IndieTide

Social preview checker

See how your link will look when it's shared in a feed or a chat. The checker reads your Open Graph and Twitter tags, measures the share image and lists what to fix.

What the social preview checker does

When someone shares your link, the site or app they share it in reads a handful of tags from your page and builds a card from them. The checker reads the same tags and downloads the image they point to:

  • Open Graph tags (og:title, og:description, og:image and its width, height and alt text), which nearly every site and chat app reads.
  • Twitter card tags, mainly twitter:card, which decides whether X shows a large image or a small thumbnail.
  • The share image itself: whether it loads, its format, file size, pixel dimensions, and how far its shape is from the 1.91:1 that large cards use.
  • Four previews of the usual layouts (large feed card, compact card, chat message and team chat) so you can see what gets cropped or cut off.

The share image that works almost everywhere

Use a PNG or JPEG at 1200 × 630 pixels, under about 1 MB, served from an absolute https URL that doesn't need a login. That shape is 1.91:1, the one large cards use, so very little gets cropped.

Keep your logo and any text inside the middle of the image, with some margin on every side: compact cards crop it to a square, and some chat apps trim the edges. Declare the size with og:image:width and og:image:height so sites can lay out the card before the image has downloaded.

After you change your tags

  1. Run the check again here to confirm the new tags are in the HTML your server sends.
  2. Social sites cache cards, sometimes for days. Most have a debugging or inspector tool that fetches your page again and refreshes their copy.
  3. If you changed the image but kept the same URL, add a version to it (like og.png?v=2) so caches pick up the new file.

Frequently asked questions

What size should an og:image be?
1200 × 630 pixels is the safe choice. It's the 1.91:1 shape large cards use and sharp enough for high-resolution screens. Images narrower than about 600 pixels are often shown as a small thumbnail, and most sites ignore images under 200 × 200.
Why does my link show an old image or title?
Sites cache the card the first time a link is shared. Changing your tags doesn't update copies they already have. Use the site's own link inspector or debugger to fetch the page again, and change the image URL if you replaced the file.
Do I need both Open Graph and Twitter tags?
Open Graph covers almost everything, and X falls back to it for the title, description and image. The one Twitter tag worth adding is twitter:card set to summary_large_image, because without it X shows a small card.
Can I use an SVG or WebP image?
SVG doesn't work: link cards don't render it. WebP works on most large sites but not every app, and AVIF support is still patchy. PNG or JPEG is the safest choice.
Why does the preview show my image cropped?
Cards have a fixed shape, so an image of a different shape gets cropped to fit: 1.91:1 for large cards and square for compact ones. The checker tells you how much is cut from each edge, so you can keep important parts in the middle.
Is the page or image I check stored anywhere?
No. The page and its share image are fetched once to run the check and aren't saved. Each visitor can run a limited number of checks per minute.