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Troubleshooting Common Safe SVG Plugin Issues: Dimensions, Srcset, and More

24 threads Sep 9, 2025 Plugin → Safe svg

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If you use the Safe SVG plugin on your WordPress site, you may have encountered issues where your SVG images display incorrectly, appear at the wrong size, or cause unexpected errors. This troubleshooting guide compiles the most common problems reported by the community and provides tested solutions to help you resolve them.

1. Incorrect or Zero Width/Height Attributes

The Problem: SVG images display with width and height attributes set to 0, 100, or an incorrect value like 2000px. This often causes images to appear broken, tiny, or stretched.

Why It Happens: This is one of the most frequently reported issues. It can occur due to bugs in the plugin's dimension calculation logic, such as failing to properly parse numeric values from SVG files that use decimal dimensions or viewBox attributes. It can also happen when the plugin incorrectly interacts with themes or other plugins that also try to set image dimensions.

Common Solutions:

  • Update the Plugin: Many dimension-related bugs have been fixed in subsequent releases. Ensure you are running the latest version of Safe SVG.
  • CSS Workaround: As a temporary fix, you can add custom CSS to force the correct dimensions. For example: 
    .your-svg-container img {
    width: auto !important;
    height: auto !important;
}
  • Code Filter: For developers, a more permanent fix can be to use a filter in your theme's functions.php file to ensure integer values are output. This addresses issues where decimal values or incorrect data types cause problems: 
    function fix_svg_image_attributes( $attr ) {
    if ( isset( $attr['width'] ) ) {
        $attr['width'] = intval( $attr['width'] );
    }
    if ( isset( $attr['height'] ) ) {
        $attr['height'] = intval( $attr['height'] );
    }
    return $attr;
}
add_filter( 'wp_get_attachment_image_attributes', 'fix_svg_image_attributes', 11, 1 );

2. Unnecessary or Broken Srcset Attributes

The Problem: SVG images are output with a srcset attribute containing multiple sizes, often with incorrect file paths (e.g., double slashes). In some browsers, like Chrome, this can cause the image to display at a much smaller size than intended.

Why It Happens: WordPress core generates srcset attributes for images to support responsive images. However, SVGs are vector-based and scale infinitely, making srcset unnecessary. The plugin sometimes fails to prevent this default WordPress behavior.

Common Solutions:

  • Use a Filter to Disable Srcset: The most effective solution is to prevent srcset generation for SVG files entirely by adding this code to your theme's functions.php: 
    add_filter( 'wp_calculate_image_srcset', function( $sources, $size_array, $image_src, $image_meta, $attachment_id ) {
    if ( substr( $image_src, -4 ) === '.svg' ) {
        return array();
    }
    return $sources;
}, 10, 5 );

3. Plugin and Theme Conflicts

The Problem: Safe SVG may not work correctly with certain themes or plugins, such as Avada or GeneratePress. This can manifest as missing dimension data in admin fields or overridden CSS styles.

Why It Happens: Themes and other plugins often have their own logic for handling images. When both Safe SVG and another piece of software try to manipulate the same image attributes, conflicts can arise, leading to unexpected results.

Common Solutions:

  • Check for Updates: First, ensure both Safe SVG and the conflicting theme/plugin are updated to their latest versions. Developers often release compatibility patches.
  • Reach Out to Developers: If an issue is persistent, report it to the theme or plugin author. For example, the Safe SVG team has been known to collaborate with theme developers like ThemeFusion (Avada) to resolve conflicts.
  • Temporary Deactivation: As a last resort, some users enable Safe SVG only when uploading SVGs to sanitize them, and then disable it for production use to avoid front-end conflicts.

4. Decimal Values in Dimensions

The Problem: SVGs with decimal values in their width or height (e.g., 461.2px) can cause issues. WordPress may fail to parse them correctly, leading to validation errors or problems like disappearing captions when changing image sizes.

Why It Happens: While decimal values are valid in SVG files, they can cause problems in the integer-based WordPress image system.

Common Solutions:

  • The code filter provided in Section 1 (using intval()) will also resolve this issue by converting decimal values to integers.
  • When creating SVGs, try to export them with whole number dimensions to avoid the problem entirely.

General Troubleshooting Tips

  • Clear Caches: After making any changes, always clear your WordPress cache (if using a caching plugin) and your browser cache to see the results.
  • Check with a Default Theme: Temporarily switch to a default WordPress theme like Twenty Twenty-Four to see if the problem persists. If it resolves, the issue is likely a conflict with your theme.
  • Disable Other Plugins: Conflict testing by disabling all other plugins and re-enabling them one by one can help identify the culprit.
  • Review Error Logs: Enable WP_DEBUG in your wp-config.php file to check for PHP warnings or notices that might point to the specific issue.

By understanding these common problems and their solutions, you can effectively troubleshoot issues with the Safe SVG plugin and ensure your vector graphics display perfectly on your WordPress site.

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