You can send photos in messages now
Private messages have been text only since they launched on the 13th. Starting today you can attach a photo: tap the paperclip next to the message box, pick an image, add a caption if you want one, and send.
It works in every place messages live: the chat widget in the game, the panel on the website, the phone sheet and the full page at /messages.
Where the photo goes
Most pictures on Skydex are public on purpose. A moment you publish, a spot photo or a station's cover can be opened by anyone who has the link. That's the wrong model for a private conversation, so message photos are handled differently:
- They sit in a separate storage area with no public address.
- Each time you open the conversation, the site hands you links that stop working within two hours. Only the two people in the conversation get them.
- If the conversation is reported, a moderator can see the photo. That is the same rule that already applies to the words.
Location data is removed
Phones write a lot into every photo: the camera model, the time, and very often the exact coordinates where it was taken. For a picture of your antenna on the roof, that means your home address.
We re-encode every photo when you send it. The re-encoded copy keeps the picture and drops all of that metadata, and the original file is never stored. Photos are also resized to 2048 pixels on the long side, which is plenty to read a tail number and keeps the thread quick to load.
A few limits
- Up to 10 MB per photo, JPEG, PNG, WebP or GIF (a GIF sends its first frame). On an iPhone the photo picker converts to JPEG for you.
- 20 photos a day, and 500 MB of stored photos per account.
- If you started a conversation with someone who hasn't answered yet, you can send words but not photos. The paperclip says so when you tap it. Links in a first message are shown as plain text for the same reason: an unsolicited first message is where abuse starts.
Deleting
Deleting a message you sent removes its photo from storage. The one exception is a conversation with an open report: then the file is kept until a moderator has looked at it, and it is still hidden from both of you in the meantime.
No video for now
We looked at video too. The size cap that would fit our server today is too small to be useful for most clips, so video is off the table until we can do it properly. If you need to share a clip, a link still works.
Found something odd? Tell us in Discord or write to [email protected].