# Retrieve avatar automatically from Google/Facebook/X
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/retrieve-avatar-automatically-from-google-facebook-x/11879
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** pr-welcome
**Created:** [January 10, 2014, 8:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/retrieve-avatar-automatically-from-google-facebook-x/11879 "2014-01-10T20:39:19Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@peter\_imai](https://meta.discourse.org/u/peter_imai)
#### Post date: [January 10, 2014, 8:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/retrieve-avatar-automatically-from-google-facebook-x/11879/1 "2014-01-10T20:39:19Z")
Definitely a somewhat frivolous question:
I just signed up with my google ID, but was given this geometric pattern as an avatar instead of my normal profile pic associated with my google account. Any reason for this or plan to change this?
Very excited for Discourse!
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [January 10, 2014, 8:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/retrieve-avatar-automatically-from-google-facebook-x/11879/2 "2014-01-10T20:51:07Z")
We don’t have plans to automatically retrieve avatars from Twitter, Facebook, G+ etc at this time.
What we do offer is standard Gravatar (email) avatar support as well as custom local avatars.
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### Author:  [@peter\_imai](https://meta.discourse.org/u/peter_imai)
#### Post date: [January 10, 2014, 10:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/retrieve-avatar-automatically-from-google-facebook-x/11879/3 "2014-01-10T22:57:56Z")
ok thanks @codinghorror
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [January 10, 2014, 11:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/retrieve-avatar-automatically-from-google-facebook-x/11879/4 "2014-01-10T23:17:23Z")
However, if someone wants to submit that as a community contributed PR that would be great!
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### Author:  [@Greg\_Swallow](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Greg_Swallow)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2014, 7:17am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/retrieve-avatar-automatically-from-google-facebook-x/11879/5 "2014-05-31T07:17:52Z")
If a discourse user authenticates with Facebook, does their Facebook user ID get saved in the database?
If so, their profile picture can be found at this URL:
```
http://graph.facebook.com/USERID/picture?type=small
```
eg - [http://graph.facebook.com/zuck/picture?type=small](http://graph.facebook.com/zuck/picture?type=small)
edit - or actually, to make it square & 50x50
[http://graph.facebook.com/zuck/picture?type=square](http://graph.facebook.com/zuck/picture?type=square)
(You are supposed to be able to add &height=45&width=45 but it seems that the smallest it will resize to is 48 pixels)
More info here - [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/v2.0/user/picture](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/v2.0/user/picture)
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### Author:  [@TheLoneCuber](https://meta.discourse.org/u/TheLoneCuber)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2014, 1:42am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/retrieve-avatar-automatically-from-google-facebook-x/11879/6 "2014-10-28T01:42:23Z")
Come on someone [with the skills to do it]… PR Social Avatars **please**. I’m surprised they’re not a part of Discourse: the friction-free social logins seem such a contradiction given that users then have to manually upload a profile picture, even though they have one set for the social login they’ve just used. It’s such a confusing prospect for Joe and Jane Public who are not forum frequenters.
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### Author:  [@riking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/riking)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2014, 1:53am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/retrieve-avatar-automatically-from-google-facebook-x/11879/7 "2014-10-28T01:53:59Z")
Tips for the implementers:
1. Add more options to the avatar changing modal dialog (titled “Change your avatar”)
2. Pull the ‘Associated accounts’ records (example is on the admin user page, these should be visible to the user somewhere)
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### Author:  [@ChrisBeach](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ChrisBeach)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2016, 11:10am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/retrieve-avatar-automatically-from-google-facebook-x/11879/8 "2016-05-17T11:10:50Z")
+1 for automatically pulling avatars from Facebook / Google / Twitter.
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### Author:  [@chapoi](https://meta.discourse.org/u/chapoi)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2025, 11:09am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/retrieve-avatar-automatically-from-google-facebook-x/11879/9 "2025-12-04T11:09:21Z")