If you encounter this error message “Sorry, this image is broken, please pick another image.” while trying to save an image from a website or site into your Pinterest board, you would need to contact Pinterest support team if the url happened to be your site.
I’ve published a video on this because I encountered few times since the past 3 months. The first time, I have tried to Google but unable to find answers- whatever that was suggested in the forums I have tried but nothing worked. It was when I made the video. I’ve since encountered the same issue again twice.
Note: Pinterest to me is an excellent image organizing platform. This article would be useful for the creator/website. However if you are a pinner encountering this issue, do know that it is not an issue with your app or phone especially if you have no problem pinning images from other sites.
Issue:
You go to your verified site (or its subdomains) like you always do. Then you pick on a vertical image and then either click on Share or a Pinterest plugin to try to save the image to a board in your Pinterest account. After selecting the board, at first it seemed to be saving.
Then you would see like a red line appearing (you can see that about 30 second into the video below where I share the screen recording), which followed immediately with the error message:
“Sorry, this image is broken, please pick another image”
Even when you pick other images – so long as the image is from the same domain or its subdomains, the same message would occurr.
However, if you were to go into Pinterest to manually create a pin by uploading an image and then pointing the pin to your url, the pin can be published. And people can also repin the existing pins from your Pinterest account. It is just that if a person arrived at your website and wish to save an image from your site into their Pinterest account, they would encounter the same message.
Impact:
It would disable other people from pinning anything from your site into their Pinterest account. And most creators actually get the majority of their impressions from others pinners who pinned images from their site.
Below is a video I have published on this topic:
Until I contacted Pinterest support at https://help.pinterest.com/en
Do note that you need to scroll down the page till you reach the part “Still need help? Contact Us”. Click on Contact Us and it will open up to a new form which you need to fill up.
What you need to prepare:
You need to capture a screen recording of you encountering that issue right up to the error mesage apearing. You also need to provide the domain or website url where that issue is encountered. Of course you also need to provide your email address (preferably linked to your Pinterest account) because the customer support will reply to you via email (sometimes their email may go into Updates, Promotions or Spam folder instead of your Inbox).
The first time, I just give an image (screenshot) when filling up their online form but they replied via email to request for a screen recording of the error. So do get the recording prepared first before contacting their support.
Note: The video cannot exceed 40MB in size – because their system would not allow you to upload the video if the exceed. Try to keep it as short as possible like below 20s and it should not exceed 40MB. If the video you have taken exceeds the size, try to trim off the non useful parts. The main thing is the video needs to show the image you are at and your action in attempting to save the pin till then error message occur.
At first, they provided some standard technical troubleshooting such as:
- Reboot your device
- Uninstall and reinstall the app
- Update to the latest Android OS software
- Make some extra space (Pinterest works best with at least 20 MB of extra space)
- Clear cache (open your Android settings, find Apps, then Pinterest)
- Clear data from your Pinterest app (this doesn’t affect your Pinterest content)
I have done the above and still is unable to save the images. Also, even if I login to save the pin from a desktop, it is still the same issue.
Why I was quite certain it is not due to technical issue from my side:
Simple, because when I go to any random website, I have no problem pinning their images to my Pinterest account. I also have no problem when I wanted to pin a video that is published in YouTube.
I encounter the same issue when I login as a DIFFERENT Pinterest user, go to my website and tried to save any images to that Pinterest account.
What I suspected could be the root cause:
My site domain may have entered into Pinterest’s spam filter. This can be due to other people saving certain articles or images from my sites that somehow contain words or phrases that may trigger the automatic spam filtering. I have written thousands of articles over the years so it would not be possible to identify which articles.
I did highlight my concern to the customer service officer that it seemed it is only my domain that got blocked as I have no issue saving images from any other site that is not my own.
The next day my issue was rectified. Even though they did not specify what the cause was, I was happy I was able to save images again.
Note: The rectification is not immediate. It seemed to require a batch maintenance hence give it about a day before you try again. And you may want to delete the cache on your PC or phone. If you are using the phone, reboot the device and logout, then login again. If your app requires an update, then update it via Playstore or App store.
I believe many others may also encounter the same issue hence I decided to do a video. I write the article since this issue had occurred again after the video was published. But each time when I contact Pinterest support, they were able to assist.
