as copyrights. And I don’t trust so much a website that give you ads based on your information and (above all) only let you register if you confirm your cell-phone number.

Given this, a cautious approach when pasting an image on obsidian may make sense. And if you worried if the image may have rights don’t upload to imgur. It’s not practical to make the choice of upload or not, by turn on and off the pluggin when you need to paste something.

I wonder what is safer: upload to imgur without or with account?

INTELECTUAL PROPERTY By uploading a file or other content or by making a comment, you represent and warrant to us that (1) doing so does not violate or infringe anyone else’s rights; and (2) you created the file or other content you are uploading, or otherwise have sufficient intellectual property rights to upload the material consistent with these terms. With regard to any file or content you upload to the public portions of our site, you grant Imgur a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable worldwide license (with sublicense and assignment rights) to use, to display online and in any present or future media, to create derivative works of, to allow downloads of, and/or distribute any such file or content. To the extent that you delete any such file or content from the public portions of our site, the license you grant to Imgur pursuant to the preceding sentence will automatically terminate, but will not be revoked with respect to any file or content Imgur has already copied and sublicensed or designated for sublicense. Also, of course, anything you post to a public portion of our site may be used by the public pursuant to the following paragraph even after you delete it."

Wandering your thoughts on this.
Does the plugin improvement makes sense?
Do you feel safe putting all obsidian images in imgur hands?
I guess i get the terms of consent right, didn’t I?

(BTW i can’t do this pluggin. Is just an idea for a more talended person if it makes sense)

:wave:

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Did not know about that, I registered my account years ago with an e-mail

I never thought so deep about that actually. I created the plugin because Imgur is used the same way at HackMD notes or StackOverflow posts. Whatever picture you paste, it gets uploaded to Imgur and you simply get a Markdown image link. It’s your choice to use the plugin or not and your responsibility to not violate Imgur rules.
Can you lose the whole account because of a single “bad” image? I think there is a low chance, but still possible. Even if the account will be banned, I guess only images violating rules will be removed (the ones which caused the ban of your account), not everything. But anything is possible, I can not look into future. We can only know what rules work now and what is the past experience we have with Imgur so far. Mine is positive.

Yes, your suggestion makes sense, I created a request for future. I already thought that confirmation dialog could be useful.

Now about Authenticated upload: I implemented OAuth because it makes the plugin much user-friendly, not forcing you to deal with client_id (which is not very user-friendly). There was a request and discussion around authentication. This way people will have more control over their images and feel more confident they won’t disappear.

What about me: I think I personally will continue using Anonymous upload, simply because I do not want to clutter my account with lot’s of (often throw-away) images for notes

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Does the plugin upload the images as public or hidden? It’s weird because when I go to my account, I can see my test picture in “All” but not in Public nor in Hidden! So I’m not quite sure how that picture has been uploaded.

As I know, all images are public. But you need to know the URL to view the image. Regarding: Public/Hidden on Imgur website: I am not sure, but I think it is related to POSTS (which can be voted/commented/etc). The plugin does not create any posts.

So the image is hidden for anybody unless it somehow gets an URL to it

Thanks, It works well. :+1:

Suggestion

But we can add the letter “s” or “t” or “m” at the end of the imgur URL to resize the image.

for eg :

Small - https://i.imgur.com/RVfbZ6mt.jpg
Imgur

Medium - https://i.imgur.com/RVfbZ6mm.jpg
Imgur

An option that concatenates this letter to the URL will be very helpful.

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Hi @1dan, just released the 2.1.0. There is a confirmation dialog now :slight_smile:

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Hi there, I’ve run into an issue - I have the plugin enabled but my images are still uploaded locally. I am on a Windows 10 device and running Obsidian Sync. The plugin is working fine on my Macbook.

I am unable to utilise the plugin, i am a mac user.