WhatsApp link preview not showing an image

Why this happens

WhatsApp reads og:image to build the preview card. The image fails to appear when any of these are true:

• The og:image URL is relative instead of absolute (/og.png rather than https://…)
• The image is behind authentication or blocked by a firewall — WhatsApp's servers cannot reach it
• The image file is too large — keep it under ~300 KB; heavy images are skipped
• The og:title or og:url tag is missing — WhatsApp often drops the entire preview when core tags are absent

WhatsApp also caches previews per conversation. Once a link is shared, the cached version sticks. A link shared before you fixed the image will still show the broken preview in that thread.

How to check

Paste your URL into the Open Graph Checker. It confirms whether og:image is present, whether the URL is absolute, and whether the image is publicly reachable. Fix any issues flagged there before troubleshooting the cache.

How to fix

1. Make og:image an absolute HTTPS URL — https://yourdomain.com/og.jpg, not /og.jpg.
2. Make the image public — no login, no IP restriction, no CDN token required.
3. Compress the image to stay under ~300 KB. A 1200×630 JPEG at 80% quality is typically well under that. See Open Graph image size.
4. Confirm og:title and og:url are also present — WhatsApp needs the full set.
5. Share the link in a new conversation to bypass the per-thread cache.

Example

A page uses og:image="/social/preview.png" — a relative path. WhatsApp's crawler fetches from its own servers and cannot resolve that path, so no image appears. Changing it to https://yourdomain.com/social/preview.png (absolute, publicly accessible, compressed under 300 KB) makes the preview image appear when the link is shared in a new chat.