Performance Issues with SharePoint-hosted Images in Power BI Mobile - Seeking Optimization Solutions

[herosoftware]

I'm encountering an issue with using SharePoint-hosted images in my Power BI report. While the images work as expected in Power BI Service, they do not load properly in Power BI Desktop or the Power BI Mobile Application.

As a workaround, I’ve converted the images to Base64 format to make them work on the mobile app, and that approach seems to work fine. However, I'm experiencing significant performance issues—it takes over a minute to load just 250 images in Power BI Mobile, whereas the same images load quickly in Power BI Service.

We also tried setting the SharePoint site to anonymous access in an attempt to resolve the issue, but it still doesn’t work as expected in Power BI Mobile.

Is there a better solution or optimization for handling images in Power BI Mobile? I would appreciate any insights or suggestions on how to resolve this issue and improve the mobile app performance.

[v-hashadapu]

Hi @herosoftware , Please let us know if your issue is solved. If it is, consider marking the answer that helped 'Accept as Solution', so others with similar queries can find it easily. If not, please share the details.
Thank you.

[v-hashadapu]

Hi @herosoftware , Please let us know if your issue is solved. If it is, consider marking the answer that helped 'Accept as Solution', so others with similar queries can find it easily. If not, please share the details.
Thank you.

[v-hashadapu]

Hi @herosoftware , Please let us know if your issue is solved. If it is, consider marking the answer that helped 'Accept as Solution', so others with similar queries can find it easily. If not, please share the details.
Thank you.

[v-hashadapu · Accepted solution]

Hi @herosoftware , Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Community Forum.

For a quick fix, embed your Base64 images in the Power BI semantic model as a column (since they’re static), optimize their size and filter the report to load only the most relevant subset of the 250 images, say 50 at a time using slicers or pagination. This should cut load times in Power BI Mobile significantly. Test this in Desktop and Mobile to confirm.

For a better long-term solution, move the images to Azure Blob Storage with public access, store only the URLs in your model (set as “Image URL” data category) and let Power BI Mobile fetch them directly. This keeps your report lightweight and resolves authentication/rendering issues you’re seeing with SharePoint. If Azure isn’t an option, optimize the Base64 approach as above but know it won’t scale well beyond small sets.

If this helped solve the issue, please consider marking it 'Accept as Solution' so others with similar queries may find it more easily. If not, please share the details, always happy to help.
Thank you.

[lbendlin]

Realistically, how many of the 250 images will your mobile user look at in a single session?

If you already have the images in Base64 format (and if they are static) then you can cosider including them in the semantic model directly.