The Squarespace asset library is an extremely underrated yet important feature of your Squarespace website

I’ll show you what it is, how to use it, and go over some cool new features added recently that'll save you a bunch of time and make it even more powerful for your website design.

If you already have a Squarespace website, anytime you’ve uploaded an image or video to your website, they were stored in the asset library.  This came in handy when you wanted to re-use them later, as you could just search for them when adding your image/video block.  It wasn’t fancy, just a large collection of everything you uploaded in the past.

But recently, the asset library has gotten a few updates to make it even more powerful and useful, and I will show you how.

YOUTUBE VIDEO

For a complete demonstration, or if you prefer video, watch the companion video on my YouTube channel.  Otherwise, keep reading for the highlights!

Overview of the asset library

You'll find the asset library in your main site navigation panel on the left-hand side, about halfway down. 

When you click on that to go into the library, you’ll see every image uploaded into the site to date. You have the option of viewing it in a list format or a grid/gallery format. Regardless of which view you choose, folders will always be at the top of the page. It’s a personal preference, so go with what works best for you.

Click on the three dots and you can get all the file details. 

This is a great thing to keep in mind when you're trying to optimize your website. You can see the type of file it is (png., jpeg., etc.) and the dimensions in pixels. But you can also see the size of the file and this is a really important thing to check from time to time because you want to do your best to keep images below 500 kb whenever possible to help your site load faster. 

Ideally, you’ve checked that size before you uploaded it, but if you didn’t or you want to go back and check, this is a great way to get that information quickly.

One of the key new features, added recently is the ability to upload your images or videos directly into the asset library. 

Before, assets would only get added to the library when you uploaded them to your website when adding an image/video block to a page on your site.

now you can proactively add assets and organize assets in your library!

There are a couple of ways you can do that. In the upper right corner, click ‘Add New.’

You have the option here to upload files, but before we go over that, there's a really cool new feature here I want to bring to your attention: 

The ability to Create folders!

You now have the ability to create folders and organize your assets. No more scrolling through tons of images to find the one you need! 

You can also create folders within folders, so you have the flexibility to structure and organize your library in a way that suits you and how you work!

How to upload assets to your library

You can select ‘Add New’ and ‘upload files’ from the main asset library page, or you can drag and drop files directly into it!

Prior to this update, you could not proactively upload or bulk-upload images to your site.  This alone is a game-changing time saver because you can load and organize all your assets before you start designing your site! When you start designing you can quickly grab your assets because they’ll be at your fingertips organized in a way that makes sense to you.

You can also do this within a folder as shown here:

Notice this (⬆️) is where you can create a folder within this folder if you choose.

Once you upload/drag your files in, you’ll see a circle with a number at the bottom right of your screen that shows the number and progress of your uploads.  When all your files are complete, this circle will turn green and show a checkmark.

If you're uploading a bunch of images at the same time, you can click on that circle, and it will expand to show their progress. They'll each get a check mark as they complete. Alternatively, if there's a problem uploading your image, you'll get a red exclamation point letting you know there's an issue.

Finally, if you ever want to move or delete an asset, you can select them individually, select all, or deselect all and move them to another folder or you can delete them from here.

What are your next steps?

If you’re just getting started building your Squarespace website, or even if you haven't started all at all, when you do, head over to your asset library. Start creating folders that make sense to you and how you want to organize your images (and videos if you're using them). 

Maybe you want to organize them based on the page that they're gonna be on your website: your homepage, your about page, your services page, or some other organization that makes sense to you. It's your website. You can do anything you want!

My advice is to try it and use these folders to organize those assets so you can access them easily when designing your webpage. When you click that 'add image' button, you don't have to search through one image after another to try to find the one you were looking for; you can just head right into the folder that you need to and grab it quickly.

And if you're already well into your website design and you've got a ton of images out there, set aside half an hour or so aside some day and go through them and start organizing them.

It'll save you a lot of time down the road and make your web design updates and experience a lot easier.

I hope this was helpful and that you’ll take advantage of the power you now have within the asset library to organize your images and streamline your design process.

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