How to hide image broken Icon using only CSS/HTML?

Question

There is no way for CSS/HTML to know if the image is broken link, so you are going to have to use JavaScript no matter what

But here is a minimal method for either hiding the image, or replacing the source with a backup.

<img src="Error.src" onerror="this.style.display='none'"/>

or

<img src="Error.src" onerror="this.src='fallback-img.jpg'"/>

Update

You can apply this logic to multiple images at once by doing something like this:

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function(event) {
   document.querySelectorAll('img').forEach(function(img){
  	img.onerror = function(){this.style.display='none';};
   })
});

<img src="error.src">
<img src="error.src">
<img src="error.src">
<img src="error.src">

Update 2

For a CSS option see michalzuber's answer below. You can't hide the entire image, but you change how the broken icon looks.

Despite what people are saying here, you don't need JavaScript at all, you don't even need CSS!

It's actually very doable and simple with HTML only.
You can even show a default image if an image doesn't load. Here's how...

This also works on all browsers, even as far back as IE8 (out of 250,000+ visitors to sites I hosted in September 2015, ZERO people used something worse than IE8, meaning this solution works for literally everything).

Step 1: Reference the image as an object instead of an img. When objects fail they don't show broken icons; they just do nothing. Starting with IE8, you can use object and img tags interchangeably. You can resize and do all the glorious stuff you can with regular images too. Don't be afraid of the object tag; it's just a tag, nothing big and bulky gets loaded and it doesn't slow down anything. You'll just be using the img tag by another name. A speed test shows they are used identically.

Step 2: (Optional, but awesome) Stick a default image inside that object. If the image you want actually loads in the object, the default image won't show. So for example you could show a list of user avatars, and if someone doesn't have an image on the server yet, it could show the placeholder image... no JavaScript or CSS required at all, but you get the features of what takes most people JavaScript.

Here is the code...

<object data="avatar.jpg" type="image/jpg">
    <img src="default.jpg" />
</object>

... Yes, it's that simple.

If you want to implement default images with CSS, you can make it even simpler in your HTML like this...

<object class="avatar" data="user21.jpg" type="image/jpg"></object>

...and just add the CSS from this answer -> https://stackoverflow.com/a/32928240/3196360

Found a great solution at https://bitsofco.de/styling-broken-images/

img {  
  position: relative;
}

/* style this to fit your needs */
/* and remove [alt] to apply to all images*/
img[alt]:after {  
  display: block;
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  background-color: #fff;
  font-family: 'Helvetica';
  font-weight: 300;
  line-height: 2;  
  text-align: center;
  content: attr(alt);
}

<img src="error">
<br>
<img src="broken" alt="A broken image">
<br>
<img src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/218eLEn0fuL.png" alt="A bird" style="width: 120px">

If you will add alt with text alt="abc" it will show the show corrupt thumbnail, and alt message abc

<img src="pic_trulli.jpg" alt="abc"/>

If you will not add alt it will show the show corrupt thumbnail

<img src="pic_trulli.jpg"/>

If you want to hide the broken one just add alt="" it will not show corrupt thumbnail and any alt message(without using js)

<img src="pic_trulli.jpg" alt=""/>

If you want to hide the broken one just add alt="" & onerror="this.style.display='none'" it will not show corrupt thumbnail and any alt message(with js)

<img src="pic_trulli.jpg" alt="abc" onerror="this.style.display='none'"/>

4th one is a little dangerous(not exactly) , if you want to add any image in onerror event, it will not display even if Image exist as style.display is like adding. So, use it when you don't require any alternative image to display.

display: 'none'; // in css

If we give it in CSS, then the item will not display(like image, iframe, div like that).

If you want to display image & you want to display totally blank space if error, then you can use, but also be careful this will not take any space. So, you need to keep it in a div may be

Link https://jsfiddle.net/02d9yshw/

I think the easiest way is to hide the broken image icon by the text-indent property.

img {
    text-indent: -10000px
}

Obviously it doesn't work if you want to see the "alt" attribute.

in case you like to keep/need the image as a placeholder, you could change the opacity to 0 with an onerror and some CSS to set the image size. This way you will not see the broken link, but the page loads as normal.

<img src="<your-image-link->" onerror="this.style.opacity='0'" />

img {
    width: 75px;
    height: 100px;
}

I liked the answer by Nick and was playing around with this solution. Found a cleaner method. Since ::before/::after pseudos don't work on replaced elements like img and object they will only work if the object data (src) is not loaded. It keeps the HTML more clean and will only add the pseudo if the object fails to load.

object {
  position: relative;
  float: left;
  display: block;
  width: 200px;
  height: 200px;
  margin-right: 20px;
  border: 1px solid black;
}
object::after {
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  display: block;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  content: '';
  background: red url("http://placehold.it/200x200");
}

<object data="http://lorempixel.com/200/200/people/1" type="image/png"></object>

<object data="http://broken.img/url" type="image/png"></object>