Laravel 12 — Display Image from Storage Folder

A simple guide and example for uploading and displaying images stored in Laravel’s storage folder.
This repo contains code snippets and examples from the Itstuffsolutions article: “Laravel 12 Display Image From Storage Folder”.

📄 View the blog article

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🧩 Table of Contents

• Overview
• Features
• Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation
  • Setup & Usage
• Methods Explained
  • Public Access via Symbolic Link
  • Secure Streaming via Controller
• Common Problems & Tips
• License

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🌟 Overview

Laravel, by default, does not expose files stored in storage/app to the web.
This example demonstrates two primary ways to serve images stored in Laravel’s storage:

1. Public symbolic link approach — easiest for public images
2. Controller-based streaming — best for restricting access or controlling headers

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✅ Features / What You’ll Learn

• How to store uploaded files to the public disk
• How to create the storage:link for public access
• Using Storage::url() to generate URLs
• Displaying images in Blade views
• Building a secure controller method to stream images
• Setting MIME types and handling “not found” cases
• Tips for permissions and path issues

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🛠 Getting Started

Prerequisites

You’ll need:

• PHP (compatible version with Laravel 12)
• Composer
• A Laravel 12 project
• Web server (Apache, Nginx, etc.)
• (Optional) local environment: Laravel Sail, Valet, or Homestead