Live Preview

WhatsApp Link Preview

Best Practices

Optimise Links Shared on WhatsApp

🖼️

Use a 1.91:1 or 1:1 Image

WhatsApp displays link thumbnails at approximately 240px wide. Use a 1200×628px or 1080×1080px image. Images smaller than 300×200px may not generate a thumbnail at all.

✂️

Keep Titles Under 65 Characters

WhatsApp truncates titles after approximately 65 characters. Put your most important information first — brand or article name at the start, not the end.

🔒

HTTPS Is Required

WhatsApp will not generate a preview for HTTP-only links. Ensure your website uses HTTPS with a valid SSL certificate — without it, links appear as plain text only.

⚡

Fast Server Response

WhatsApp's crawler times out quickly when fetching OG tags. Ensure your server responds within 3 seconds. Use CDN hosting and enable HTTP/2 for the best crawl success rate.

🔄

Force Re-crawl After Updates

WhatsApp caches link previews for 3–7 days. To refresh a stale preview, add a URL parameter (e.g. ?v=2) — this creates a "new" URL that WhatsApp will re-crawl immediately.

📱

Test Both Dark and Light Mode

A significant proportion of WhatsApp users use dark mode. Ensure your OG image works visually against both dark backgrounds (very dark image = invisible) and light backgrounds.

How WhatsApp Generates Link Previews

When you paste a URL into a WhatsApp chat, WhatsApp's servers visit your page and read the Open Graph meta tags from your HTML <head>. Within a few seconds, it builds a compact link card — thumbnail on top, then domain, title, and up to 2 lines of description — that appears directly in the conversation bubble.

The process is straightforward, but several conditions must be met: your page must be publicly accessible (no authentication wall), it must use HTTPS, and your server must respond quickly. If any of these fail, WhatsApp shows the link as plain blue text only — no card, no thumbnail, no brand visibility.

Required OG Tags for WhatsApp Link Previews

<!-- Minimum required for WhatsApp link card --> <meta property="og:title" content="Your Page Title" /> <meta property="og:description" content="Brief description of the page." /> <meta property="og:image" content="https://your-site.com/og-1200x628.jpg" /> <meta property="og:url" content="https://your-site.com/page" /> <!-- Recommended additions --> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Your Brand Name" /> <meta property="og:type" content="website" />

WhatsApp vs Facebook vs Twitter — How They Differ

WhatsApp uses the same Open Graph protocol as Facebook and Twitter, but its link card layout is more compact. Key differences: WhatsApp does not show the og:site_name prominently (it infers the domain from the URL), images are displayed smaller and in a 1.91:1 or 1:1 crop, and descriptions are limited to 2 visible lines (~130 characters). Also, WhatsApp never shows cached like or share counts — every link card is purely based on meta tags.

FAQ

WhatsApp Preview FAQs

Make Every WhatsApp Link Stand Out

Preview in dark and light mode, audit your OG tags, and share links that always look professional.

Preview WhatsApp Link Free →