Bug: Image attributes don't propogate to posts, pages, products, etc

[maltfield]

This ticket is a bug report to track the effort to fix the WP bug where updating image attributes in the Media Library saves changes, but it does not actually update the image on posts, pages, and (woocommerce) products where the image was used.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Write a post
2. Create a gallery
3. Upload a random picture
4. Set caption to "test"
5. Publish Post
6. Go to Media -> Select the picture from before
7. Set caption to "changed" and save
8. Go back to post
9. Check the image
10. Image caption still shows "test" -> Should be "changed"

So if I ever update the media library with proper captions, alt text and titles it looks like they will never be updated on older posts.

Attribution: CasualBen ​https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/403272/media-changes-not-updating-posts

[maltfield]

Migrated from ​https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/7712

[joedolson]

Content like alt attributes and captions are specific to how an image is used; if changes in the media library were propagated to all uses of that image, then it would be impossible to have context-sensitive text associated with an image.

For an example use case, the alt text for an image that's linked should be about the resource linked to; but the alt text for the same image on the target page should be a description of the image. In order to make that work, alt text needs to be usage-specific.

In my opinion, this should be a wontfix.

[dd32]

I'm inclined to agree with @joedolson.

While I agree on one hand it'd be expected to have the changes propagate (especially if they were left at the default), on the other, it could be entirely unwanted.

[maltfield]

I (and much of the userbase) recognize this as a bug, because it doesn't do what most users expect it to do. Here's another article describing the current (buggy) behaviour defying user expectations:

• ​https://therenegadecoder.com/meta/updating-alt-text-in-wordpress-media-library-does-not-update-images-in-posts/

If we decide not to change the default behaviour, then I think we should at least add a button to the Media Library (next to "Update" button and "delete permanently" link when editing the image) that triggers wordpress to propagate the changes to the image attributes throughout the wordpress site's usage of that media.

And, for better UX, a flag in Settings that, when enabled, will make all changes to media propagate automatically by default on-save (so users don't have to click the button every time they update a media's attributes)