How to test your WhatsApp link preview
- 1
Paste your URL
Any public page. We fetch it and read every
og:tag in its head, plus the image's file size. - 2
See the WhatsApp message
The result opens on the WhatsApp preview: the image, title, description and domain as they appear in a chat bubble.
- 3
Fix what's flagged
Each problem links to a plain-English fix, with the exact tag to add. Re-run the check to confirm it is live.
How WhatsApp builds a preview
WhatsApp has no debugger. The preview is built by the sender's app when a link is typed into a chat, and it is sent along with the message. Meta's own advice for testing is to paste the link into a chat and wait about ten seconds for the preview to appear.
This checker shows the preview without opening WhatsApp, lists each tag it read, and flags the problems that stop WhatsApp showing a preview, above all an image file that is too large.
The tags WhatsApp reads
Meta's WhatsApp guidelines name four tags, og:title, og:description, og:url and og:image, and the first three should not be empty. They must sit in a <head> within the first 300 KB of the page's HTML, so a page bloated with inline scripts or styles can lose its preview.
| Tag | Falls back to | Notes |
|---|---|---|
og:title | <title> | Shown in bold, up to two lines. |
og:description | Meta description | One or two lines; about 80 characters is enough. |
og:image | None | Under 600 KB, at least 300 pixels wide, no wider than 4:1. |
og:url | The shared URL | Keep it clean: no session or tracking parameters. |
<meta property="og:title" content="Your page title" />
<meta property="og:description" content="One or two sentences." />
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/og.png" />
<meta property="og:image:width" content="1200" />
<meta property="og:image:height" content="630" />
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/page" />WhatsApp image size
Meta's guidelines for WhatsApp previews set the image at under 600 KB, at least 300 pixels wide, with a width-to-height ratio of 4:1 or less. The standard 1200 × 630 image fits the shape; the file size is what usually breaks it, since Facebook accepts up to 8 MB and LinkedIn 5 MB.
Aim well under the limit, around 300 KB, for headroom on slow connections. A well-compressed 1200 × 630 JPEG or PNG usually lands under 200 KB. Serve it from a public HTTPS URL.
Need an image at the right size? Create one with the free OG image generator and download a ready 1200 × 630 PNG.