Meow Lightbox opens your photos full screen, fast and beautifully, with the details photographers care about: camera, lens, settings, even where the photo was taken. It works with WordPress galleries and image blocks, Meow Gallery and WooCommerce, the moment you activate it. Click any photo below to try it.

1. It works right away

There is nothing to set up. Once the plugin is active, the photos in your content open in the lightbox: WordPress galleries, image blocks, Meow Gallery and the images inside your posts. Visitors can zoom, swipe on mobile, use the keyboard, and see the photo’s information at the bottom.

2. Choose the look

1. Open Meow Apps → Lightbox, in the Basics tab.
2. Pick a theme: Dark Glass (the default), Light Glass, Plain Dark, Flat Dark or Flat Light. The Preview next to it shows the result as you go.
3. In Metadata, choose what appears under the photo: the title, the caption, the camera info (camera, lens, shutter, aperture, focal length, ISO), the credits, the date and keywords.

Meow Lightbox runs on PhotoSwipe by default, fast and smooth on every device. A second engine, built by us for photographers, is one click away in the Default Engine setting.

3. Choose which images open

Two settings in Advanced → Image Handling decide where the lightbox works. The Selector lists the areas of your pages it covers (by default your content, WordPress galleries, image blocks and Meow Gallery). The Anti Selector lists the areas it ignores, like blog listings, archives and emojis.

The simplest way to keep a single image or gallery out of the lightbox is to give it the no-lightbox class (Block settings → Advanced → Additional CSS class). The gallery below has it, so its photos don’t open:

More in the docs: selectors ↗.

4. Go further (Pro)

• Deep LinkingEach photo gets its own link, so a shared URL opens straight on that image.
• SlideshowPlay through a gallery, with your own timing and autoplay.
• Location MapShow where the photo was taken, from its GPS data, on OpenStreetMap (no key needed, fine for light traffic), Google Maps, MapBox or MapTiler.
• Sharing and DownloadLet visitors share a photo on Facebook, X or Pinterest, or download it.

5. If an image doesn’t open

1. Open the Diagnostics tab and run it: it checks your setup and tells you what’s in the way.
2. Check that the image sits inside one of your Selector areas and isn’t excluded by the Anti Selector.
3. For images added by a page builder or loaded later by JavaScript, look at Advanced → Performance: Output Buffering (with its Parsing Engine) and Dynamic Fetch handle those cases.

More in the docs: dynamic media loading and Diagnostics ↗.

For developers

Every piece of information shown in the lightbox goes through a filter, so you can change it: mwl_img_title, mwl_img_caption, mwl_img_description, mwl_img_alt_text, mwl_img_camera, mwl_img_aperture, mwl_img_focal_length, mwl_img_date, mwl_img_gps, mwl_img_author, mwl_img_copyright and more. They all receive the value, the attachment ID and its metadata. For example, to show the attachment ID as the title:

add_filter( 'mwl_img_title', function ( $title, $id, $meta ) {
  return $id;
}, 10, 3 );

To offer the download link only to logged-in visitors:

add_filter( 'mwl_download_link', function ( $download_link, $attachment_id, $meta ) {
  return is_user_logged_in() ? $download_link : null;
}, 10, 3 );

The results are cached: after adding a filter, reset the cache in Advanced → Performance. Who can change the settings is controlled by mwl_allow_setup (administrators by default).

Stuck somewhere? The docs ↗ go deeper, and our support is here for the rest.