Skip to content

How to Remove Empty Image Placeholders from Quarto Listings

Using image-placeholder: "" and fields configuration in _quarto.yml

The Problem

By default, Quarto’s listing pages show thumbnails for each post. Even if you don’t have images, it still reserves space for them, creating unnecessary whitespace.

The Solution

In your listing page (e.g., index.qmd), configure the listing like this:

listing:
  type: default
  fields: [date, title, author, description]
  image-placeholder: ""

This:

  • Uses default layout instead of table/grid
  • Only shows the fields you want
  • Sets empty image placeholder to remove the space

Why It Works

The key is image-placeholder: "". Without this, Quarto reserves space for thumbnails even when posts don’t have images. Setting it to an empty string removes this space entirely.

The fields list explicitly states what you want to show, giving you clean, text-only listings.