Bart's Imgur uploader bash script

• By Bart Nagel bart@tremby.net
• Improvements by Tino Sino robottinosino@gmail.com
• Other contributions from the Github community

Purpose

Upload images to Imgur via a small bash script.

History

This is the repository for the Bash script which has been found on Imgur's tools page since way back in 2009, and now on their new tools page.

I received infrequent but steady emails over the years with thanks and suggestions for improvements. A Google search shows the script has been reused and forked many times over the years. About time this had its own Git repository, so maybe the improvements can find their way back to the source.

Requirements

• curl

Optional

• xsel, xclip, pbcopy (Mac), or clip (Windows) to automatically put the URLs on the X selection or clipboard for easy pasting

Instructions

1. Put it somewhere in your path and maybe rename it

    mv imgur.sh ~/bin/imgur
   

   Or you could make a symlink instead.

2. Make it executable

    chmod +x ~/bin/imgur
   

3. Optional, since I've provided a client ID: add your client id to the top of the script, replacing the provided one, or set it as the IMGUR_CLIENT_ID environment variable

Uploading images

• Single image

    imgur images/hilarious/manfallingover.jpg
  

• Single image from a URL

    imgur https://example.com/egg.png
  

• Multiple images

    imgur images/delicious/cake.png https://example.com/exciting/bungeejump.jpg
  

• Directly from a screenshot

    import png:- | imgur
  

  Note that the import command above is from Imagemagick, and will await a selection being made on screen.

The new URLs will be displayed (and the delete page URLs will be displayed on stderr). If you have xsel or xclip, the URLs will also be put on the primary X selection, which you can then usually paste with a middle click. If you have pbcopy (standard on Mac) or clip (standard on Windows), the URLs will be put on the clipboard.

If no filename is given, or if - is given as one of the arguments, an image is read from standard input.

Rate limits

There are some rate limits with the API. The daily upload limit is shared by everyone using the same client ID, so if you're using the provided one and start to get errors, you might consider using your own client ID.

Configuring your clipboard program

You can configure the clipboard program by providing options for it.

An example use case is if you're using xsel or xclip and would rather user the clipboard than the primary selection.

See the code for the environment variable names, but for the xsel example above, you'd set the environment variable IMGUR_XSEL_OPTIONS to -b:

IMGUR_XSEL_OPTIONS=-b imgur ...

You can make this environment variable persistent; do a web search if you don't know how.