Image Checker Tool
Intro
The Image Checker Tool finds broken images across your store: pictures that are referenced in your content but no longer exist at the source. Broken images make your store look neglected and hurt trust with shoppers, so it pays to clear them out regularly.
What counts as a broken image? Any image whose URL no longer loads. This usually happens because the file was deleted from your media library, or because a hotlinked image on someone else's site has been removed or moved.
How it works
The tool scans every image reference across your articles, products, pages and categories, then tries to load each one. Anything that fails to load is flagged and grouped by the content type it appears in, so you can work through the list and fix each item at the source.
Where to find it
In your store admin, go to Tools > Image Checker.
What you see
Broken images are grouped by where they live in your store:
- Articles: blog posts and guides with broken inline or featured images.
- Products: product entries with a missing main image or in-content image.
- Pages: static pages (About, Contact, custom pages) with broken images.
- Categories: category pages with a missing banner or in-description image.
Each row shows the broken image and an Edit button. Click Edit to open the item in a new tab so you can either replace the image or remove the reference.
Tips
Need a fresh image to drop in? Two free options built into your store:
- PixaBay Images: search a huge library of royalty-free photos and add them with one click.
- AI Image Generator: generate a custom image from a text prompt.
Run the Image Checker every few months, especially after a big content cleanup or media library tidy-up. It is the fastest way to catch references you might otherwise miss.
Troubleshooting
An image shows as broken but loads fine in my browser. The source server may be slow or rate-limiting the checker. Open the page on your live store to confirm. If it loads consistently for visitors, you can leave it; if it is intermittent, swap it for a hosted image to be safe.
I fixed the image but it still appears in the list. The list reflects the last scan. Re-run the tool to refresh the results.
Hotlinked images keep breaking. Images hosted on other websites can disappear at any time. The safer pattern is to upload images to your own media library or use PixaBay so you control the source.