Getting Google+ profile picture url with user_id

Question

I know that lots of social network APIs provide a way to construct a url to the profile picture of a user, using their user_id or username. For Facebook it looks like this:

http://graph.facebook.com/user_id/picture?type=square

Now is there something like this for Google Plus? Or any other way to get user's pic without an API call??

I opened a feature request which you can star to get updates if Google ever implements it. https://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?id=167 — abraham, Feb 03 '12 at 18:44
Here's an example for the other way around. Embedding for instance your StackOverflow flair in your Google+ Profile: http://goo.gl/8EE4LT — Lorenz Lo Sauer, Nov 06 '13 at 16:05
The answer to this question changed since 2012 too many times. I posted one answer that work in 2020 - don't know how much time :) — Leandro Bardelli, Sep 26 '20 at 06:13

score 103 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 26 '20 at 05:54

103

Google had changed their policy so the old way for getting the Google profile image will not work now, which was

https://plus.google.com/s2/photos/profile/(user_id)?sz=150

New Way for doing this is

Request URL

https://www.googleapis.com/plus/v1/people/115950284...320?fields=image&key={YOUR_API_KEY}

That will give the Google profile image url in json format as given below

Response :

{
    "image": 
    {
         "url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-OkM...AANA/ltpH4BFZ2as/photo.jpg?sz=50"
    }
}

More parameters can be found to send with URL which you may need from here

For more detail you can also check the given question where I have answered for same type of problem How to get user image through user id in Google plus?

edited Sep 26 '20 at 05:54

Leandro Bardelli

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answered Mar 20 '14 at 11:48

Deepak Goswami

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It is still not a redirect, it cannot be used within a `` tag – Kirill Kulakov Mar 20 '14 at 13:04
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that's why its mentioned in JSON format don't you get that, since there are changes so you can't expect everything to work as per before @KirillKulakov – TheMohanAhuja Mar 20 '14 at 14:26
I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying that is not as useful as the old method, and besides the OP asked for ''''way to get users pic without an API call'''' – Kirill Kulakov Mar 20 '14 at 14:33
yup that's right this method will not return user's image, even I am searching for same answer. @KirillKulakov – TheMohanAhuja Mar 20 '14 at 14:35
@TheMohanAhuja, does the API req take a param to request for a particular image size? Looks like it defaults to 50px. – rgoraya Apr 04 '14 at 17:04
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@rgoraya you can't request in API call but you surely can add size with image URL, that you got as `.../-OkM...AANA/ltpH...as/photo.jpg?sz=512` – TheMohanAhuja Apr 05 '14 at 08:51
Thanks works. But as I could do if I have only the email, not the id? – jose920405 Nov 05 '15 at 17:27
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i having a bad request error, what api should i enable on my developer console – Earwin delos Santos Nov 26 '15 at 11:43
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Will the generated image.url expired? – neobie Jul 08 '16 at 02:25
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is there any way by which we can get the profile picture of the user without google plus api since it will be deprecated in future – Saurabh Verma Feb 18 '19 at 09:26

Emil Stenström · Answer 2 · 2017-05-31T16:16:56.930

94

UPDATE: The method below DOES NOT WORK since 2015

It is possible to get the profile picture, and you can even set the size of it:

https://plus.google.com/s2/photos/profile/<user_id>?sz=<your_desired_size>

Example: My profile picture, with size set to 100 pixels:

https://plus.google.com/s2/photos/profile/116018066779980863044?sz=100

Usage with an image tag:

<img src="https://plus.google.com/s2/photos/profile/116018066779980863044?sz=100" width="100" height="100">

Hope you get it working!

edited May 31 '17 at 16:16

answered Jun 27 '12 at 16:10

Emil Stenström

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Is this documented anywhere? – Jonas Alves Jan 10 '13 at 21:28
I found it in their source code, and since I figure lots of other services already use them I think it's unlikely that they will change. – Emil Stenström Jan 12 '13 at 00:19
Nice find.Saves me a lot of trouble. – Akshat Jiwan Sharma Mar 16 '13 at 15:52
@EmilStenström using your examples works perfectly but the image is small and when you increase it, it becomes blurry.Is there a waya round this? – Ojonugwa Jude Ochalifu Feb 12 '14 at 06:13
@OjonugwaOchalifu: No. The blurriness is because the original user uploaded a small image, there is no way to get a bigger version of a small image. If you check my example above you see it doesn't get blurry even on 400. – Emil Stenström Feb 12 '14 at 13:46
As a matter of fact I used your Id and retrieved your profile picture.with the same result. – Ojonugwa Jude Ochalifu Feb 12 '14 at 14:00
@OjonugwaOchalifu: My comment still stands. – Emil Stenström Feb 13 '14 at 14:42
But just so we are on the same page, is this tutorial based on Android? Because am trying this in Android. – Ojonugwa Jude Ochalifu Feb 13 '14 at 14:57
Android is trying to reduce the image quality to reduce bandwidth. The screen is small, do not need a big picture. – Magno C Feb 18 '14 at 13:24
This URL worked for a while, but now only seems to work for me when I am NOT signed in to google. When I am signed in, I get a 404 error. Anyone else have the same results? – KevMo Mar 12 '14 at 15:57
1

