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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-16T22:04:49+00:00

1.I want to render a dropbox image from a short url in a img

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1.I want to render a dropbox image from a “short url” in a img tag like the following: 

    <img src="https://db.tt/mght345atp" alt="Dropbox image"/>

But there will be no image rendered if I do it this way. Am I doing something wrong or is it not possible?
With long urls it works like a charm but dropbox’s mobile clients (android and I think ios client,too) only create and copy “short urls” via “Share” and “Copy link”. I need the stuff in order to incorporate images from different users (they will do that on their own) in my mobile app, so the images will be loaded from the shared links of different users.

2.So what is the sense of dropbox short urls? I mean what are they good for when you can’t remember the senseless letter combinations either way?

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  1. Editorial Team

    Your point #1 doesn’t seem like a question. If there’s a question there, please clarify what you are asking. A browser should be able to render an image just fine from a shortened URL. The short URL will typically return a redirect status code and a new URL and the browser will then go fetch the image from the new redirected URL. This is less efficient than just using the original URL to fetch the image because it requires two web requests for an image (one to the shortened URL and then one to the redirect URL) rather than just one, but it should work just fine.

    For your point #2, short URLs provide the benefit of being shorter in length. They work better in emails and in other types of posts where a long URL that might even be longer than the line length can cause problems either in message readability or in actual operation (when the URL gets linefeeds inserted in it). Also, with the popularity of short messages in texting and in Twitter, short URLs can save you characters in your msg so you can use the character count for other parts of the msg.

    Short URLS are not intended to improve the ability to remember them as their dense combination of mixed alpha-numerics are not easy to remember. They were never good for that purpose. For rememberability, you would need your own custom domain where you could use short english words/phrases as your URL that were easy to remember and probably relevant to the subject matter.

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