Question

Is it possible to place a screenshot in README file in a GitHub repository? What’s the syntax?

Answer 1

If you use Markdown (README.md):

Provided that you have the image in your repo, you can use a relative URL:

![Alt text](/relative/path/to/img.jpg?raw=true "Optional Title")

If you need to embed an image that’s hosted elsewhere, you can use a full URL

![Alt text](http://full/path/to/img.jpg "Optional title")

GitHub recommend that you use relative links with the ?raw=true parameter to ensure forked repos point correctly.

The raw=true parameter is there in order to ensure the image you link to, will be rendered as is. That means that only the image will be linked to, not the whole GitHub interface for that respective file. See this comment for more details.

Check out an example: https://raw.github.com/altercation/solarized/master/README.md

If you use SVGs then you’ll need to set the sanitize attribute to true as well: ?raw=true&sanitize=true. (Thanks @EliSherer)

Also, the documentation on relative links in README files: https://help.github.com/articles/relative-links-in-readmes

And of course the markdown docs: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax

Additionally, if you create a new branch screenshots to store the images you can avoid them being in the master working tree

You can then embed them using:

![Alt text](/../<branch name>/path/to/image.png?raw=true "Optional Title")