Link preview cheat sheet

Image sizes, file limits and text lengths for the places your links get shared, and the meta tags that control them. Updated October 2026.

The short version

One set of tags that works everywhere:

Image: 1200×630 pixels, JPG or PNG, under 300 KB if you can, under 5 MB at most.
Title: under 60 characters.
Description: under 160 characters.
Addresses: absolute and https, for the page and the image.
Tags: Open Graph for everything, plus twitter:card. That covers every platform below.

By platform

Numbers marked “Official” come from the platform’s own documentation. The rest are widely reported behavior, so test with a real share before relying on them.

Facebook

Official

Image: 1200×630 recommended
Minimum: 200×200 (600×315 for the large layout)
File size: Up to 8 MB
Ratio: 1.91:1

Images under 600×315 still show, but as a much smaller card.

Sharing Debugger ↗

Official

Image: 1200×627
Minimum: 1200×627
File size: Up to 5 MB
Ratio: 1.91:1

Set og:image:width and og:image:height. Without them LinkedIn may skip the image.
Square images can be rejected for not being landscape.

Post Inspector ↗

X (Twitter)

Reported

Image: 1200×628 or 1200×600
Minimum: 300×157
File size: Up to 5 MB
Ratio: 2:1 (1.91:1 is cropped slightly)

Reads og:title, og:description and og:image. Only twitter:card has no Open Graph equivalent.
Use twitter:card "summary_large_image" for the big card, "summary" for a small square one.

Reported

Image: 1200×630
Minimum: Not documented
File size: Keep it under about 300 KB
Ratio: 1.91:1

Larger images are dropped silently and the link shows without a thumbnail.

Slack and Discord

Reported

Image: 1200×630
Minimum: Not documented
File size: Not documented
Ratio: 1.91:1

Both show og:site_name above the title.
Discord colors the embed border with your theme-color meta tag.
Slack caches previews for a long time. Add a query string like ?v=2 to test changes.

iMessage

Reported

Image: 1200×630
Minimum: Not documented
File size: Not documented
Ratio: 1.91:1

Shows og:title and og:image with your domain. No description.
Without og:image it falls back to the page title and an icon.

Google Search

Official

Image: Not used for regular results
Minimum: Favicon: square, 48×48 or larger
File size: Not applicable
Ratio: Favicon 1:1

Google publishes no text limits. In practice it shows about 60 characters of the title and 160 of the description, cut by pixel width.
Google may rewrite either one if it thinks another text fits the search better.

The tags to add

Paste into the <head> of each page and replace the example values. Check your own page to fill them in and preview the result.

<!-- Primary meta tags -->
<title>Your page title, under 60 characters</title>
<meta name="description" content="One or two sentences about what people will find, under 160 characters." />
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/page" />

<!-- Open Graph: Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, iMessage -->
<meta property="og:type" content="website" />
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/page" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Example" />
<meta property="og:title" content="Your page title, under 60 characters" />
<meta property="og:description" content="One or two sentences about what people will find, under 160 characters." />
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/share.jpg" />
<meta property="og:image:width" content="1200" />
<meta property="og:image:height" content="630" />
<meta property="og:image:alt" content="What the image shows" />

<!-- X (Twitter) reads the Open Graph tags above -->
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image" />

<!-- Meta tags generated via https://heymeta.com -->

Common questions

I changed my image, why does the old one still show?

Every platform caches previews, some for weeks. Re-scrape the page in Facebook’s Sharing Debugger or LinkedIn’s Post Inspector. For other apps, share the address with a query string such as ?v=2 so it looks like a new link.

Do I still need twitter:title, twitter:description and twitter:image?

No. X falls back to the Open Graph tags. twitter:card is the only one worth adding, because it chooses between the large and the small card.

Which image format should I use?

JPG or PNG works everywhere. JPG is usually smaller for photos, which helps with WhatsApp’s size limit. SVG is not supported for preview images.

Why does my image work locally but not when shared?

Preview crawlers need an absolute, public https address. Relative paths like /og.png, localhost addresses and images behind a login all fail.

Check your meta tags for free

Easily check, edit and preview how your website will look when shared online. When you're ready, export your meta tags and add them to your website.

Or try it on an example: modulat.co