diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 2e07b46..3020709 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Package: xfun
 Type: Package
 Title: Supporting Functions for Packages Maintained by 'Yihui Xie'
-Version: 0.50.3
+Version: 0.50.4
 Authors@R: c(
   person("Yihui", "Xie", role = c("aut", "cre", "cph"), email = "xie@yihui.name", comment = c(ORCID = "0000-0003-0645-5666", URL = "https://yihui.org")),
   person("Wush", "Wu", role = "ctb"),
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index f5544af..748eeed 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -2,6 +2,8 @@
 
 - `tojson()` supports more types of data now, and will indent sub-elements for lists. See the help page [`?xfun::tojson`](https://git.yihui.org/xfun/manual.html#sec:man-tojson) for details.
 
+- `upload_imgur()` shows the error message instead of the error code when it fails to upload the image, which is more informative.
+
 # CHANGES IN xfun VERSION 0.50
 
 - The function `isFALSE()` has been removed from this package. The deprecation notice was given two years ago: https://yihui.org/en/2023/02/xfun-isfalse/
diff --git a/R/image.R b/R/image.R
index 88ae68a..05ddf1d 100644
--- a/R/image.R
+++ b/R/image.R
@@ -230,7 +230,7 @@ upload_imgur = function(
   if (length(link) != 1) stop(
     'Failed to upload ', file, sprintf(' (reason: %s)', if (is.character(res)) {
       grep_sub('.*<error>([^<]+)</error>.*', '\\1', res)
-    } else res[[1]]$error[[1]])
+    } else res[[c('data', 'error', 'message')]][[1]])
   )
   if (include_xml) structure(link, XML = res) else link
 }