Random Image Block for Block Editor

Description

Random Image Block for Block Editor is a lightweight, high-performance Gutenberg block that lets you effortlessly display random images from your WordPress media library. Perfect for hero banners, rotating header backgrounds, dynamic portfolio showcases, sponsor logos, daily featured photos, and interactive image galleries.

Keep your website fresh and engaging on every page load or automatically rotate images at custom time intervals with smooth shuffle animations, interactive hover effects, advanced lightbox modals, and responsive layout controls.

Live Demo & Documentation | Upgrade to Pro | Support & Contact

🌟 Why Choose Random Image Block?

  • Boost Visitor Engagement: Dynamic content keeps your landing pages, blog posts, and sidebar widgets feeling lively and modern.
  • SEO & Performance Optimized: Built with lightweight Vanilla JavaScript and optimized CSS. Supports native and progressive lazy loading for fast Core Web Vitals.
  • No Coding Required: Intuitive Gutenberg sidebar controls allow you to configure layouts, filters, animations, and conditions in seconds.
  • Responsive by Default: Granular controls for Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile devices ensure pixel-perfect presentation on every screen size.

πŸ†“ Free Version Features

  • Media Library Integration: Pick any collection of images directly from your WordPress media library.
  • Responsive Image Alignment: Align images to the left, center, right, or full width.
  • Custom Link Options: Link images to their WordPress attachment page, a custom URL, or open in a new tab.
  • Live Sidebar Previews: Preview and manage your selected gallery images directly inside the block inspector.
  • Clean & Semantic Markup: Output clean HTML with standard WordPress block styling and accessibility attributes.

πŸš€ Pro Version Features & Highlights

Upgrade to Random Image Block Pro to unlock powerful display modes, animations, and enterprise-grade personalization tools:

1. πŸ” Advanced Lightbox Modal

  • Full-Featured Popup: Open images in a distraction-free, responsive lightbox overlay.
  • Zoom & Fullscreen: Built-in 2x zoom toggle and native browser fullscreen mode.
  • Captions & Navigation: Display image captions with next/previous navigation and keyboard arrow/Escape support.

2. πŸ–ΌοΈ Image Background Mode

  • Section & Hero Backgrounds: Transform any random image into a full-width background container.
  • Color Overlay & Opacity: Customize overlay colors and alpha transparency for optimal text readability.
  • Parallax Depth Effect: Optional smooth parallax scrolling background for modern hero banners.

3. πŸ”„ Shuffle Animations & Auto-Refresh

  • Seamless Transitions: Choose from smooth Fade, Slide, or Zoom shuffle transitions.
  • Custom Transition Duration: Fine-tune animation speed from 100ms to 2000ms.
  • Auto-Rotate Timer: Automatically cycle through random images every X seconds without requiring a page reload.

4. 🎯 Smart Conditional Display

  • User Role Targeting: Display specific images exclusively to logged-in users, logged-out guests, or specific WordPress roles (e.g. Administrator, Editor, Subscriber).
  • Time-Based Scheduling: Show different images during day, evening, or custom operating hours (e.g. 09:00 to 18:00).
  • Seasonal Personalization: Automatically switch image pools for Spring, Summer, Autumn, or Winter.
  • Date Range Campaigns: Set start and expiration dates for limited-time promotions, holiday campaigns, or flash sales.

5. βš–οΈ Weighted Random & Exclusion Controls

  • Priority Probability (Weighting): Assign custom weights to individual images so key products or banners appear more frequently.
  • Image Exclusion: Temporarily hide or exclude specific images from the random pool without deleting them.

6. ✨ Interactive Image Hover Effects

  • Engaging Micro-Animations: Choose from Zoom In, Zoom Out, Pan, Rotate, Grayscale-to-Color Reveal, and Opacity change on mouse hover.
  • Hardware-Accelerated CSS: Ultra-smooth 60fps performance without sluggish JavaScript recalculations.

7. 🎨 Live CSS Image Filters

  • Real-Time Styling: Apply Grayscale, Blur, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, and Hue-Rotate directly from the block editor.
  • One-Click Reset: Easily reset individual filters to default values.

8. πŸ“ Advanced Caption Styling & Positioning

  • Overlay or Below: Place captions underneath the image or overlay them directly on top with custom X/Y focal point coordinates.
  • Hover-Only Captions: Reveal captions smoothly when users hover over the image.
  • Typography & Styling: Control caption background color, opacity, text color, font size, border radius, and responsive padding.

9. πŸ“ Device-Specific Sizing & Shapes

  • Responsive Width & Height: Set separate width, height, and unit metrics (px, %, vh, rem) for Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile.
  • Object-Fit Control: Choose between cover, contain, fill, or scale-down to prevent image stretching.
  • Rounded Corners & Circle Shape: Customize border radius per corner or create 100% circular profile avatars and badges.

10. ⚑ Smart Caching & Sticky Mode

  • Sticky Mode (Session Persistence): Maintain the same randomly selected image for a user across multiple page visits using local storage.
  • Mobile bfcache Compatibility: Ensures reliable image randomization on mobile browsers and Back/Forward cache restores.
  • Lazy Loading: Progressive image loading with smooth fade-in to boost Google PageSpeed and Core Web Vitals scores.

