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Images and link previews ​

Org mode can display previews of hyperlinks (see Hyperlinks) inside Org buffers. By default, only image links[1] can be previewed inline, where the images are displayed in place of the link path.

You can customize the previews as described in Adding Hyperlink preview. Link previews do not have to display images – any kind of display decoration (see (elisp)Overlay Properties) can be used.

You can preview the supported link types in the whole buffer, in the current section, active region or at point with the following commands:

Create inline previews for external links in the active region, if any; the link at point, if there is such; or in the current section otherwise. With a prefix argument, clear link previews at point or in the current entry. With a double prefix argument, preview all links in the buffer. With triple prefix argument, hide previews for all links in the buffer.

By default, only links without descriptions are previewed. You can force displaying previews for all supported links (including links with descriptions) using a numeric argument of 1. This will toggle all previews in the active region, the link at point or the current section. A numeric prefix argument of 11 will toggle previews in the whole buffer instead.

Org mode can display link previews automatically when opening buffers. Either customize org-startup-with-link-previews or use the ‘#+STARTUP: linkpreviews’ keyword to enable previews for that specific buffer when opening it. ‘#+STARTUP: nolinkpreviews’ will disable previews on startup in the buffer.

Assure inline display of external link previews in the whole buffer and refresh them.

Create inline previews for external links in the active region, or the buffer. With a prefix argument, also preview links with a text description part.

Clear external link previews in the active region, or the buffer.

Link previews can also be displayed when cycling the folding state. When the custom option org-cycle-link-previews-display is set, supported link types under the subtree (including images) will be displayed automatically.

  1. Image links are ‘file:’ and ‘attachment:’ links to existing image files; Emacs can only display the linked images listed in image-types variable ↩︎