# SSO & external avatars

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/sso-external-avatars/192392>\
**Category:** Feature\
**Created:** [June 2, 2021, 11:44am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/sso-external-avatars/192392 "2021-06-02T11:44:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

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**Author:** ![mentalstring](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mentalstring/32/168934_2.png) [@mentalstring](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mentalstring)\
**Post date:** [June 2, 2021, 11:44am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/sso-external-avatars/192392/1 "2021-06-02T11:44:45Z")

</div>

When using SSO with `sso overrides avatar: true`, Discourse seems to download the avatar and always serve it locally instead of linking directly to the URL provided.

Would it make more sense to allow avatars to serve directly from the `avatar_url` provided? As is, for each avatar shown it hits Discourse backend somewhat needlessly. Perhaps this could be a SSO option?

If the concern is that avatars may go missing, that could be handled with the image `onerror` event that fallback’s `src` to the locally downloaded copy (or show a default one). What I don’t know is if too large avatars images can be constrained with CSS alone.

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/sso-external-avatars/192392)._