πŸ’‘ Common Use Cases

  • E-Commerce & WooCommerce: Display random promotional banners, seasonal sale graphics, or daily featured products.
  • Portfolios & Photography: Show rotating artwork, photography highlights, or design client showcases.
  • Testimonials & Quotes: Pair inspirational quotes with alternating author headshots or background graphics.
  • Sponsors & Partner Logos: Rotate verified sponsor logos and partner badges fairly on every visit.
  • Blogging & Editorial: Keep header hero images fresh and varied for returning readers.

🀝 Join Our Community

Blocks

This plugin provides 1 block.

  • Random Image Block Display random images from a gallery.

Installation

  1. Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Plugins > Add New.
  3. Search for Random Image Block.
  4. Click Install Now and then Activate.
  5. Open any page or post in the Block Editor (Gutenberg) and click the + icon to insert the Random Image Block.
  6. Select multiple images from your Media Library and customize your settings in the sidebar panel.

FAQ

Does Random Image Block work with any WordPress theme?

Yes! Random Image Block is built following official WordPress block API standards and works seamlessly with Classic, Block-based (FSE), and Hybrid themes.

Can I link each random image to a different URL?

Yes. You can link images to their WordPress attachment page, a single custom URL, or enable the interactive Lightbox modal.

How does Auto-Refresh work?

When auto-refresh is enabled, the block automatically switches images at your chosen interval (in seconds) using smooth fade, slide, or zoom animations without reloading the page.

Does it affect website performance or Core Web Vitals?

No. The plugin uses lightweight vanilla JavaScript with no heavy external dependencies (like jQuery). It also includes built-in Lazy Loading for fast page load times.

Can I control how often certain images appear?

Yes! In the Pro version, you can assign custom probability weights to each image so your most important banners or products appear more frequently.

Reviews

26. November 2024 2 replies
Never could get it to work. Dashboard menu only had options forContactReviewUp Grade to Pro No option to setup or make a random image shortcode. I uninstalled it.
1. November 2023 14 replies
Orignal review before big update (3*): I tried a whole day to let ChatGPT or other AI's write a plugin like this and they all failed. I'm so happy I found this plugin! Great work. But, in its current state, it's quite limited. You don't see the selected images in the sidebar, you can't resize the image, it doesn't make the images responsive… The basic options are there but I'd love to see more options to tweak it to my liking. — Review of v1.0.1 (4*): Ok, we are getting there. A bit more options. Sadly, this plugin went for a PRO version for various options. I totally understand people needing to make money and keeping the company afloat. I'm quite thankful that there is a "life time" option for the license. πŸ™‚ While you would have the impression that this plugin isn't responsive in the free version since you can't edit the mobile and tablet views in the free version, my testing tells otherwise. Maybe that can be communicated better to the user. I highly dislike how the plugin puts their options and upsell underneath the "settings". I'd love it having it's own menu-item. Since it's better to explain to clients to say: "WordPress options go here and plugin options go here". A big thumbs up from me as a polyglot to make this plugin translate-able. A lot of devs forget about this but not here πŸ™‚ (PS, the upgrade message in the block editor from index.js is forgotten to be tagged as translate-able) The devs are setting steps in the right direction and this plugin has a lot of promise. At it's current state it is still a bit rough around the edges and limited but I'm convinced that with more development this plugin can be something quite unique and amazing.
8. September 2023 1 reply
This is the only random image block I could find and it works. it's easy to use simply by selecting images in the image manager. Thanks!
26. August 2023 2 replies
Simple and sweet. Random Image Block functions precisely as it's designed.
Read all 4 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Random Image Block for Block Editor” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“Random Image Block for Block Editor” has been translated into 1 locale. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Random Image Block for Block Editor” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

1.2.0 – 08 Oct 2026

  • Added: Full-featured Lightbox Modal with Zoom, Fullscreen, Caption, and Keyboard navigation.
  • Added: Image Background Mode with overlay color, opacity, and parallax effects.
  • Added: Image Hover Effects (Zoom, Pan, Rotate, Grayscale-to-color, Opacity).
  • Added: Image Border Radius and circular shape option.
  • Added: Lazy Loading support with smooth fade-in transitions.
  • Added: Weighted Random selection and per-image exclusion controls.
  • Added: Advanced Caption Styling (background color & opacity, typography, responsive padding, border radius).
  • Added: Conditional Display options (User role, time of day, season, and date range).
  • Update: Updated Freemius SDK to the latest version.

1.1.1 – 06 Oct 2026

  • Fixed: Editor inspector controls layout overflow and panel clipping.
  • Fixed: Mobile browser caching and back-forward cache (bfcache) image randomization on reload.
  • Improved: Responsive width and height input controls in the block sidebar.

1.1.0 – 14 Feb 2026

  • Added: Image Shuffle Animations (Fade, Slide, Zoom).
  • Added: Auto-refresh Interval functionality.
  • Added: Sticky Mode (Random Seed persistence via local storage).
  • Added: Image Filters (Grayscale, Blur, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Hue Rotate).
  • Added: Link Options (Attachment page, Custom URL).

1.0.5 – 18 Jan 2025

  • Updated: Freemius SDK
  • Updated: Deprecated Gutenberg Controls.
  • New: Link Settings.

1.0.4 – 18 Jan 2025

  • Updated: Freemius SDK
  • Added: Translation Support

1.0.3 – 22 Nov 2023

  • Added: Caption Over Image (Pro Version)
  • Added: Some Core Controls

1.0.2 – 06 Nov 2023

  • Some Fixes
  • Added Menu Page
  • Code Optimized

1.0.1 – 29 Oct 2023

  • Added Block Controls
  • Added Pro Version

1.0.0 – 6 June 2023

  • Initial Release