Preventing visitors from downloading your images, videos, and audio

Protect your site's assets and discourage unlawful copying.

Last updated January 17, 2025

There isn't a way to completely prevent someone from copying images, video, audio, or file URLs from your site. Images, videos, or other files uploaded to a public page are accessible to view or download by visitors who have the asset's static URL. This includes password-protected pages and pages in the Not linked section.

Where visitors can right-click and save images on your site depends on your site's version and where you added your images. For example:

  • In version 7.1, you can right-click and save image blocks and gallery section images. However, you can't right-click and save banner or section background images.
  • In version 7.0, you can right-click and save image blocks and gallery blocks.

To help prevent visitors from saving images across your site, you can disable right-clicks using custom code.

Tip

Computers can still use various programs to capture screenshots, record the screen, and record audio. This guide covers several approaches you can take to protect your images and discourage unlawful copying.

Protecting images

Use watermarks

We recommend adding semi-transparent text or a logo, known as a watermark, to your images. When tastefully done, watermarks can be an ideal asset to the photographer, both protecting your images and promoting your brand.

The primary advantage of watermarks is that, even if someone screenshots your image, the watermark still identifies it as yours.

You can create advanced watermarks using photo editing software like Photoshop or Gimp.

Reduce image size

We recommend uploading images with a width of 1500 pixels to 2500 pixels. While the maximum file size is 20 MB, we recommend keeping your image files below 500 KB. Images below 1 MB in size are web-optimized, and look great on your site, but won't be suitable for printing. This discourages anyone from trying to use your images offline without your permission.

For more on image formatting, visit Formatting your images for display on the web.

Protecting videos

Visitors can't right-click to download videos, but any content uploaded to a public page is accessible to a visitor who has the static URL. This includes password-protected pages and pages in the Not linked section.

Use watermarks

Like with images, you can also add watermarks to your videos. If someone records their screen while playing your video, or if they download it, the custom watermark identifies it as your video. You can create watermarks in most video editing software.

Video asset protection

Some videos you add to your site are protected, meaning the ability to view or download the video is restricted. This protection only applies to content that's already private, paywalled, or unpublished, like videos that have been added to:

For example, videos added to pages in a Member Site are only accessible to visitors who are members of that area. Unless they have access to the protected area, visitors will encounter an "Access denied" error when they visit the video's URL.

Note

Videos that have only been added to a private, paywalled, or unpublished part of your site can't be viewed or downloaded by people who don't have access to that area. If you reuse the same video on another, public page on your site, the file becomes publicly accessible.

Protecting audio

Connect to streaming services

Streaming platforms like SoundCloud and Spotify prevent audio downloads by default. When you use these services to add tracks and playlists to your site, the option to download a file won't appear to visitors if they right-click it. Visitors can use these services to play audio on repeat and share streaming content without sharing the actual files.

SoundCloud

Use the SoundCloud block to add a track or playlist to your site from SoundCloud.

Spotify

Use the embed block to embed a Spotify playlist.

Use audio samples

When you're uploading a file directly, consider creating an audio sample. With an audio sample, visitors can preview your content without having access to the entire track. You can also use an audio sample to control which part of your track visitors engage with first.

Add terms of service

Add a line to your site’s terms of service prohibiting visitors from copying or downloading your content, or sharing links to protected Member Sites content, like images and videos.

Disable right-clicks

We don't recommend this option because it creates a false sense of security and in no way prevents screenshots, drag-and-drop downloading, or recording software from capturing your content. However, if you'd like to disable right-clicks, you can do so by adding custom code to code injection.

This topic has come up on the Squarespace Forum, and you can view the post for more information and example code.

Accessing this feature

Code Injection is available in the Core, Plus, Advanced, Business, Commerce Basic, and Commerce Advanced plans. To learn more, visit Choosing the right Squarespace plan.

Note

Custom code modifications fall outside the scope of our support. This means that we’re unable to help further with setup or troubleshooting. Additionally, with a code-based solution, we can’t guarantee its functionality or full compatibility with Squarespace. This includes how it functions with our responsive design, particularly its appearance on mobile devices, and if it functions on all templates. Custom code can also cause display issues with future updates to our platform. While we can't help further, there are many resources that can point you in the right direction:

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Preventing visitors from downloading your images, videos, and audio