How to compress images in monday.com without downloading them

Compressing images in monday.com without downloading them is possible with the File Compress app by ColumnMate. The app runs as a monday.com automation: it reads each image from a Files column, compresses it on a server using the sharp image pipeline, and uploads the smaller file back to the same board. Your browser only sends a request — the image bytes never land on your machine.

Why download-and-reupload is the wrong workflow

The manual way to shrink a monday.com image is to download it, open it in Photoshop, Preview, Squoosh, or TinyPNG, export a smaller copy, delete the original from the board, and upload the new one. That is five steps per file, it breaks the link between the file and its item history, and it does not scale past a handful of images.

Running compression as an automation keeps the file attached to its item, preserves who uploaded it and when, and needs no manual step once it is set up.

Is compressing on the board actually safe?

Yes. File Compress requests two permissions during install: boards:read to see the file and boards:write to upload the compressed version. It never stores your images. Files are downloaded to memory on AWS Lambda, compressed, written back, and discarded. See the privacy policy for the full data flow.

Step by step: set up image compression on a board

1. An account admin installs File Compress from the monday.com marketplace. This is a one-time action.
2. Open the board that holds your images and go to the automation center.
3. Add a Compress Images recipe from File Compress.
4. Pick a trigger — when a file column changes to compress on every upload, or when a button is clicked to compress an item on demand.
5. Set the source column (where the images are) and the target column (where the compressed version goes).
6. Pick a compression level: low, medium, or high.
7. Turn it on. When the trigger fires, the compressed image appears on the board within seconds.

Choosing a compression level

Level	JPEG quality	What it is for	Typical saving on a photo
Low	85	Hero images, product photography, anything a client will scrutinize	20–35%
Medium	70	The default. Board attachments, proofs, internal references	40–65%
High	50	Thumbnails, archive copies, storage cleanup. Also caps dimensions at 4000px	60–80%

PNG files use zlib compression levels instead of a quality number, WebP and AVIF use their own quality scales, and animated GIFs keep every frame. If File Compress cannot make a file smaller — say, an already-optimized JPEG — it skips the file instead of writing a larger one.

Which format compresses best?

JPEG and WebP give the biggest, most predictable savings on photographs. PNG is lossless by design, so a photo saved as PNG will always be larger than the same photo as JPEG — the MDN guide to image file types explains why. If you control the export, save photos as JPEG or WebP before they reach the board; screenshots and flat graphics can stay PNG.

Compressing images that are already on the board

An automation only acts on new triggers, so it will not touch images uploaded before you turned it on. To clear that backlog, add a recipe on a status or button trigger, then select your existing items and use monday.com's batch actions to change the status column to the trigger value for all of them at once — monday.com runs the automation once per item. Remove the temporary recipe afterward if you do not want it permanently.

The short version

Install File Compress once, add a Compress Images recipe in the board's automation center, and set a trigger, source and target columns, and a level. The image is compressed on the server and written back to the board. Nothing is downloaded, nothing is stored, and the file stays attached to its item. See the setup guide for the full walkthrough or pricing for plan limits.