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5 min readWhatsAppTroubleshooting

WhatsApp link preview not showing: the image size trap

WhatsApp drops the preview image when the file is too heavy — and tells nobody. The 300 KB rule and the other four causes.

Key takeaways

  • WhatsApp silently skips og:image files above a few hundred KB — keep share images under 300 KB.
  • The crawler also refuses images behind redirects, on http URLs, or in formats it cannot decode.
  • If the title shows but the image does not, the tags are fine and the image fetch is failing.
CB

Chris Bonney

CommonPoint LLC

WhatsApp's link preview has a behaviour that catches more sites than any other: when the og:image file is too heavy, WhatsApp does not show an error, a placeholder or a smaller version. It shows nothing — just the URL, or at best the title — and gives you no clue that the image was the problem.

The size trap

Other platforms tolerate images of several megabytes. WhatsApp gives up at a few hundred kilobytes. A beautiful 2 MB hero export that works perfectly on LinkedIn and Facebook renders bare in every WhatsApp chat. Export a dedicated share image at 1200x630 and compress it under 300 KB.

The other four causes

  • Relative or http image URL — the value must be a complete https address WhatsApp can fetch directly.
  • Redirects on the image — CDN or hotlink rules that bounce the request lose the fetch.
  • Format — stick to PNG or JPEG; an SVG or an exotic format will not render.
  • Tags rendered by JavaScript — WhatsApp reads the served HTML, not the hydrated app.

Title but no image?

That combination is the tell. If WhatsApp shows your og:title and description but no picture, the page crawl succeeded and only the image request failed — go straight to the image's size, URL and format. If nothing shows at all, check the tags are in the raw HTML instead.

<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/card-under-300kb.jpg" />
<meta property="og:image:width" content="1200" />
<meta property="og:image:height" content="630" />

Confirm before you send

The checker on this site downloads your real image and reports its exact byte size alongside the WhatsApp card, so the trap is visible before your link is in someone's chat. The og image checker page goes deeper on dimensions and format.

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