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Markdown images with mxc:// URLs are not displayed

Open nukeop opened this issue 2 years ago • 8 comments

Steps to reproduce

Whenever somebody sends a message formatted with Markdown, and it includes an image with an mxc:// URL (for example ![](mxc://matrix.example.com/image)), the image is not displayed. The image is correctly displayed in the web client.

To reproduce:

  • Upload an image from the web client. This should display correctly in the iOS client and in the web client.
  • Click "View source" in the message properties to find out the mxc url. It should look like this: mxc://matrix.server/eYQIShWKWDWBrfCSpGDPlVmK
  • Send an image from a web client with this content: ![](your-mxc-url)
  • It will display correctly in the web client, and will be absent in the iOS client

Outcome

What did you expect?

I expected the image to be visible in all clients.

What happened instead?

The iOS client displays an empty message.

Your phone model

iPhone 11

Operating system version

iOS 17.2.1

Application version

1.11.7

Homeserver

Synapse v1.98.0

Will you send logs?

No

nukeop avatar Feb 20 '24 09:02 nukeop

Any updates on this?

nukeop avatar May 14 '24 08:05 nukeop

Bump

nukeop avatar May 27 '24 22:05 nukeop

Don't bother. This has been an issue since at least 2017, I don't think they have any intention of fixing it at this point.

arychj avatar Jun 03 '24 22:06 arychj

Heheh. I am sure this is just a matter of getting it in front of someone calling the shots.

nukeop avatar Jun 03 '24 22:06 nukeop

Yeah. We were really trying to migrate off of Slack, but needed to be able to post graphs and charts in chat via the API. The best solution we were able to come up with was publishing the images to a public URL and posting the URL to the chat, rather than trying to embed them as Matrix resources. It "worked" but ultimately we had to reject Matrix as a solution since the images weren't really viewable in the app at that point (even with thumbnails enabled).

arychj avatar Jun 03 '24 22:06 arychj

I do the same thing, because the Node SDK is really hard to use when you're uploading images. So I take the mxc URL, and put it in Markdown. In the web client, the images are visible, but in the iOS client, they're not. I see you have already uncovered that the links are improperly escaped.

nukeop avatar Jun 03 '24 22:06 nukeop

Is there any update on this?

nikita-fuchs avatar Jun 16 '25 11:06 nikita-fuchs

As a workaround I switched to manually following the image upload procedure and dropped markdown. But it's still broken in the iOS client.

nukeop avatar Jun 16 '25 12:06 nukeop