Media

The Media library opens in two ways. One is the picture icon near the top of the rail to the left of the editor. It opens the whole gallery for the book you are in, with delete and storage on hand. The same window also opens wherever a picture goes, such as a Media block in a Chapter or Choose from gallery in a Decision Template. Picking a file there hands it straight to the thing you came from.

The window has two tabs. Upload adds a file from your computer. Gallery shows every file the book already has, as a grid. Selecting a tile opens it large, with its title and description ready to edit and a delete button.

• The drop zone takes a file dropped on it, or opens a file browser when pressed. The window reads the kind from the file itself, so there is no image or video switch to set.
• Title, up to 120 characters, and an optional Description, up to 500. The description is the caption your Reader sees under the picture in a Chapter. A Glossary Item's main image uses the item's own summary instead.
• Was this made with AI? has to be answered before Upload lights up. There is no silent default. Yes puts a small Created with AI mark on the picture wherever Readers see it. The Acceptable Use Policy asks for that mark, and says what may be uploaded at all.

• Pictures: JPEG, PNG, WebP or GIF, up to 15 MB each. Larger pictures are shown at a size that fits the page, and the original is kept.
• Videos: MP4 or WebM, up to 100 MB each. A .mov from a phone is not accepted, because most Readers' browsers cannot play one. It needs exporting as MP4 first. In a Chapter a video starts playing silently as the Reader scrolls to it. A tap on a video that is playing pauses it. Full screen with sound is a second tap, on the now-paused video. Two places add a length limit of their own, checked when you pick the file there. A book cover holds a video of up to 15 seconds, and a Background one of up to 30 seconds.

Every writer has 3 GB of storage, shared across all of their books. The Gallery tab shows how much is used. An upload that would go over the line is refused, with a message saying so. Pictures are small. It is video that fills the space.

• Clean unused, on the Gallery tab, deletes every file nothing in the book uses and frees its space. It shows you the list first and asks. A file that any Chapter, Glossary Item, Dynamic Component, cover or Snapshot still points at is never touched.
• A deleted file does not give its space back at once. It stays counted until the nightly clean-up removes it, a day or more later. Clean unused is the way to make room today: it frees the space the moment it runs.

• A Media block in a Chapter or in a Glossary Item's wiki body, set full width, with the description as its caption.
• A Glossary Item's main image: the top of its entry, its card, and the portrait in a conversation where it speaks.
• A Decision Template's picture above the choices, a Dialogue Template's scene, and a Background behind the page. A reply's Change Media result can swap the Dialogue scene for another file.
• The book's cover, set under Book Settings or when you publish.

One file can be in all of these at once. When you rename it or change its description in the Gallery, every place picks up the change.

Delete is on a tile's large view in the Gallery. The window asks first, and a delete cannot be undone. Afterwards it counts the places that used the file: Glossary Item main images, Decision and Dialogue Templates, Change Media results and Backgrounds. Media blocks in Chapters, Glossary wiki bodies and Fact Cards are not in that count, though they are still emptied. So "Media deleted." with no number does not mean the file was used nowhere.

• A Media block in a Chapter shows as removed until you pick another file or take the block out.
• A Decision Template or Dialogue Template that used it is marked with a warning. It will not save until you choose another picture, or dismiss the notice to go without one.
• A Background that used it is marked the same way, but it has no "go without" option. A Background is one picture or one flat colour, and with neither it shows a Reader nothing. So it will not save until you choose another picture or switch it to a colour.
• A Glossary Item's main image or the cover goes blank. The entry or the listing shows without a picture until you pick one.
• The publish check refuses the book while a Decision Template, Dialogue Template or Background is still marked. Each one's handbook page says how to fix it.

Publishing an expansion freezes a copy of every file it uses, along with the Snapshot of the text. Its Readers keep seeing those pictures, whatever you do in the library afterwards. Deleting a file from your gallery takes it out of your live draft, never out of a published book. The same goes for what a publish locks in general.