Yes, not working right now, anybody knows if it's a temporal issue or permanent one? – Cecilia Abadie Mar 13 '14 at 05:14
I found that this alternative still works: https://s2.googleusercontent.com/s2/photos/profile/{id}?sz={size} (per answer below by Will Norris) – Cecilia Abadie Mar 13 '14 at 05:46
These URLs are not working with Chrome but they work with FireFox/Explorer. I don´t know why! – Martin Varta Mar 14 '14 at 12:47
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This method no longer works. Gives a 404 error. I tested in Chrome, Safari, FireFox. – Justin Mar 14 '14 at 20:04
"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-xxxxxxxxx/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAADOU/xxxxxxxx/photo.jpg?sz=50" seems to work still but the user-id only urls are still returning 404 – rgoraya Mar 14 '14 at 23:29
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I've updated the answer to reflect that the above method does not work as of a few days back. – Emil Stenström Mar 15 '14 at 11:25
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@CeciliaAbadie: Can you confirm that your method still works? Tried several variations but couldn't make it work with my user id (see the answer above). Can you? – Emil Stenström Mar 15 '14 at 11:26
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@rgoraya: But how do you calculate the xxxxxx part automatically? – Emil Stenström Mar 15 '14 at 11:26
I guess that has been deprecated – Kirill Kulakov Mar 16 '14 at 06:53

Salvador · Answer 3 · 2014-03-23T16:27:45.823

47

UPDATE: Google stopped support for this method, that now returns a 404 (not found) error.

All this urls fetch the profile picture of a user:

https://www.google.com/s2/photos/profile/{user_id}
https://plus.google.com/s2/photos/profile/{user_id}
https://profiles.google.com/s2/photos/profile/{user_id}

They redirect to the same image url you get from Google API, an ugly link as
lh6.googleusercontent.com/-x1W2-XNKA-A/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAAA/ooSNulbLz8U/photo.jpg

The simplest is to directly use like image source:

<img src="https://www.google.com/s2/photos/profile/{user_id}">

Otherwise to obtain exactly the same url of a Google API call you can read image headers,
for example in PHP:

$headers = get_headers("https://www.google.com/s2/photos/profile/{user_id}", 1);
echo "<img src=$headers[Location]>";

as described in article Fetch Google Plus Profile Picture using PHP.

edited Mar 23 '14 at 16:27

answered May 15 '12 at 11:15

Salvador

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No need to make a HTTP request for each request, see my answer. – Emil Stenström Jun 27 '12 at 16:11
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Is this documented anywhere? – Jonas Alves Jan 10 '13 at 21:27
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Although this works perfectly, I would not go this way, as google might simply stop supporting this, since I don't see anywhere an official documentation – Lefteris Apr 12 '13 at 12:27
I have added a full proof answer below – Erwan Dec 10 '13 at 17:33
Below I have added a new solution to get Google profile image by user id ,which is not returns 404 error please check that. – Deepak Goswami Mar 20 '14 at 12:05
but how to find user_id from gmail address – Bijender Singh Shekhawat Oct 23 '16 at 15:12

Masum · Answer 4 · 2014-03-28T08:05:07.357

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Approach 1: (no longer works)

https://plus.google.com/s2/photos/profile/<user_id>?sz=<your_desired_size>

Approach 2: (each request counts in your api rate limits which is 10k requests per day for free)

https://www.googleapis.com/plus/v1/people/<user_id>?fields=image&key={YOUR_API_KEY}

with the following response format:

{ "image": { "url": "lh5.googleusercontent.com/-keLR5zGxWOg/.../photo.jpg?sz=50"; } }

Approach 3: (donot require api key)

http://picasaweb.google.com/data/entry/api/user/<user_id>?alt=json

in the json response you get a property named "gphoto$thumbnail", which contains the profile picture url like the following:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/-btLsReiDeF0/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAAA/GXBpycNk984/s64-c/filename.jpg

