Adding Media
Where a gallery's images and videos come from — the Media Library, a URL, or a video service — and what each source can do.
A gallery is a list of items. This page covers how items get into that list and what each kind of item supports.
The media modal
Click Add from Media on an empty gallery (or Add from Media inside the Edit Gallery modal) and the media picker opens. Its left rail lists every source under Add media from:
| Source | What it is |
|---|---|
| Images | Images in your WordPress Media Library. |
| External Images | Images hosted somewhere else, added by pasting their URLs. |
| Videos | Video files in your Media Library. |
| External Video | Video files hosted somewhere else, added by URL. |
| YouTube | YouTube videos, added by URL. |
| Vimeo | Vimeo videos, added by URL. |
| TikTok | TikTok videos, added by URL. |
| Wistia | Wistia videos, added by URL. |
Select what you want, then press Add to Gallery. Selection is cumulative across sources, so one trip through the modal can pull in Media Library images and a couple of YouTube clips.
Media Library images and videos
The default, and the one with the most behind it.
- Browse, search and filter by date. The grid pages as you scroll, with a Load more button at the end.
- Upload from inside the modal. Drag files onto it, or use Select Files.
- Attachment Details on the right shows the file's size and dimensions, its URL with a copy button, and its Alt Text, Title, Caption and Description.
- Media Library items are the only ones that can be watermarked or served in more than one resolution.
Alt text is worth the two minutes
Alt text is what a screen reader announces and what shows if an image fails to load. Title and caption become the tile's title and description and the lightbox caption, and both are what image search matches against.
Editing text per item
Once an item is in a gallery you can change its Alt Text, Title, Caption, Description and Custom URL — from the media modal's details panel, or from the Edit Gallery modal.
These edits belong to the gallery, not the Media Library
Changing a caption here changes it in this gallery only. The attachment in your Media Library is untouched, so the same photo can be captioned differently in two galleries.
Clearing a field isn't the same as overriding it with nothing: an empty field falls back to the attachment's own value.
External images and videos by URL
Choose External Images or External Video and paste one or more URLs. The plugin stages them and adds them as ordinary items.
What you gain: media that lives on a CDN, another site, or storage you already pay for, with nothing uploaded to your Media Library.
What you give up, because there's no attachment behind them:
- No watermarking. Watermarking composites new files from an attachment; external items keep their originals.
- No resolution ceiling and no responsive candidates. The browser gets the file you gave it.
- No Media Library title or caption to fall back on — set the text on the item itself.
Everything else works normally: layouts, the lightbox, categories, filtering, hover animations, click actions.
Video services
YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok and Wistia each take a URL to a single video. The plugin recognises the provider, stores a normalised item, and renders the right embed.
How a video tile behaves
Two settings in Image & Video Settings decide what a visitor gets:
| Setting | Effect |
|---|---|
| Video Play Mode → Inline | The video plays inside its own tile, in place. |
| Video Play Mode → Popup | Clicking the tile opens the video in the lightbox. |
| AutoPlay | Inline video starts on its own. Browsers only permit this muted — the panel links to Chrome's autoplay policy for the details. |
| Play Icon Size · Display Icon on Hover | Size the play badge, and optionally hide it until hover. |
Posters and the first frame
A video tile shows a still. Where it comes from:
- If the video has a featured image, that's the poster, and the tile is a fully editable image on the canvas.
- If it has no featured image, the tile draws a muted video element paused on its first frame instead. It still renders correctly, but that one tile can't be selected or dragged on the canvas — reorder it from the Edit Gallery modal.
Give video items a featured image
It's the difference between a tile you can drag around the canvas and one you can't, and it lets you choose the frame visitors see rather than accepting whatever the first frame happens to be.
Which sources support what
| Media Library image | Media Library video | External image | External video | YouTube · Vimeo · TikTok · Wistia | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All seven layouts | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Lightbox | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Categories & filtering | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Per-item text overrides | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom URL | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Watermark | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Resolution / retina candidates | ✅ | — | ❌ | — | — |
| Hover animations | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Adding another source
The media sources are a registry, not hard-wired branches — a new one is a provider class plus one registration call, with no change to the renderer, the REST layer or the editor. If you're building one, see Media Providers.