330

How can I hide the broken image icon? Example: Example

I have an image with error src:

<img src="Error.src"/>

The solution must work in all browsers.

4
  • 1
    I tried to set alt= "", and set to img teg background throw CSS live: {background: url(src), width:...; height:..} but it not true. My img tag must hide then src is broken. Commented Feb 26, 2014 at 19:42
  • See a possible solution here - stackoverflow.com/questions/18484753/… but needs JS though. You cannot do this with CSS alone. Commented Feb 26, 2014 at 19:46
  • See w3schools.com/jsref/event_onerror.asp "onerror" attribute Commented Nov 22, 2016 at 16:39
  • 1
    Best solution below is to set alt="" this not only hides the broken image icon, but also makes the image properly accessible. Commented May 10, 2024 at 13:06

24 Answers 24

395

There is no way for CSS/HTML to know if the image is broken link, so you are going to have to use JavaScript no matter what

But here is a minimal method for either hiding the image, or replacing the source with a backup.

<img src="Error.src" onerror="this.style.display='none'"/>

or

<img src="Error.src" onerror="this.src='fallback-img.jpg'"/>

Update

You can apply this logic to multiple images at once by doing something like this:

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function(event) {
   document.querySelectorAll('img').forEach(function(img){
  	img.onerror = function(){this.style.display='none';};
   })
});
<img src="error.src">
<img src="error.src">
<img src="error.src">
<img src="error.src">

Update 2

For a CSS option see michalzuber's answer below. You can't hide the entire image, but you change how the broken icon looks.

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

9 Comments

You can do it with HTML only using the object tag since it can be used to display images just like the img tag, and doesn't display a broken link if the image doesn't exist, it works in all browsers and as far back as IE8 all by itself, you can even use default images with this method, I posted an answer with details below.
This worked for me instead of the <object> approach because I needed the image to have a declared margin, but only if a valid image was found, otherwise I needed it to take up zero space. <object> doesn't have the onerror event, so that wasn't an option there. A style rule to remove the margin, using an :empty pseudo class, was never triggered on object.
@Lemdor – yes, you would need to find images on load and attach the common function to each one. You could use jQuery or vanilla JS to accomplish this (I've updated my answer with an example)
onerror="this.style.display='none'" worked for me
onerror="this.style.visibility='hidden'" is also useful rather than display none.
|
199

Despite what people are saying here, you don't need JavaScript at all, you don't even need CSS!

It's actually very doable and simple with HTML only.
You can even show a default image if an image doesn't load. Here's how...

This also works on all browsers, even as far back as IE8 (out of 250,000+ visitors to sites I hosted in September 2015, ZERO people used something worse than IE8, meaning this solution works for literally everything).

Step 1: Reference the image as an object instead of an img. When objects fail they don't show broken icons; they just do nothing. Starting with IE8, you can use object and img tags interchangeably. You can resize and do all the glorious stuff you can with regular images too. Don't be afraid of the object tag; it's just a tag, nothing big and bulky gets loaded and it doesn't slow down anything. You'll just be using the img tag by another name. A speed test shows they are used identically.

Step 2: (Optional, but awesome) Stick a default image inside that object. If the image you want actually loads in the object, the default image won't show. So for example you could show a list of user avatars, and if someone doesn't have an image on the server yet, it could show the placeholder image... no JavaScript or CSS required at all, but you get the features of what takes most people JavaScript.

Here is the code...

<object data="avatar.jpg" type="image/jpeg">
    <img src="default.jpg" />
</object>

... Yes, it's that simple.

If you want to implement default images with CSS, you can make it even simpler in your HTML like this...

