Attaching images, videos, and other media to your posts

When scheduling posts, the option to include images and videos (and how many of each) will vary depending on the social network.

In this article:

1. Table of how many images and videos can be shared on each social network
2. Link previews
3. Suggested media
4. Image, Video and GIF upload

How many images and videos can be shared on each network

* When scheduling to both Facebook or Instagram and another social channel via Buffer's Omnibox, you can upload up to 10 images but when you click the Customize for each network button, only the number of images permitted for that social channel will populate. For instance, if you're scheduling to both Facebook and LinkedIn and you upload 10 images, when you click Customize for each network, you'll see that only 9 of your images show within your LinkedIn composer while all 10 show up within your Facebook composer. This is because it's only possible to publish 9 images at a time through LinkedIn. 

Link previews

When you add a link into Buffer we look at the information provided on the website and generate a preview based on what we anticipate the social networks will display using the Open Graph tags (these are created by the owner of the website you're linking to).

Link previews mirror what you would see if you were sharing a link natively to those social networks. If you prefer not to have the link displaying in the body of the post, you can remove it from the composer after the link preview has been generated. 

For Facebook, though we pull from Open Graph data, the preview is ultimately determined by Facebook itself, meaning that they do not rely on the exact same preview that we display.

For X/Twitter, they don't allow third party apps like Buffer to provide the link preview information; instead, they generate it based on the information they see on the URL.

For LinkedIn, link previews can be customized, meaning you're able to modify the title, description, and image if you wish.  

For Mastodon, link previews can appear differently based on the way a server/instance is set up (as part of that server's theme settings), and based on your followers viewing preference settings and device. Some mobile clients have previews disabled by default, for example.

Suggested media

If you would prefer not to use the link preview, you can click Replace link preview with image or video. We will then scrape the link you've included and pull in any images found on the page. You're then able to click on any of those images to include with your post. 

Revisit the table at the top of this article to see how many suggested media images you're able to add to each of your posts.

Image, video, and GIF uploads

You can upload images, videos, or GIFs from your computer, Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive, as well as certain files from Canva. We have full guides on each of these integrations here:

• A guide to using Canva with Buffer
• Attaching media from Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive

Images

To see how many images you're able to upload for each social network, revisit the table at the top of this article.

We currently support JPG, PNG, HEIC, and WebP image files for all social networks, and additionally GIF files for Facebook, X/Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Pinterest. Alt-text is available for images posted to LinkedIn. Image size requirements and resizing information for each social network can be found in this guide: Ideal image sizes and formats for your posts.

If you would like to enhance the look of or resize your images using the simple editing functionality right within the Buffer composer, kindly follow this guide: Editing your images in Buffer

Using hosted images

Learn more about uploading images from Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Photos, and OneDrive here.

Using Unsplash images

Want to add an image but don't have a good one in your own photo library? Our Unsplash integration lets you access thousands of free images to use in your post. Here's where to find it: 

Search for an image, select the one you want and we'll add it right to your post, like this:

Re-ordering images

Once you've added your images to the composer, you can drag and drop the images into place to re-order them.

Video

Video size, length, and file requirements, along with choosing a thumbnail and other important details for each social network can be found in this guide: Uploading and sharing links to videos.

GIF

At the moment, we support GIFs (up to 15MB) for posts scheduled to Facebook, X/Twitter, Bluesky, and Pinterest. For LinkedIn and Mastodon, we support GIFs up to 10MB.