Administering the Media Library

The Media Library module adds a simple and customizable grid-style view of your media entities to the media administration page (/admin/content/media). The existing table-style view provided by the Media module is shown by default, but the addition of the grid-style view in the tab sub-menu allows you to toggle between the two styles.

These administrative displays can be customized using the Views module and by customizing the view modes of your media items. The grid-style view is part of the "Media Library" view, and the table-style view is part of the "Media" view. See the Views module documentation for more information about working with views.

Like nodes, media items can be managed in bulk by selecting multiple items and applying actions, such as delete or unpublish, using the drop-down menu. Several filters are also provided to help find specific media items in the library.

Table-style vs. Grid-style

Out of the box, there are two layouts of the administrative media library: table-style and grid-style. The table-style view is useful for displaying media items with additional information, which may be preferable for lists of documents or audio files, for example:

The grid-style view gives you a visual depiction of each media item with minimal textual information, which is well-suited to browsing images, for example:

Customizing display modes

Additionally, Media Library provides a "Media library" view mode and form mode to further customize the display of media items. See the Display Modes documentation for more information about configuring display modes.

Media library view mode

For example, customize the display of the Media library view mode display at URLs like: /admin/structure/media/manage/document/display/media_library (where "document" is the machine name of the media type).

The Media library view mode is enabled by default under the default display mode.

Easily add fields to the media entity's display using the Media library view mode as in the example below:

The Media library view mode is displayed by default in the provided Media Library grid view, so the administration page will automatically display the fields you have selected.

Media library form mode

The Media library form mode is customizable by visiting a URL such as /admin/structure/media/manage/image/form-display, where "image" is the media type. Here, you may add or enable additional fields to be displayed on the modal media upload form. For example, you might want the ability to use the Name field for your images. Simply drag any desired field from the "Disabled" list to the top of the form, and save your changes.

Your enabled fields will then be visible on the media upload modal window, as illustrated below. Note that this window is shown after the media file is uploaded in the media library widget.