<object class="avatar" data="user21.jpg" type="image/jpeg"></object>

...and just add the CSS from this answer -> https://stackoverflow.com/a/32928240/3196360

21 Comments

Somehow I completely missed this idea, when it is so obvious in retrospect! Unfortunately, I don't think the object tag can gracefully handle responsive images like we're starting to see on the img.srcset property :(
This does break the semantics of image tags, though. I don't know if search engines will like your using of <object> tags instead of <img> tags. Is this approach HTML5-compliant and rendered correctly by all major browsers?
This is HTML4 compliant (compliant since 1997) and rendered correctly by all major browsers since IE8/2009 (other browsers did it much, much earlier). If a search engine doesn't understand an object with an image type is an image, it's had 19 years to catch up to spec so it's probably not a very good engine... Teens that are on the road driving cars now weren't even conceived when this solution met specs... How far back do you want to go? :) This is a rock-solid solution.
@MonsterMMORPG because it doesn't use JavaScript, and you aren't always allowed to (in a body of an email message, for example).
I really hoped it would work, but gmail web and outlook web removed object tag from html email.
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106

Found a great solution at https://bitsofco.de/styling-broken-images/

img {  
  position: relative;
}

/* style this to fit your needs */
/* and remove [alt] to apply to all images*/
img[alt]:after {  
  display: block;
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  background-color: #fff;
  font-family: 'Helvetica';
  font-weight: 300;
  line-height: 2;  
  text-align: center;
  content: attr(alt);
}
<img src="error">
<br>
<img src="broken" alt="A broken image">
<br>
<img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/218eLEn0fuL.png" alt="A bird" style="width: 120px">

9 Comments

Awesome solution purely using CSS which should be the accepted answer. The article linked to is outdated, as browser support is now 97,87%: caniuse.com/#feat=css-gencontent.
The linked article has an excellent explanation on how the browsers handle images, but keep in mind that this solution works only if you have a solid background and you want to cover everything with another box of the same solid color, or with another image. This solution is not really removing or hiding the broken image icon, it's just covering it.
The problem with this solution is that the alt content will shine through if the image contains transparent areas
On Chrome 70, it shows the bird + a broken image icon :(
^ Same on Firefox 63
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90

If you will add alt with text alt="abc" it will show the show corrupt thumbnail, and alt message abc

<img src="pic_trulli.jpg" alt="abc"/>

1st

If you will not add alt it will show the show corrupt thumbnail

<img src="pic_trulli.jpg"/>

2nd

If you want to hide the broken one just add alt="" it will not show corrupt thumbnail and any alt message(without using js)

<img src="pic_trulli.jpg" alt=""/>

If you want to hide the broken one just add alt="" & onerror="this.style.display='none'" it will not show corrupt thumbnail and any alt message(with js)

<img src="pic_trulli.jpg" alt="abc" onerror="this.style.display='none'"/>

4th one is a little dangerous(not exactly) , if you want to add any image in onerror event, it will not display even if Image exist as style.display is like adding. So, use it when you don't require any alternative image to display.

display: 'none'; // in css

If we give it in CSS, then the item will not display(like image, iframe, div like that).

If you want to display image & you want to display totally blank space if error, then you can use, but also be careful this will not take any space. So, you need to keep it in a div may be

Link https://jsfiddle.net/02d9yshw/

6 Comments

YES! Just add alt=""! That is literally it! Thank you. So glad i scrolled to the bottom of the page. I'm using lazy loading, and in-frame images that haven't loaded yet (because the browser mistakenly thinks the viewport hasn't scrolled to them yet) showed as broken images. A little scroll, and they reappear. The broken images in their place were so ugly though
getting rid of alt will hurt your SEO if that is important to you. img { color: transparent; } will hide the alt without alt="" so Google will still see the alt tag and you won't get dinged SEO wise
This won't work if your image has set dimensions via width and height.
@RobinMétral, in that case last approach works, css style none. <img src="pic_trulli.jpg" width="500" height="333" onerror="this.style.display='none'"/> . Please remove downvote if it solves your issue
I feel in that case you could use bootstrap class="img-thumbnail", will just let you have a border box of the desired width
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74

I think the easiest way is to hide the broken image icon by the text-indent property.

img {
    text-indent: -10000px
}

Obviously it doesn't work if you want to see the "alt" attribute.