You may notice in the url the portion "s64-c" which means the image size to be 64, I've tried using other values like "s100-c" and they worked. Also if you remove the "s64-c" part and append the "?sz=100" parameter, that will also work as of now. Though this is not very good way of getting the profile picture of a gplus user, but the advantage is it do not require any api key.

edited Mar 28 '14 at 08:05

answered Mar 24 '14 at 19:40

Masum

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On Approach2 have you figured out how to set image size by API call? – Maca Mar 28 '14 at 07:31
@Maca you should get the api response like this: { "image": { "url": "https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-keLR5zGxWOg/.../photo.jpg?sz=50" } } from where you can set the sz parameter for different image sizes – Masum Mar 28 '14 at 07:57
lol..google is going to have to hack every publicly available image link to come under their API for people to have no choice but to get an API key. – user1323136 Jun 21 '14 at 13:28
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I wonder if there is something like picasaweb but you get the picture directly from the email and not google +. I just have a case of a user that has an image in your Gmail account but do not have a profile on google +, and does not bring image. Only can get an url like this http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-k10Va1BdzL8/AAAAAAAAAAA/AAAAAAAAAAA/5vpJcwClcAA/s64-c/117785406588046698617.jpg – jose920405 Nov 25 '15 at 19:16
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picasaweb.google.com api is depriciated and will be turned off by Jan 2019 https://developers.google.com/picasa-web/ – siddhesh Dec 27 '18 at 08:14
@siddhesh do you know of any other alternative then? – sbattou Jan 02 '19 at 03:32
@jose920405 did you ever figure it out? – sbattou Jan 02 '19 at 03:32

score 11 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 03 '14 at 20:07

11

Google, no API needed:

$data = file_get_contents('http://picasaweb.google.com/data/entry/api/user/<USER_ID>?alt=json');
$d = json_decode($data);
$avatar = $d->{'entry'}->{'gphoto$thumbnail'}->{'$t'};

// Outputs example: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2N6fRg5OFbM/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAADE/2-RmpExH6iU/s64-c/photo.jpg

CHANGE: the 64 in "s64" for the size

answered Apr 03 '14 at 20:07

Shawn Rebelo

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This is fine, but does not return if the avatar is the default or a real user uploaded one. – Miguel Nov 13 '14 at 13:02

score 4 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 13 '13 at 15:20

4

If you want to show the profile picture for the currently logged in user, you do not even need to know the {user_id}. Simply using https://plus.google.com/s2/photos/profile/me will be enough.

answered Jan 13 '13 at 15:20

Danny Ruijters

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thanks, but unfortunately it's not for current logged in user – ArVan Jan 14 '13 at 15:24
The question was about getting the profile picture using the user_id. Not with the *me* – makki Sep 20 '19 at 13:46

score 4 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 26 '20 at 06:12

4

2020 Solution Please comment if no longer available.

In order to get profile URL from authenticated user.

GET https://people.googleapis.com/v1/people/[THE_USER_ID_OF_THE_AUTHENTICATED_USER]?personFields=photos&key=[YOUR_API_KEY] HTTP/1.1

Authorization: Bearer [YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN]
Accept: application/json

Response:

{
  "resourceName": "people/[THE_USER_ID_OF_THE_AUTHENTICATED_USER]",
  "etag": "12345",
  "photos": [
    {
      "metadata": {
        "primary": true,
        "source": {
          "type": "PROFILE",
          "id": "[THE_USER_ID_OF_THE_AUTHENTICATED_USER]"
        }
      },
      "url": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a-/blablabla=s100"
    }
  ]
}

and the link can be used as:

<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a-/blablabla=s100">

answered Sep 26 '20 at 06:12

Leandro Bardelli

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it's not as straight forward as the way facebook lets to use tho – Pooya Estakhri Oct 01 '20 at 20:56
Well, it's right, but take consideration for Facebook API GRAPH 8.0 are several issues, you can't reference the image, only download it as force or broken image. I had a question about it without response yet :( – Leandro Bardelli Oct 01 '20 at 21:42
@PooyaEstakhri not this case in this answer but if you are working with ASP.NET Core 3.1 you can get the image from the picture claim, is what I finally did. – Leandro Bardelli Oct 01 '20 at 21:44
in case of facebook you can use tag, no need to download it. unfortunately i'm not familiar with asp.net programming – Pooya Estakhri Oct 01 '20 at 21:53
@PooyaEstakhri that's exactly doesn't work with 8.0, img don't show the picture. – Leandro Bardelli Oct 01 '20 at 23:40
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i tested now with app scope uid of an app with v8, it works `https://graph.facebook.com/1661794173890082/picture?width=200&height=200` – Pooya Estakhri Oct 02 '20 at 06:35
@PooyaEstakhri if you want we can discuss it in my question (has no answers yet) https://jsfiddle.net/t10a7vox/ – Leandro Bardelli Oct 02 '20 at 16:44
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posted my answer there. – Pooya Estakhri Oct 02 '20 at 18:54
What if user changes the profile picture ? the url would show old picture, new one or nothing ? – Pooya Estakhri Jun 22 '21 at 10:32
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@PooyaEstakhri it changes. For any case I use a code myself to save the image in my server and update the picture if it changes. – Leandro Bardelli Jun 23 '21 at 12:56

