Image/video Resizing in WYSIWYG Editor - Looking for User-Friendly Solution

Hi Directus Community! :waving_hand:

I’m looking for a solution to enable intuitive image resizing within the WYSIWYG editor for content publishers.

The Problem: Currently, when images are inserted into a wysiwy field, there’s no visual way to resize them, only the ability to set the width and height independently. The standard TinyMCE drag-to-resize handles don’t appear.

What I’ve Tried:

  • Added object_resizing and resize_img_proportional to Options Override.

  • Configured various TinyMCE plugins and settings

  • The resize handles simply don’t appear.

What I Need: A user-friendly way for non-technical publishers to resize images while maintaining aspect ratios. Editing source code and manually calculating dimensions isn’t realistic for my content team.

Possible Solutions I’m Exploring:

  1. TinyMCE Media Optimizer - Has anyone successfully integrated TinyMCE’s Media Optimizer with Directus? This would be ideal.

  2. Custom Extension - Perhaps a Directus extension that adds a custom image dialog with visual resize controls?

Has anyone solved this or found a workaround that doesn’t require manual dimension editing? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

I ended up solving this by creating a custom Directus interface extension that implements TinyMCE with its native behavior, which restores the drag-to-resize handles that were missing in the default Directus WYSIWYG interface.

What I Built: A custom interface called “WYSIWYG (Enhanced)” that provides:

  • Native TinyMCE image and video resize handles (drag-to-resize functionality)

  • Aspect ratio maintenance while resizing

    • This also still uses the directus URL transformation params for optimizations like width, height, and quality
  • All standard WYSIWYG features preserved

  • Same configuration options as the default interface

Why This Works: Directus’s default wysiwyg strips inline width and height attributes from <img> tags, converting them to URL transformation parameters. This prevents TinyMCE’s native resize handles from functioning. By implementing TinyMCE directly with its native handlers, the resize functionality works as expected.

Result: Publishers can now intuitively resize images and videos directly in the editor by dragging the corner handles - no manual dimension calculations or source code editing required. This provides the user-friendly experience I was looking for.

Demo if it in action:


Screenshot of interface tab: