All things Shopify and commerce
I have a store for a garden centre
As a result I have a lot of products (literally thousands) that share the same images (as we get the same plants in from multiple suppliers depending on the time of the year.) whether it's a collection place-holder image or a specific image of the plant/product.
Previously I was able to click the "copy Image" link on the files page and paste it into the image section for the product.
Recently, when I do this, Shopify has been creating duplicate images rather than linking to the same image.
To summarise: Let's say I have 20 products that share the same image, previously I was able to link the same file for all products so they shared the same image. Now shopify is creating 20 separate duplicate images meaning the page has to load 20 individual copies of the same image for each product, rather than 1 image shared for each product.
Here's what it looks like in my files section:
All of these images in the list are exactly the same, and each one was created when I tried to copy the link of the original to new products.
This is causing the following problems for me:
1. it increases the page load time as instead of loading 1 shared image, it's now loading individual duplicate images
2. it's majorly clogging up my files section.
It's not a massive problem as I can still run my store with it. But I'd rather go back to how it was working before. Is there a way to tell shopify to share a particular image when I want to use it on another product rather than creating all these duplicates?
Experiencing the same thing.
This is not a minor issue. To reiterate to anybody from Shopify reading this: you are creating a situation where merchants are losing control over their media library. Duplicated images make it almost impossible to manage a store once these images need to be changed or deleted. "Don't repeat yourself" is a fundamental principle of software development; it also applies in this situation.
What is needed is when the Add button is tapped, allow merchants to select from the existing media library, rather than requiring an upload.
We've had issues with uploading a CSV... it keeps re-writing all the images and ends up breaking the original listing if you aren't changing the image... causing us to lose images on each product.
The solution seems to be to delete out the URL's from all image fields when re-saving. Very dumb.
This is exactly why it's a HUGE issue. It literally breaks listings. I can't tell you how many times I had to go in and manually fix every single listing because of this dumb problem.
Even worse, when you "add file URL" it then *gobbles* up the image and saves it locally, to their internal system, instead of just maintaining the reference to the image URL you provide. This makes using a Digital Asset Manager service useless, though that's the best way to handle your images, especially if you use the same one on multiple platforms.
I'm considering using an external cdn like cloudinary. Will they gobble this up too?
yes they will. I use Cloudinary and they did it to me.
I would love to find a plug-in or a code-snippet that I can use in Dawn (or any theme) that replaces the image section of the product page with code that has the same feel, but when you "add URL" it respects the URL. I would even take a method that uses meta-fields to hold the image URLs and displays them like they should be.
Let's all be honest. This is the SOP of many tech companies. You see it with Apple, Microsoft, QuickBooks, and such. The have to show that they are changing things, "make improvements". They come up with an idea and start implementing it with out really knowing what the end product will be. Not thinking if this is really what there customers want. Once started they can not go back. It may not be possible or it makes them look bad. Time and time again, they make a change that make it worst for the customer. When issues are pointed out, say that it is in the works, this is just beginning phase, or just ignore it.
I am still waiting on they the fix the sales tax issues. You would think that an ecommerce platform for at least be concern about charging the wrong sales tax. But years later they still will not reply to me about.
We have a number of products that have a reference image. There is no logical reason to have duplicated images for each product. This has to be taking up more space on Shopify servers each month. At some point it is going have to start costing more and more. Maybe that it is the point. Their end game to to start charging for the more space you use.
Whomever thought this system of media management for an e-commerce platform was a good idea should be fired, along with the person above them that approved it.
I'm just getting started on Shopify. I'm transitioning over from Square Online and am manually adding every product I have. I thought about using one of the sync apps or CSV export/import, but there seemed to be some horror stories with both. So, I'm going through and making my items and I put in a "Image Coming Soon" placeholder. I didn't think anything of the fact that I only had the "Add File" option. I just figured that it would see the same filename and replace / ignore it, then link it to the product. I only realized how it was actually working when I clicked on the media option and saw hundreds of duplicates for my Coming Soon placeholder. Wordpress lets you pick existing media or upload new as you go. Square Online does most things wrong, but even they got this part more right that Shopify.
At the end of the day, it's their HDD space but they must have petabytes of wasted space on unnecessary duplicate images at this point.
I use Matrixify to do bulk uploads/downloads. It has a bit of a learning curve, but it's very helpful.
You could put the URL of a Coming Soon image into a spreadsheet for each image, then upload the sheet and then Shopify would just do it's stupid thing and make instances for each image.
If you are the only one making changes to the store, then using Matrixify is a solid choice, especially if you plan on using metafields. The trick is to fill out all the fields first, including the SEO, from the Shopify product page. This way, the app will pull down all the fields as columns. If there's a blank, it will skip it (one thing I am not a fan of, but not the worst thing in the world). There should be a "include empty fields" checkbox. However, it has a bunch of great features otherwise, like scheduled downloads.
HTH
Pete
Thanks Pete! I'll definitely take a look at Matrixify. I don't have that many products currently so making each one manually to get rolling isn't a big deal. For the future though, Matrixify definitely sounds like something I'd want to use.
I spent some time over the past weekend, trying to build an app to reuse images when uploading new products.
However, this isn't possible, even with the Shopify Admin API.
If you try to provide an existing image ID or URL to the productCreateMedia [1] API, the result is still a duplicate image.
So, this is something that not even an app could fix.
Shopify team, any updates on this?
1: https://shopify.dev/docs/api/admin-graphql/2023-10/mutations/productCreateMedia
I have the same issue and it's sooo tiresome. I need one image across multiple products.
same problem here i use all the same colour charts for acrylic and i have 30+ images for colours and these are getting duplicated for hundreds of products
So this will automatically keep track of duplicate product images, allowing us to replace the same image across many different products? It will actually manage the images and their alt-text?
how are you going to associate an image with multiple products? If you update an image, does it then update for all the associated products? Does this hold true for products with multiple images? How about video?
Its a shame that so many people have reported this issue and have commented on this Shopify Forum but looking through the replies it is evident that Shopify don't care, they don't even respond to anything on here. This is an obvious issue as everyone has pointed out, for me the biggest issue with this is I have a single image that I have on every product I sell, this image if I ever wanted to update it and replace with a new one would need to be replaced on hundreds of products. Come on Shopify how can you not see this is a flaw in the design and needs to be fixed for all Shopify stores not mentioning yourselves with all the space this must be unnecessarily using on your servers.
At the very least Shopify should take the time to respond to the concerns of there customers.
it's a shame indeed, this was first posted on May 2023, then Gabe from Shopify responded FOUR MONTHS LATER in September to say that was a half implemented feature and then he disappeared. Now we are in February 2024 and not even a peep from Shopify support? This is ridiculous! It's an issue for everybody and it's been repeated ad nauseam. Please fix it!
Absolutely, Shopify support just doesn’t listen to the concerns of customers. Having the ability to use a file across multiple products without it being duplicated would allow stores to easily be able to swap out an image from multiple products, have the ability to set the Alt tags once and not have duplicates filling up the files area.
I wish someone from Shopify would just look once in a while at these comments and give some sort of response instead of just ignoring them.
For all that may be interested - I just so happened to be working with Shopify Support on a different issue, and I brought this one up and even sent them the link to this thread. This is the response I got:
I want to express my gratitude for bringing this important issue to our attention. We understand the importance of resolving this to prevent the duplication of product images. Please rest assured that our skilled developers are already diligently working on this matter. They are fully aware of the situation and are committed to finding a robust solution to ensure a smooth and efficient experience for you.
Thank you for your understanding and patience as we work on this. We're dedicated to providing you with the best service possible.
I was also in discussion with the support round about 6-8 month ago. I've used the chat, the support asked in the meanwhile the dev and they told to her that this problem is 2 years old. They know but dont have a task. I made the importance of this task clear to the support and she told me that she brings it in. Nothing happens.
I hope we have better luck with your try 😉
Well all I can say is I won’t hold my breath, if they were that committed they would at least update the forum and let people know they haven’t just forgot. Getting zero response from Shopify doesn’t give anyone the impression they are looking into anything.
This means nothing. It's a boilerplate canned response that they pass onto you when they don't have anything useful to share.
FWIW. I have just decided to embrace this "image cloning" architecture of Shopify. I have multiple products where the only thing that changes is the length of the product, about 5 to 10 different lengths, on average 3 lengths. I've chosen NOT to try to implement this as a Variant. What I have found in the past with WP, Woocommerce and also in the Shopify documentation is that variants work well right up until they don't when there is some kind of arbitrary SEO, pricing, checkout or display functionality missing. It's a more complex structure that has hidden limitations.
So, I created a structured CSV file to upload all these products with the permutations of length, SKU, pricing etc. and I thought I could also do the same with the images. I'd just make one product with the images I want, then export that, then copy the hyperlinks for the images to the csv file, then upload and Viola', my products would be fully populated with images where each product has the same images for a series of different lengths.
Now, I'm thinking it will just be easier to manually upload the images to each product variant (not Shopify variant) directly from my desktop. It's much easier to do this than to try to copy and paste the link from the Shopify library. The thumbnails, sorting and other library management features are crude in poorly implemented such that file selector window to my desktop is much more functional, efficient and better UI.
So, okay, fine, I'll have up to 10 copies of the same 200k image file in the Shopify library. And, I'll never try to use that dumbed down collateral content manager again. I don't think storing all those files is a big deal at all since under the hood the Shopify engine or database must keep cached or resized or optimized images anyway. If they believe showing the user all those duplicates in the file manage makes sense, that's okay. We just need to understand it's not really there to manage image assets, it's a just a crude admin tool for doing some necessary operations.
