Openverse is a search engine for openly licensed media that gives you free access to over 600 million Creative Commons licensed and public domain image and audio files. This guide will show you how to add Openverse images to your site.
In this guide
While editing a page or post on your site, you can add free images from Openverse by taking the following steps:
- Edit any page or post in the WordPress editor.
- Add any block that uses images, such as the Image block, the Gallery block, or the Cover block.
- Click the “Select Image” option.
- Select “Openverse”:
- Type your search term into the box at the top to browse available images.
- To choose an image, click on it and then click the “Select” button. If you’re creating a gallery, you can select multiple images at once:
Any images you select are added to your site’s Media and will count against your site’s storage capacity.
You can access the same free images from Openverse via your site’s Media by taking the steps below. (This option is available if using the Default View, not WP-Admin.)
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- On the left side, click on Media.
- Select the image icon in the upper-left corner and select “Openverse free photos“:
- Add a term to the search box. Select as many photos as you want and click the “Copy to media library” button:
Any images you select are added to your site’s Media and will count against your site’s storage capacity.
All Openverse content is under a Creative Commons license or is in the public domain, depending on the image.
The photographer’s credit is automatically added to the caption of each image. If an image is under a Creative Commons CC0 license, it’s not necessary to keep this credit on your site. Other Creative Commons licenses require this credit line to be maintained.
