Is there a way to upload a large amount of item images in one upload?

[Cyclebitz]

We need to upload 16 thousand items via CSV file but there doesn't seem to be a way to include image links to the upload.
Adding images one by one to items would be ridiculous.
Is there a way to do this in one upload?

[Summer2024 · Accepted solution]

Hi, @Cyclebitz ! Welcome to the Square Community. 

Unfortunately, Square’s CSV import tool for the Item Library does not currently support image URLs or image uploads as part of the import file. That’s why you’re not seeing an option to include them in your CSV. 😥

Supporting URL to catalog import is not currently on the product team's roadmap, but they will definitely consider this for the future. However, as a workaround, you can bulk upload images in the item catalog. Select the items you wish to upload images for in Item Library using the checkboxes > click the "edit items" button in the bottom right corner > click the "..." within the Bulk Edit page > select "bulk upload images."

You can learn more about uploading and managing item images in this Support Article. 

I hope this helps! 

[skalo]

Hi @Cyclebitz, just adding to Summer2024's answer above since 16,000 items is a scale where the built-in bulk-upload workaround (select items → bulk edit → bulk upload images) gets painful fast — that flow is really built for batches of a few dozen to a few hunden, not thousands.

A few options depending on how technical you want to get:

1. Square's Catalog API — you can programmatically create/update ImageData objects and attach them to items via image_ids. If you have a dev on hand, this is the "proper" way to do 16k items without touching the UI at all.
2. Naming-convention workaround — some sellers name image files to match SKU/item name, then use a script to batch-map and push them via the API in one pass rather than 16,000 manual clicks.
3. Full disclosure: I work on Skalo, we built a tool specifically for this — bulk catalogue-to-Square sync including image mapping, since we kept seeing sellers stuck on exactly this problem. Happy to share more if useful, but the API route above works fine too if you'd rather DIY it.

Either way, hope this saves you from clicking through 16,000 items one at a time.