A featured image represents the contents, mood, or theme of a post or page and is used throughout your site. This guide will show you how to work with featured images on your website.
In this guide
To set a featured image on a post or page, follow these steps:
- Visit your dashboard.
- Click on Pages or Posts from the options on the left.
- Click on the title of the page or post to open the editor.
- In the settings sidebar, click on the “Set featured image” box, which will appear if an image is not already present.
- Choose an image from one of the available options:
- Media Library (click “Add new” here to upload a new image)
- Your Phone (via the Jetpack app)
- Generate with Al
- Google Photos
- Pexels Free Photos
- Openverse
- Click the “Publish” or “Save” button to save your featured image.
You can generate a featured image with AI that’s based on your page or post content.
To generate a featured image for a post or page with AI, follow these steps:
- Visit your dashboard.
- Click on Pages or Posts from the options on the left.
- Click on the title of the page or post to open the editor.
- In the settings sidebar, click on the “Set featured image” box, which will appear if an image is not already present.
- If a featured image is already present, click the “Remove” button first.
- Click the “Generate with AI” option, which will use AI to create a new image based on the post/page content:
- If you don’t like the first image, you can use the text box to describe the image you’d like to create and click the “Generate another image” button.
- You can repeat this process as many times as you like, and you can browse the previously generated images using the arrows below the image. All AI-generated images are automatically added to your website’s Media Library.
- With your desired featured image selected, click the “Set as featured image” button.
- Click the “Publish” or “Save” button to save your featured image.
To change or remove a featured image, follow steps 1 to 4 in the previous section to locate the featured image. Then, click the “Replace” or “Remove” button:
Perhaps you would like to add a Featured Image to your content, but you also want to hide this image so that it does not appear on any page or post.
You can make this change in block themes by editing the template. To hide the featured image, remove the Featured Image block from the page template or post template.
Featured images are used in many different ways by themes. Here are some examples of places where featured images may appear, depending on your theme:
- Search results
- Blog Page
- Portfolio Page
- Featured Content on the homepage:
If a featured image does not appear as expected, check your theme settings to ensure the theme is set up to display featured images. The setup can vary depending on the type of theme your site uses:
- Block Themes: Use the Featured Image block in your template.
- Universal, Hybrid and Classic Themes: Check the Customizer for “Content Options” or a similar section. Your theme may have a setting here to show or hide the featured image in certain areas.
- Third-Party Themes: Check your theme documentation for details.
If your featured image is the wrong size, please see your theme’s documentation for recommended dimensions to use. Certain themes use featured images in ways that may require a specifically sized image to work correctly. Visit our Optimize Your Images guide for more.
Captions are typically not shown with featured images in most WordPress themes, but you may be able to display captions with a featured image caption plugin.
Social media sites like Facebook will often use the page’s featured image when you share it on social media. Here are examples from Facebook and LinkedIn:
You can check the following guides for help with how images appear on Facebook and LinkedIn.
