On my photography site https://www.peterblandford.com/ I allow image downloads that are reasonably hi res. It works great on PC and Mac browsers, people can click on the little image icon then the cloud icon and get an image in their download folder.
On IOS devices people always have problems
If they are using Google Chrome, which is most of them, when they click on the cloud they get this error
Is they use Safari, it downloads a copy of the image to their downloads folder which is only accessible with the “Files” app and gives no notification.
Ideally the hires version of the photo would just be saved in their photos app.
Is there anything I can do to make it easier for people to download hi-res images from my site when on an IOS device?
Access is blocked to your /photos-for-download folders, hence the 403 error. 403 indicates a denial of access based on permissions, not a software failure.
Try this in your desktop browser, you’ll get the same result as in your mobile Chrome browser:
(URL removed)
@Ben, are we doing anything to block access to his folder, or is this purely a server issue?
As for iOS, we cannot add images directly to the Photos app. The user would need to long-press on the image and select “Save to Photos” from the OS menu. On new versions of iOS, we are appropriately handling file downloads; when clicking a download button, the file is saved to the Files “Downloads” folder is the way that Safari is meant to work.
On older versions of iOS, without Files, the image is opened in a new tab, where the user can then long-press to save. That’s what’s meant to be happening in Chrome, but you’ve got that 403 error instead.
And now the image above is loading auto-magically, so I guess that means they’ve fixed the permissions? I’m going to edit the message to remove it, as I don’t want our forum to be hot-linking your images.
You’re getting a 403 error due to a .htaccess in the directory mentioning ‘Deny from all’, you need to remove this line for the images to load. I have done it now and you will see it now loading:
I did not set the .htaccess directory to “deny from all” is that something I can correct for all directories?
photos-for-download directories had previously been configured to block direct access by creating .htaccess files with a ‘Deny from all’ directive. We encountered a few issues with mobile browsers and have since removed this blocking. Can you try the following:
Make sure that your BL2 modules are up-to-date
Visit the Update Album Files function on the main Backlight Admin page
That should remove the .htaccess files from within all photos-for-download directories, and unless there’s something else causing a 403, downloads should work. If it doesn’t can you first check via your FTP application to see whether the .htaccess files have actually been removed on your server?
Can you let us know how that goes?
That’s worked thank you! Chrome on the IOS is still not great at handling an image link, the long press doesn’t work to save the file, but Safari works as it should.
Huh. You’re right; long-pressing images in Chrome doesn’t seem to work. I do believe that’s a behavior change since the last time I used it. Or something strange is happening here …
If I open one of your thumbnails in a new tab, I can long-press that image to save it, but not your photos-for-download … even though both images are direct URLs to a .jpg file. I have no explanation for this.
Maybe because of the file size? Trying to Google, and I’m finding various conversations around the notion of “Chrome won’t download images,” but in a more general sense, and seeming not to be specifically the problem we’re seeing here.