6 Comments

The easiest way.
Hacky CSS is best CSS
What if you want to show the alt text but not the broken document icon ?
I thought we were done with this around 2012? "But despite its enduring popularity, Phark has drawbacks of its own: chiefly, a performance hit caused by the need to draw a giant 9999px box offscreen. (Yes, the browser really does this.)" zeldman.com/2012/03/01/…
Future human from 2100 here. This method doesn't work on my 36K screen. I think you should... add a zero or so.
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34

in case you like to keep/need the image as a placeholder, you could change the opacity to 0 with an onerror and some CSS to set the image size. This way you will not see the broken link, but the page loads as normal.

<img src="<your-image-link->" onerror="this.style.opacity='0'" />

img {
    width: 75px;
    height: 100px;
}

2 Comments

@adrianp can you share the link with deprecated information (list) please thanks. It still seems to work fine with style options. Btw no deprecation message on w3schools.com/jsref/event_onerror.asp Normally they update with a red message "is deprecated ...."
its been marked as deprecated on mdn, see table developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/web/html/element/…
20

I liked the answer by Nick and was playing around with this solution. Found a cleaner method. Since ::before/::after pseudos don't work on replaced elements like img and object they will only work if the object data (src) is not loaded. It keeps the HTML more clean and will only add the pseudo if the object fails to load.

object {
  position: relative;
  float: left;
  display: block;
  width: 200px;
  height: 200px;
  margin-right: 20px;
  border: 1px solid black;
}
object::after {
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  display: block;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  content: '';
  background: red url("https://placekitten.com/g/200/200");
}
<object data="https://placekitten.com/200/200" type="image/png"></object>

<object data="http://broken.img/url" type="image/png"></object>

1 Comment

instead of empty content, one can make use of an alt-Text (just like with <img>) and get to see it withcontent: attr(alt);, styling the ::after-bracket as display: flex; justify-content: center, …, still has the benefit of avoiding the 'classic' broken-image-icon… or <title>-tag, not sure what is considered more “barrier free”…
19

If you need to still have the image container visible due to it being filled in later on and don't want to bother with showing and hiding it you can stick a 1x1 transparent image inside of the src:

<img id="active-image" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7"/>

I used this for this exact purpose. I had an image container that was going to have an image loaded into it via Ajax. Because the image was large and took a bit to load, it required setting a background-image in CSS of a Gif loading bar.

However, because the src of the was empty, the broken image icon still appeared in browsers that use it.

Setting the transparent 1x1 Gif fixes this problem simply and effectively with no code additions through CSS or JavaScript.

3 Comments

only answer that worked all others left a white outline
The best sollution for me. Can you give some resource how create something like this by own?
nice solution. no need to do so complex things....
13

The same idea as described by others works in React as follow:

<img src='YOUR-URL' onError={(e) => e.target.style.display='none' }/>

Comments

12

Using CSS only is tough, but you could use CSS's background-image instead of <img> tags...

Something like this:

HTML

<div id="image"></div>

CSS

#image {
    background-image: url(Error.src);
    width: //width of image;
    height: //height of image;

}

Here is a working fiddle.

Note: I added the border in the CSS on the fiddle just to demonstrate where the image would be.

