Facebook and Instagram convert your photo to ASCII

Did you know that Facebook and they have a "secret" that converts your photos to ASCII? By making a small change to your photo URLs, you can view them in color or black and white ASCII characters

ascii photos

The information came online from developer Mathias Bynens at and has piqued the interest of users.

mathias

As he says, the trick is extremely simple and applies to both sites. Just add the .txt or .html photo to the end of the photo url to see it in ASCII form. With txt it will be black and white and the html color.

For example, if this is your usual URL from Facebook or Instagram ...

https://scontent-ams3-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/11906246_1700002456899911_1391970345_n.jpg

…. then just add the .txt at the end to see it in black and white ASCII:
https://scontent-ams3-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/11906246_1700002456899911_1391970345_n.jpg.txt

… Or add .html to see in ASCII colored:
https://scontent-ams3-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/11906246_1700002456899911_1391970345_n.jpg.html

The process is the same for Facebook photos, although in our tests we found it difficult to find a photo that its url address does not end in? Oh = something. In these url tricks do not work.

Of course on both sites although the conversion is a simple process, discovering its original URL s is quite painful. For Instagram, you can view the source code in your browser and search for it there. And on Facebook, turning right images unfortunately you will not get the correct format of the URLs.

But if you are able to find the right way to give the actual URL, then you can play with this fun feature.

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Written by Dimitris

Dimitris hates on Mondays .....

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