It’s okay, Shopify doesn’t compare the names of the pictures, it creates duplicates. To avoid duplicates, you must copy the link to the existing file and insert it into the input field, which will open when you click "Add from URL"
No, it doesn't work
This is unbelievable. Almost a year since this bug, and it can only be called a bug since this is such basic functionality to an ecommerce platform that for even the intended functionality to be such crap design mean it's a bug in March of 2024. I mean all the platforms on WP have had this implemented correctly for what? a decade? All the time I've wasted learning this idiotic platform and it can't do the most basic function of sharing media across products without duplicating the file each time and I'm sure this must break the CSV upload. Which is probably why it's stuck in development. The system architects should be fired, they've botched this so bad that the only way to fix it, is to break it in a big way for so many existing stores.
I think what you are trying to do is a default image for all kinds of flowers. Apparently there is no way to photograph each individual view and upload it. In this case, I recommend that you use metafield to add an existing image
Hi, I know you can use metafields to add an image to a page, but unless I'm wrong you cannot use a metafield to add an additional image into your product photos which is what we are all complaining about. We want to be able to add a product image and use the same image across multiple products without it being duplicated.
Please provide instructions if I'm wrong.
Of course have! You can create a default version for a product and add an existing photo to it. Save the product, refresh the page and then this photo will be applied and displayed in the list of product files.
Hi, this is adding an image to a variant, what we are asking for is to just be able to add an additional product photo and not have it be a duplicate so we can set the ALT text on one image and change one image to change it in all locations across the site.
If you add an existing picture to a variant, the picture is not duplicated. A link to it is created
Yes I know that but you keep saying to a variant, this post has nothing to do with variant images. What we are asking if we can have a generic image displayed across multiple products not necessarily specific to that product but something we want showing with the product images for multiple products across the site.
This image might be something like “follow us on social media” or “best ways to water you plant” whatever it is it will not have anything to do with any product variant, this is to do with the image repository.
And then the Shopify file repository creates an exact duplicate of the image with a unique system generated filename extension. This means that every time the image is used a new copy is created.
This makes is very cumbersome to use the same image across many similar products since the image must be added to each product and the linking to the file contents directory is very clumsy and finding the image again is difficult. Of course, you can re-use any of the duplicates of the image just as you would the original, but it is much easier to keep the image repository on your desktop computer in a directory structure. Then when you add an image you get your local desktop file directory explorer which is much quicker and better functionality than the broken and simplistic Shopify asset manager, file manager or whatever they're calling it now.
Whilst it's not done yet, it's pretty clear that Shopify are now fixing this. In one of my dev stores the file upload interface has already changed from "Add/Add From URL" to "Add New/Select Existing" and uses the newer Shopify File/Image dialog. This seems to be a natural part of a much larger piece of work that they've been doing on using that newer file dialog across the site.
For any of you who like the dev stuff, that "select existing" action calls a fileUpdate mutation on the GraphQL api to do the work, but with some new parameters available to add references rather than sourceUrls. At the moment that mutation isn't available to us with the relevant changes in either the Current Candidate or Unstable APIs, so it could be a few months before I or anyone else can write an app to help you all clean your duplicates up (assuming shopify don't do it for us), but it's clearly coming and that at least is some good news on the horizon, for those of you who want a cleaner files section
Hey @iamdavehart
The new file picker ('Upload new/Select existing') is currently in % rollout and may not show in all stores before it goes out to GA (general availability).
Hope that helps!
Gabe | Social Care @ Shopify
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thanks for the clarification Gabe.
It's nice to see it getting out there. Was just noting that it's on its way, and people who do get it will be able to clean up some of their duplicates and then hopefully the change comes into the APIs after that so we can come up with some solutions to clean up duplicates.
Gabe, this new feature is not yet on our store's back end. Is there some way you can add it for us now? We're in the process of adding a major product collection, and it would be so helpful to have this feature now. Thank you for you your help.
So I'm the one that originally wrote the post. The change just rolled out to my store, which is working well for new products.
HOWEVER, I now have tens of thousands of OLD products with duplicate images.
I downloaded an export of my entire database and spent the last several hours manually replacing all of the duplicate image URLs with the original product URL (so they all shared the same product image URL.)
Imported it back to my store and... it didn't work, it just duplicated all the images again.
So as far as I can tell there currently isn't any way to go back and fix all the duplicate images without doing it manually within shopify.
DO NOT try doing what I did and exporting all the products then changing all the URL's and re-importing, it currently does not work.
SHOPIFY REPS - If you see this, PLEASE suggest allowing to fix the duplicates through the export/import feature (as shown in the attached image, you can see I've copy pasted the same product URL for products that share the same image. When imported though, these all become duplicates again.)
