Introduction

What is Friendly Media?

Friendly Media is an extension to Umbraco’s Media section designed to make managing media files faster, safer, and more SEO-friendly. It automatically creates readable, stable URLs and provides clear visual feedback about the health and usage of your media library.

Key features include:

• Automatic Friendly URLs for all media items
• Optional custom URL for each item (e.g. /media/biscuit-collection.jpg)
• Dashboard view showing all media URLs with search and filtering
• Helpful warning badges highlighting common issues such as:
  • Missing file
  • Duplicate URL
  • Filename changed
  • Unused media
• Deletion Guard to prevent accidental removal of media referenced in content
• Restore From Bin option for recovering deleted media items
• Integrated Content App for quick URL management per item
• Edit or clear custom URLs directly from the dashboard

What are "Friendly" URLs

By default, Umbraco places every uploaded file in a unique folder, producing URLs like:

https://www.mysite.com/media/al3dpg14/myimage.jpg

These are functional but not ideal for SEO or long-term use in marketing materials, as the folder hash is unreadable and can change if the file is replaced.

Friendly Media automatically generates simplified URLs without the hashed folder name:

https://www.mysite.com/media/myimage.jpg

In addition, users can specify a more descriptive custom filename for media items, for example biscuit-collection.jpg which will create an additional "custom URL" for that media item:

https://www.mysite.com/media/biscuit-collection.jpg

Friendly Media ensures that filenames remain stable and that both auto-generated and custom URLs automatically redirect if the underlying file changes—helping preserve SEO value and external links.

Ready to start using Friendly Media?

Jump to Getting Started to learn how to install and configure Friendly Media in your Umbraco project.