Adding content to your courses is as easy as 1,2,3 using Moodle’s file picker

March 2, 2018

It’s now easier than ever to upload files into your Moodle courses using our file picker feature!

As the name suggests, the file picker lets users select and display files to be included in their Moodle site. For example, when an editing teacher clicks Add an activity or resource > File, or when a forum participant adds an attachment to a post.

So how does it work?

1) To get started you first have to find the file picker in one of two places. You can find the file picker when you upload a file using the activity chooser.

Moodle

Or you can also find the file picker if you’re using the text editor and want to add a media or an image file, using the relevant icons.

Text editor

2) Once you have clicked to add a file, you will be taken to a new screen. Scroll down to content and access the file picker clicking the add button.
On the left you will see links known as ‘repositories’. Each repository is a place where you can retrieve files to display on your course.
Which repositories are included depends on which ones have been enabled by the administrator and also the context in which you access the file picker. We will explore what these repositories mean later in the post.
moodle's file picker
3) Select what file you would like to be added into your Moodle course.
Now that you understand the basic of the file picker let’s explore repositories.
As mentioned, which repositories are included is decided by a Moodle administrator.
Here are four popular ones which we think you may benefit from:

  • Upload a file allows you to access your documents from your computer or USB drive. You will most likely use this option the most.
  • Server files are the other files in other courses that teachers have access to.
  • Recent files show you the last few files that you’ve uploaded. This repository is also content sensitive, for example, if you want to upload an image from the image icon it will only show you images.
  • Private files allow you upload a file from your private file space.
  • URL downloader lets you add a webpage and will download images from that web page.

When you are searching through the repositories you may notice that the files can be displayed in 3 separate ways:

  • Icons, which show the files as easily identifiable thumbnails.
  • Table, which shows the files with details such as licence, date uploaded, size etc.
  • List, which shows the files in a hierarchical list.

To learn more, watch the YouTube video below or check out the documentation on Moodle.org.