We also then need a quick way to delete all the duplicate images. My suggestion would be allowing us to select all images with no assigned products in "Content - Files" and then we can delete them all at the same time.
Hi there, @LeeAurich! Thanks for taking the time to follow up on this thread, and providing us with your suggestions and feedback. I've gone ahead and passed your suggestions along to our Developers for their consideration. Though I can't comment on what sort of results may come from passing this feedback along, you can trust it's going to get seen by the appropriate folks internally.
For the sake of due diligence, it may be worthwhile to reach out to our Support Team via our Help Center so we can get you authenticated, and take a closer look at this CSV situation, and gather some more store-specific context.
Imogen | Social Care @ Shopify
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I spoke with a support person and they also said they would escalate the situation to the technical team. I sent the support person my specific CSV as well. Hopefully with a live sample from my store it might help highlight where the issue needs to be addressed.
For anyone else here for the same reason, I'll continue to update my experiences so you can follow along and hopefully find the same complete solution I'm seeking.
Hey Folks!
To address some of the use-cases above like yours @LeeAurich just to let you know work on this issue of linking one image to multiple products is ongoing.
In the meantime, there are a few immediate steps you can take to better manage your images using the new features provided by Shopify.
Access the Files Section:
Use the "Used In" Filter:
Save the Filtered View:
If your theme supports linking dynamic sources, you can explore creating metaobjects image files and linking them as a dynamic source. This method might require technical expertise or the assistance of a Shopify expert.
Create Metaobjects:
Link Metaobjects in Your Theme:
Centralized Image Management:
Dynamic Image Linking:
Here some steps on how to set up and use the capabilities of metaobjects for dynamic image linking:
Create Metaobjects:
Add Images to Metaobjects:
Link Metaobjects to Products:
Customize Your Theme:
Before Using Metaobjects:
After Using Metaobjects:
Hope that helps all or least some users here encountering this issue!
Gabe | Social Care @ Shopify
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And then what do we do when we discover the bugs in Metaobjects? Attaching images to produces is fundamental to an online ecommerce platform. There is just not excuse for the bugs and poor functionality of the basic image attachment functionality. Using Metaobjects to replace the image library functionality is NOT a good workaround.
Metaobjects is a good idea going forward, although I think it should be the standard for product images rather than an alternative. I plan on using this going forward.
The current issue is still the retroactive fixing of the duplicates that are already in place from the past year that the original duplicate-image issue existed.
The ultimate fix would be if your tech team were able to come up with a method of retroactively scanning for identical duplicate images which are being used over multiple products and merging them into a single metaobject image shared amongst those same products, ideally spitting out a report at the end with all of the changes that have taken place.
Totally agree @LeeAurich
In the interim phase the metaobject could work as a workaround until our dev teams roll out the image library 2.0!
Gabe | Social Care @ Shopify
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This is the reply I received from the tech team:
This was my reply:
"Hi Julia,
I understand I can do it that way. The issue is I have thousands of images that have been duplicated that I need to amalgamate. Doing it the way you've showed is incredibly slow and unrealistic from a time point of view.
This is not a situation unique to my store if you see the original thread on the forum where I've been discussing this with other users. We really require a faster way to amalgamate duplicate images into a single master image for all products currently sharing duplicates.
This is an important follow-up to the new file picker you've rolled out as we now need to clean up all the duplicates that were created over the past year while we've been waiting for the file picker to roll out."
I'm not sure the tech team understood that the issue wasn't preventing future duplicates, but rather cleaning up duplicates already created by the system.
What I'm getting from this is that there is currently no way to tidy up duplicates without manually doing it one-by-one in the file picker, which is unfeasible from a time/effort point of view when you literally have thousands of image duplicates that need tidying.
Shopify need to prioritise this, as the duplicate issue was created by Shopify in the first place, they need to introduce a fix for amalgamating duplicate images without expecting the user to spend literal days fixing the issue they created.
OMG. This is such sloppy software development. They fixed the issue for adding new products with images but didn't fix the CSV update of the data. Which makes no sense, given you are just replacing the URL pointer to the image, but they left in the legacy code that dupes the image even though this code has now been deprecated by the functions in the UX. Sloppy.
Still and issue here too. Thought I'd spend some time trying to delete some duplicates and use "select existing" to use the same file across multiple product but if anything I seem to have even more copies of the same image. I DO WONDER IS THERE A GOOD reason to have each usage as a distinct file? For example for Google Merchant centre to be able to see each product as distinct? I have one image showing my fabric colour card which I use on nearly all my products.
This feature is available in Simple File Manager.
Here's how you'd go about updating all your duplicates at once:
If you'd prefer to delete them, reply to this message and I'll look into adding that functionality to the app.
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