2 Comments

It's good, but this solution not for me :) img tag hided then src is broken, div - no :(
@GeraySuinov Then you might have to use Javascript
5

Since 2005, Mozilla browsers such as Firefox have supported the non-standard :-moz-broken CSS pseudo-class that can accomplish exactly this request:

/* for display purposes so you can see the empty cell */
td { min-width:64px; }

img:-moz-broken { display:none; }
img[src="error"]:-moz-broken { display:initial; } /* for demo purposes */
<table border="1"><tr><td>
  <img src="error">
</td><td>
  <img src="error" alt="error image">
</td><td>
  <img src="error" alt="">
</td><td>
  <img src="broken" alt="broken image">
</td><td>
  <img src="broken" alt="">
</td><td>
  <img src="https://i.sstatic.net/Mkdgc.png"
   alt="A bird" style="width: 120px">
</td></tr></table>

There are several cells in this example. From left to right:

  1. A broken image without alt attribute (baseline): show a broken image
  2. A broken image with alt text (baseline): show the alt text
  3. A broken image with empty alt text (baseline): show the alt text (nothing)
  4. A broken image with alt text (our CSS): hide the broken image
  5. A broken image with empty alt text (our CSS): show the alt text (nothing)
  6. A functional image with alt text (our CSS): show the image

img::before also works in Firefox 64 (though once upon a time it was img::after so this is not reliable). I can't get either of those to work in Chrome 71.

The most compatible solution would be to specify alt="" and to use the Firefox-specific CSS.

Note that a broken image with an empty alt attribute doesn't guarantee the broken image icon will be suppressed, but that does seem to be the behavior in Firefox 103 and Chromium 103. Also note that this violates accessibility guidelines since screen readers will not be able to describe items with empty alt text and that may be disruptive to blind users' experiences.

6 Comments

Interesting ... do you know if Chrome has a similar pseudo-class?
@1000Gbps – I couldn't find one when I made that answer and can't find one now, at least with quick web queries and by looking at mozilla bug 11011. You could actually request such a thing in Chromium (the upstream for Chrome) if you want, but as it's nonstandard, there's no assurance they'll do it.
I highly doubt they will do it in short time, taking into consideration that they had a hard time dealing with some nasty bugs I've reported there ... No matter the fact that built-in pseudo-classes like this one will remove from frameworks a lot of JS code written for the same reason
Tested on Firefox 104.0.2, this will work if your <img> tag contain alt="" attribute. At least required empty alt="" attribute.
@vee – I only made the example depend on the alt attribute so I could demonstrate the differences. Since that was confusing, I've reworked the example to no longer depend on attributes.
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4

Use the object tag. Add alternative text between the tags like this:

<object data="img/failedToLoad.png" type="image/png">Alternative Text</object>

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_object.asp

1 Comment

This will not work for Mandrill emails
4

You can follow this path as a css solution

img {
        width:200px;
        height:200px;
        position:relative
   }
img:after {
        content: "";
        position: absolute;
        top: 0;
        left: 0;
        width: inherit;
        height: inherit;
        background: #ebebeb url('http://via.placeholder.com/300?text=PlaceHolder') no-repeat center;
        color: transparent;
    }
<img src="gdfgd.jpg">

1 Comment

First I was thinking that this is a nice solution but this is not working on IE. Also not when adding display block in the after css
2

You can use before and after as a style to prevent the broken image.

<img src="Error.src">

img:before {
  content: url("image.jpg");
}

img:after {
  content: "(url: " attr(src) ")";
}

In this case, if the image in the src is broken, it will use the before content, and if there is no error it will use the src.

Comments

2

I'm going to build on others' answers. Instead of hiding the tag (which may have important styling), feed it a dummy image:

<img src="nonexistent.png" onerror="this.src=`data:image/svg+xml;utf8,<svg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'></svg>`;"/>

Comments

1

Missing images will either just display nothing, or display a [ ? ] style box when their source cannot be found. Instead you may want to replace that with a "missing image" graphic that you are sure exists so there is better visual feedback that something is wrong. Or, you might want to hide it entirely. This is possible, because images that a browser can't find fire off an "error" JavaScript event we can watch for.

    //Replace source
    $('img').error(function(){
            $(this).attr('src', 'missing.png');
    });

   //Or, hide them
   $("img").error(function(){
           $(this).hide();
   });

Additionally, you may wish to trigger some kind of Ajax action to send an email to a site admin when this occurs.

