In short
You can upload images, video, audio and documents directly into your account, and each one becomes a Dynamic Link you own. Files go from your browser straight to storage rather than through the site, which is what lets a two-gigabyte video through when an ordinary web upload would fail at a hundred megabytes.
The part that changes how you should work is that targeting and preview settings only apply when you upload one file at a time. A password, an expiry date and a project label go onto every file in a batch, but country, device and language rules and social preview text are carried through only on a single upload. Dragging in forty photographs is the fast path; it is not the path that produces forty targeted links.
On this page
How the upload actually travels
An ordinary web upload posts the file to the site, which receives it, checks it, and stores it. That route has hard limits well below the size of a modern video, and they are not limits anyone can raise on your behalf.
Uploads here take a different route. The browser asks for permission to write a specific object, then sends the file directly to storage in pieces, and tells the platform when it has finished. The site never has the file passing through it, so its limits never apply. The practical ceiling is two gigabytes per file.
Sending in pieces has a second benefit you will notice on a bad connection: a piece that fails is a piece that gets retried, rather than an entire upload starting again from zero.
What you can upload
| Kind | Formats |
|---|---|
| Images | JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, BMP, TIFF, SVG, HEIC, HEIF |
| Video | MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM, AVI, MKV, WMV, MPEG |
| Audio | MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, OGG, FLAC |
| Documents and archives | PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, CSV, plain text, ZIP |
Anything outside that list is refused before a single byte is sent, so you find out at once rather than after a long wait.
Two files that get converted, and why differently
Two kinds of file cannot be left as they arrive, and the platform handles them in opposite orders. The reason is time.
The platform decides by what is really inside the video, not just its file ending. MOV, WMV, AVI, MKV, MPEG and WebM are always converted. An MP4 or M4V is checked first: one already in the format every phone and browser plays is left exactly as you sent it, but one carrying a newer format — common in videos from recent phones and downloads from video sites — is converted too. Converted videos are capped at 1920 pixels on their long side.
Anyone who opens a video link while its conversion is still running sees a short Preparing your video page (“This will be ready in a moment”) that refreshes by itself, rather than a file that will not play. The same conversion runs on every way a video reaches Linxy — this page, the Create a TouchPoint wizard, the Linxy App, secure upload links, community posts and batches.
One at a time, or many
| A single file | Several at once | |
|---|---|---|
| Speed | Slower per file | Much faster overall |
| Password, expiry | Available | Available — the same on every file |
| Country, device, language rules | Available | Not applied |
| Custom address | Available | Numbered: your ending followed by -1, -2, -3… |
| Social preview title and description (SEO) | Available | Not applied |
| Project label | Available | Available |
Settings you can attach
On a single upload, everything an ordinary Dynamic Link can carry is available as you create it rather than as an afterthought. On a batch, the rows marked single-file below are left off.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Description | Your own note. Not shown to visitors |
| Project label | Groups the link with others, for finding things later |
| Client | Attributes the link to a client on your account |
| Custom address | Chooses the ending rather than accepting a generated one |
| Password | Requires it before the file is served |
| Expiry | Stops the link working after a date |
| Country, device and language rules | Sends different visitors to different places. Single file only |
| Preview title and description | What shows when the link is pasted into a chat or a social post. Single file only |
All of these can also be changed later from the link itself. Setting them at upload simply saves the second pass.
If the image is going to become a Mark
An image destined to carry a Linxy Mark has one requirement that catches people: it cannot be HEIC. That is why HEIC and HEIF are converted the moment they arrive rather than being left alone — so that an image straight off an iPhone is usable without you having to know any of this.
Symptoms, causes and fixes
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| The file is refused straight away | The format is not on the accepted list | Convert it, or wrap it in a ZIP if it only needs storing |
| File exceeds the maximum allowed size | Over two gigabytes | Compress or split it. Two gigabytes is the ceiling per file |
| A video link shows Preparing your video | It is still being converted, and is deliberately held shut | Wait. The page refreshes itself, and the address is already correct and can be shared now |
| A video is still not playing after a long wait | The conversion failed | Re-upload it, ideally already as an MP4 |
| Forty links have no country rules or preview text | They were uploaded as a batch, where those settings are not applied | Set them per link afterwards, or upload the ones that need them singly |
| We could not convert this HEIC image | The file is damaged or not really HEIC | Export it as JPEG or PNG from the phone and upload that |
| An upload stalls part-way and then continues | A piece failed and was retried | Nothing to do. That is the mechanism working |
| A Mark on an uploaded image only reads when zoomed in | The image was marked larger than it is displayed | Upload and mark at the size it will actually appear at |
Things people commonly get wrong
Related reading: Secure upload, My Linxy items, Protecting a link, Redirection controls, and What is a Linxy Mark.