New Drupal Media Library interface: managing media with joy

There is an ideal blend of usability and attractiveness — this is Media Library in Drupal 8.7 core. That’s what comes to mind when we see Drupal Media Library’s updated UI. Managing media on websites will now be easier and more enjoyable than before!

Drupal Media Library allows you to:

• save photos, audios, tweets, local videos, remote videos from YouTube or Vimeo etc.
• manage all items in the Library
• easily add them to content at any time you wish

So welcome to take a closer look at how the new Media Library interface looks and works in Drupal 8.7.

Media Library’s new UI impresses the world

As soon as the demo video of the new Media Library UI was posted by Webchick yet in March, Drupal core contributor, it gathered many compliments from the Drupal community. “Brilliant,” “wonderful,” “amazing,” “totally huge” are just some of the feedback. It’s interesting to know what you will say, so welcome to leave comments!

A closer look at new Drupal Media Library interface in release 8.7

The Media Library works in pair with the Media module. To start using it, we enable both the Media and Media Library modules.

Drupal shows a warning about the experimental status of Media Library. The module is expected to be stable in Drupal 8.8 after a few fixes and adding WYSIWYG support.

With these modules enabled, we can see that the site’s structure now has media types. There are five default and preconfigured ones (and it is also possible to add custom media types):

• Audio
• File
• Image
• Remote video
• Video

It’s time to add some media of the available types. All media items will be stored in Media Library for further convenient use. You can add it in two ways:

• from the admin dashboard “Content — Add content — Media.”
• directly from the “Media” tab in “Content” where you will see the entire Media Library with all media that you have added.

The new Media Library interface can display your media in the Grid view and in the Table view:

It is easy to filter and sort the media by various criteria, as well as select particular items to do actions with them (delete, publish, save, unpublish).

Adding media from Media Library to content

Here comes the most interesting part of managing media with the Media Library story — embedding media into content. In fact, it is not only content, but all fieldable entities (for example, user profiles or media itself).

To get this working, the basic necessary thing is to add a “Media” field to the desired entity type. Let’s add it to user account settings and call it “My pet's photos.”

Allowed number of values will define how many items can be embedded.

You need to select the media type for the field. According to the official documentation, it is completely legal to have multiple media types in the same field.

Now, every time a new user account is created, it has the “Add media” button that brings in the Media Library interface. Media can be added in two ways (and even at the same time!):

• You can select Media in the Library:

• And you can bulk upload media from PC:

You can choose “Save and insert”, or “Save and select” to insert them later.

Once inserted, the media items are displayed on the user account as the user’s favorite pet’s photos. And you can do the same with all kinds of media in all kinds of content.

Enjoy the new interface for Media Library in Drupal 8.7

Well, the new Drupal Media Library interface in release 8.7 is really user-friendly, stylish, and classy. Managing media with it will be fun for content editors.

Our Drupal team is ready to help in configuring the Media fields for your website’s content, creating a custom media type to fit your business needs, and, of course, updating you to Drupal 8.7. Enjoy the newest Drupal features!