How to enable link previews in WhatsApp

The steps come from WhatsApp's Help Center article on the setting.

Turn link previews back on

WhatsApp's setting is called Disable link previews, so to enable previews you turn it off.

Android

1. Tap More options (the three dots) → Settings → Privacy.
2. Tap Advanced.
3. Turn Disable link previews off.

iPhone

1. Tap Settings (or your profile picture), then Privacy.
2. Tap Advanced.
3. Turn Disable link previews off.

Send yourself a link to test it. Paste the full address and give the preview a moment to appear before you send.

What the setting does

WhatsApp describes Disable link previews as an advanced security measure. When it's on, links you send don't generate a preview. WhatsApp says it's an optional layer of security that protects your IP address, aimed at its most privacy-conscious users.

Two details from WhatsApp's article help when you're working out why a preview is missing:

• The setting is off by default. If you've never touched it, it isn't the reason.
• It only affects links you send. Previews of links other people send you still appear, and receiving them has no effect on your IP address.

So if a friend's links show previews for you but yours don't for them, check your setting. If no one sees a preview for one particular website, look at the website.

Should you turn it on?

That's a privacy trade-off only you can make. With it on, your messages carry bare links and nobody gets a picture or title to tap. With it off, WhatsApp builds the card when you send. Your messages are end-to-end encrypted either way, as WhatsApp's article points out.

When a website shows no preview

A preview card is built from the page's Open Graph tags: og:title for the headline, og:description for the line under it and og:image for the picture. The Open Graph protocol lists og:title, og:type, og:image and og:url as required. If a page leaves them out, or its image can't be fetched, there's little for WhatsApp to show.

Paste the address into the checker below. It reads the page's tags the way an app does, draws a close version of the WhatsApp card first, then the other apps, and lists what's missing.

Common fixes, if the site is yours:

• Add og:image with a full https:// address. A 1200×630 image works well; Facebook, also part of Meta, recommends at least that size for sharp previews. Our Open Graph image generator makes one.
• Add og:title and og:description. Without them you get the page's title tag, or nothing useful.
• Make sure crawlers can reach the page. Pages behind a login or a bot wall can't be previewed.

If the site isn't yours, you can't change its preview. Sending the link as it is still works: the person you send it to can tap the address.

To see how a page's tags look in every app at once, use the WhatsApp link preview checker, or read about the OG image size that suits every app.