Extension:Thumbro

Not to be confused with: Thumbor.

MediaWiki extensions manual

Thumbro Release status: stable
Implementation	Media
Description	Improve and expand thumbnailing in MediaWiki
Author(s)	alistair3149, Bryan Tong Minh
Latest version	2.0.0 (2025-10-16)
Compatibility policy	Master maintains backward compatibility.
MediaWiki	>= 1.43.0
Composer	starcitizentools/thumbro
Parameters $wgThumbroLibraries $wgThumbroTestExpiry $wgThumbroEnabled $wgThumbroExposeTestPage $wgThumbroOptions $wgThumbroMaxAnimatedArea
Added rights thumbro-test
Hooks used BitmapHandlerCheckImageArea BitmapHandlerTransform LinkerMakeExternalLink SoftwareInfo
Hooks provided ThumbroBeforeProduceHtml
Licence	GNU General Public License 2.0 or later
Download	GitHub: project page git repository URL commit history Readme

The Thumbro extension improves and expands thumbnailing in MediaWiki. It is a forked and rewritten version of VipsScaler .

Features

• Use libvips to render thumbnails instead of ImageMagick and GD
• Allow custom output options for libvips
• Render WebP thumbnails by default for gif, jpeg, png, and webp (including animated)
• Extend thumbnail support for more file formats, such as animated WebP
• Allow adding <source> element to the image using the ThumbroBeforeProduceHtml hook
• Add a hidden anchor element to allow web crawlers to crawl the original resolution image (see T54647)

Installation

• Install libvips
• Download and place the file(s) in a directory called Thumbro in your extensions/ folder.
• Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php file:

  wfLoadExtension( 'Thumbro' );
  

• Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.

Configurations

ℹ️ Thumbro works out of the box without any configurations.

$wgThumbroLibraries is used to define the libraries used in Thumbro.

Key	Description
command	Executable used by Thumbro to do image transformation

Default:

$wgThumbroLibraries => [
	"value" => [
		"libvips" => [
			"command": "/usr/bin/vipsthumbnail"
		]
	]
];

$wgThumbroOptions is used to define the parameters of the thumbnail generation.

Key	Description
enabled	Enable or disable Thumbro for the selected file type
library	Corresponds to $wgThumbroLibraries, currently only libvips is supported
inputOptions	Corresponds to the input/load options in VipsForeignSave
outputOptions	Corresponds to the output/save options in VipsForeignSave

Default:

$wgThumbroOptions = [
	'value' => [
		'image/gif' => [
			'enabled' => true,
			'library' => 'libvips',
			'inputOptions' => [
				'n' => '-1'
			]
		],
		'image/jpeg' => [
			'enabled' => true,
			'library' => 'libvips',
			'inputOptions' => [],
			'outputOptions' => [
				'strip': 'true',
				'Q': '80'
			]
		],
		'image/png': => [
			'enabled' => true,
			'library' => 'libvips',
			'inputOptions' => [],
			'outputOptions' => [
				'strip' => 'true',
				'filter' => 'VIPS_FOREIGN_PNG_FILTER_ALL'
			]
		],
		'image/webp' => [
			'enabled' => true,
			'library' => 'libvips',
			'inputOptions' => [],
			'outputOptions' => [
				'strip' => 'true',
				'Q' => '90',
				'smart_subsample' => 'true'
			]
		]
	]
];

To enable support for thumbnailing animated WebP files, $wgThumbroOptions['image/webp']['inputOptions']['n'] has to be set to -1.

Testing options

Name	Description	Type	Default
$wgThumbroEnabled	Set to false to disable Thumbro throughout the wiki excluding the Special:ThumbroTest page	boolean	true
$wgThumbroExposeTestPage	Enable Special:ThumbroTest on the wiki	boolean	false
$wgThumbroTestExpiry	Control the cache age for the test image streamed to Special:ThumbroTest	integer	3600

Testing Thumbro thumbnails

Thumbro comes with a special page that can be used to compare thumbnails before and after Thumbro. First you have to enable the page with this config:

 // Enable the Special:ThumbroTest page
 $wgThumbroExposeTestPage = true;

To make sure the before thumbnail is untouched by Thumbro, you can either disable Thumbro site-wide:

 // Disable Thumbro site-wide
 $wgThumbroEnabled = false;

Or disable the output file format you wanted to test under $wgThumbroOptions.

See also

• Extension:VipsScaler - original version of this extension