score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Feb 15 '12 at 16:29

You can get the URL for the profile image using the people.get method of the Google+ API. That does require an extra round trip, but is the most reliable way to get the image.

You technically can also use the URL https://s2.googleusercontent.com/s2/photos/profile/{id}?sz={size} which will then redirect to the final URL. {id} is the Google user ID or one of the old Google Profiles usernames (they still exist for users who had them, but I don't think you can create new ones anymore). {size} is the desired size of the photo in pixels. I'm almost certain this is not a documented, supported feature, so I wouldn't rely on it for anything important as it may go away at anytime without notice. But for quick prototypes or small one-off applications, it may be sufficient.

Is this documented anywhere? – Jonas Alves Jan 10 '13 at 21:29 — Jonas Alves, Jan 10 '13 at 21:29
yep, Justin seems to be right... this no longer works. – Will Norris Mar 14 '14 at 20:10 — Will Norris, Mar 14 '14 at 20:10

Erwan · Answer 9 · 2014-03-18T03:25:43.437

trying to access the /s2/profile/photo url works for most users but not all.

The only full proof method is to use the Google+ API. You don't need user authentication to request public profile data so it's a rather simple method:

Get a Google+ API key on https://cloud.google.com/console
Make a simple GET request to: https://www.googleapis.com/plus/v1/people/+< username >?key=

Note the + before the username. If you use user ids instead (the long string of digits), you don't need the +

you will get a very comprehensive JSON representation of the profile data which includes: "image":{"url": "https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/..... the rest of the picture url...."}

score 2 · Answer 10 · answered Mar 12 '19 at 14:29

If you use Flutter, then you can access it via people.googleapis.com endpoint, code uses google_sign_in library

import 'package:google_sign_in/google_sign_in.dart';

Future<String> getPhotoUrl(GoogleSignInAccount account, String userId) async {
  // final authentication = await account.authentication;
  final url = 'https://people.googleapis.com/v1/people/${userId}?personFields=photos';
  final response = await http.get(
    url,
    headers: await account.authHeaders
  );

  final data = json.decode(response.body);
  return data['photos'].first['url'];
}

You will get something like

{
  resourceName: people/998812322529259873423, 
  etag: %EgQBAzcabcQBAgUH, 
  photos: [{metadata: {primary: true, source: {type: PROFILE, id: 107721622529987673423}}, 
  url: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a-/abcdefmB2p1VWxLsNT9WSV0yqwuwo6o2Ba21sh_ra7CnrZ=s100}]
}

where url is an accessible image url.

score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Jun 15 '15 at 11:18

Tried everything possible.. here is final piece of working code. Hope it helps someone who is looking for it.

    <?
$url='https://www.googleapis.com/plus/v1/people/116599978027440206136?fields=image%2Furl&key=MY_API_KEY&fields=image';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXYPORT, 3128);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$d = json_decode($response);
$avatar_url = $d->{'image'}->{'url'};
echo $avatar_url;
?>

score -4 · Answer 12 · answered Feb 03 '12 at 12:36

-4

Simple answer: No

You will have to query the person API and the take the profile image.url data to get the photo. AFAIK there is no default format for that url that contains the userID.

answered Feb 03 '12 at 12:36

Kolja

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You're sure? I wonder if they have any plans to make such thing? Thanks anyway. – ArVan Feb 03 '12 at 12:39
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If you look at different profiles and look at the html output e.g. with "inspect element" in chrome you will see that they are all different and don't contain the userID. Also there is nothing on the official docs. – Kolja Feb 03 '12 at 12:44
2

It IS possible, both to get the image, and set a specific size to look for. See my answer below. – Emil Stenström Jun 27 '12 at 16:13
It was not possible when the question and this answer where posted :) – ArVan Mar 24 '14 at 12:28

Getting Google+ profile picture url with user_id

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