WhatsApp builds a link preview from Open Graph meta tags in your page head. Meta's developer page asks for og:title, og:description and og:url, plus og:image for the picture. The head must sit inside the first 300KB of HTML, and the image must be under 600KB, at least 300px wide.
| Item | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Required tags | og:title, og:description, og:url, inside head and not empty |
| Picture | og:image with an absolute URL |
| Head position | Within the first 300KB of the HTML |
| Image file size | Under 600KB |
| Image shape | At least 300px wide, width to height ratio of 4:1 or less |
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You paste your shop or booking link into a WhatsApp chat and get a bare blue address, or a tiny square instead of a large picture. That almost always comes down to a few tags in the hidden head section of your page, the part browsers read but visitors never see. Paste your page source into the checker below to see what WhatsApp will find.
Paste your page's HTML source. The check runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded.
Image size and weight cannot be read from HTML. Check the file itself with the OG image checker.
Paste these into your site's custom head code, or fill in the matching fields in your builder's sharing settings. Change every value to your own page.
Title, description and URL are the required trio on Meta's WhatsApp page; the image line gives the picture, and the alt line describes it.
<meta property="og:title" content="Spring Menu">
<meta property="og:description" content="Seasonal plates, served Tuesday to Sunday.">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/menu">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/img/menu-share-v2.jpg">
<meta property="og:image:alt" content="Three plates of spring vegetables on a wooden table">Each platform documents its own numbers. A 1200 by 630 image saved small enough for WhatsApp also works on the other two.
| Platform | Size guidance | File size limit |
|---|---|---|
| At least 300px wide, ratio 4:1 or less | Under 600KB | |
| At least 1200 by 630 for best display, ratio near 1.91:1 | 8MB | |
| Minimum 1200 by 627, ratio 1.91:1 | 5MB |
Meta describes WhatsApp previews as best effort. The app may relax its rules or fall back to a small preview, but Meta warns you not to rely on that behaviour, so meeting the written requirements is the only dependable route.
A preview also needs the page to be reachable without a login. A members-only page or a link behind a password returns a sign-in screen to WhatsApp, and that screen has no useful tags.
Messages already sent keep the preview they were built with. Meta's Facebook guide says updating the image for a URL does not update old shares, and the WhatsApp page gives no other method.
When you swap the share image, upload it under a new file name and update og:image to match. New messages then fetch the new file instead of a cached copy.
The most common causes are a missing og:image tag, an image path that is not absolute, an image file of 600KB or more, or an image narrower than 300px. Run your page source through the checker on this page to spot which one applies.
Meta says that when the preview appears but not at the large size, you should recheck the image requirements. Size, width and the 4:1 ratio limit are the usual suspects.
Meta's WhatsApp page does not describe a refresh tool or how long previews are cached. For Facebook, Meta says images are cached by URL, so giving the new image a new file name is the reliable way to make a fresh share pick it up.
Both read the Open Graph protocol tags such as og:title and og:image. The size limits differ: Meta's WhatsApp page sets a 600KB image limit, while its Facebook sharing guide allows image files up to 8MB.
Yes. Meta documents that WhatsApp fetches the page with an HTTP GET request and a User-Agent like WhatsApp/2.x.x.x followed by A, I or N for Android, iOS or web.
Related: Open Graph preview, Open Graph tags guide, WhatsApp link generator, OG image checker, OG image generator.
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