Comments

1

The trick with img::after is a good stuff, but has at least 2 downsides:

  1. not supported by all browsers (e.g. doesn't work on Edge https://codepen.io/dsheiko/pen/VgYErm)
  2. you cannot simply hide the image, you cover it - so not that helpful when you what to show a default image in the case

I do not know an universal solution without JavaScript, but for Firefox only there is a nice one:

img:-moz-broken{
  opacity: 0;
}

Comments

0

edit: doesn't actually solve the asked issue, but might still be useful.

This is what I did with SASS/SCSS. I have utility scss file that contains this mixin:

  @mixin fallback() {
    background-image: url('/assets/imgs/fallback.png');
    background-size: cover;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position-x: center;
    background-position-y: center;
  }

Its usage in .scss

img {
  // ...
  @include fallback();
}

Comments

-1

In theory:

Strictly "css only", we have no clean options. See other answers, I have nothing to add.

In practice:

I'd say adding a class on error event is the best way to go. Here's what I mean - and there were answers almost like this, the principle is the same, it's just more elegant if you don't add the style declarations directly. Instead, add a class that can be targeted later:

   <img src="..." onerror="this.classList.add('notfound')">

And NOW you can style the hell out of it, using img.notfound as selector. You can make it a habit to add this little fragment to all your images; won't hurt anything until you style it.


Side note, before anyone comments "this is not a css-only solution": yes, thank you captain, indeed it's not. I'm trying to help with the problem itself, a problem many may have, instead of just looking at the exact wording.

Comments

-1

This is an old question but here is something that works, the main trick here is never set a fixed height and width on the image i only use percentage.

.example {
  background-color: #e7e7e7;
  padding: 25px;
}

.image-box {
  height: 50px;
  width: 50px;
  border-radius: 8px;
  background-color: rgb(241, 255, 255);
  color: rgb(241, 245, 249);
  overflow: hidden;
  display: block;
  position: relative;
}

.image {
  display: block;
  max-width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  object-fit: cover;
}
<div class="example">
  <span class="image-box">
    <img class="image" src="/broken.jpeg" alt>
  </span>
</div>

Comments

-2

Angular way of hiding the broken image.

Inside Html file

<img *ngIf="showImage" [src]="url" (error)="showImage = false">

Inside Ts file

public showImage = true;

Comments

-3

Hide image alt with this

img {
   color: transparent;
}

2 Comments

Why is this so disliked if it works well?
@TiagoRangel Because it is a trick
-5

A basic and very simple way of doing this without any code required would be to just provide an empty alt statement. The browser will then return the image as blank. It would look just like if the image isn't there.

Example:

<img class="img_gal" alt="" src="awesome.jpg">

Try it out to see! ;)

3 Comments

That depends on the browser. In Chrome you will still also have the image border and broken image icon in addition to the (here empty) alt text.
If the image is decorational and not imperative to the content an empty alt is fine. In fact it is recommended over no alt at all. Otherwise, this is highly unadvisable. A broken image is an image that cannot be seen, but if it has an alt tag it can still at least be heard. If you take away the alt tag, it can't be seen OR heard.
@panzi I tested the solution and it seems like Chrome changed its behaviour. It won't render the broken image icon if alt="". The same goes for Firefox.
-6

For future googlers, in 2016 there is a browser safe pure CSS way of hiding empty images using the attribute selector:

img[src="Error.src"] {
    display: none;
}

Edit: I'm back - for future googlers, in 2019 there is a way to style the actual alt text and alt text image in the Shadow Dom, but it only works in developer tools. So you can't use it. Sorry. It would be so nice.

#alttext-container {
    opacity: 0;
}
#alttext-image {
    opacity: 0;
}
#alttext {
    opacity: 0;
}

1 Comment

img[src=''] { display: none; } This became relevant again with eBay html only templates

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