Messenger link preview image size

The search covers two different pictures. The first is the preview Messenger builds when someone pastes a web address into a chat. The second is a link card that a Facebook Page sends through the Messenger Platform, called a generic template. Meta documents them separately, so the rules differ.

Meta’s Link Sharing FAQ says that when content is shared on Facebook, Messenger and other places, the Sharing Debugger shows the information used to build the link preview. So the image in Messenger is the one you set with og:image on the page. Meta’s guidance for that image is at least 1200 × 630 pixels, as near 1.91:1 as you can, under 8 MB, and never below 200 × 200.

Meta’s shape guidance is written for Feed, and it does not publish a Messenger-only size, so treat 1200 × 630 as the safe choice rather than a Messenger rule. The same file also works for Facebook, which is why one properly sized image saves a lot of rework.

The generic template is a structured message with a title, a subtitle, an image and up to three buttons. Meta’s best-practice note is plain about the image: use the correct aspect ratio, because Messenger scales or crops photos in the template that are not 1.91:1. A 1200 × 630 file fits.

• Titles and subtitles stop at 80 characters each. Put the point first, since longer text is cut off.
• Each card can carry up to three buttons. A card needs at least one property besides the title.
• A default action turns the whole card into a link that opens in the Messenger webview.
• A carousel holds up to 10 cards. Meta advises that if one card has a photo, every card should have one.
• GIFs load but do not play, so use a still image.
• Do not use the template if people need to zoom the picture to full screen. Send it as an image attachment instead.

Tip: Keep text out of the image where you can. The card already has a title and a subtitle, and words in a picture get small once the card shrinks to phone width.

Previews are built from a cached copy of your page. Facebook’s crawler caches an image by its URL, so if you swap the file but keep the address, people keep seeing the old one. Use a new URL for the new image, leave the old file online, and run the page through the Sharing Debugger so the crawler fetches it before it is shared.

A missing image on a first share is usually the crawler arriving late. Adding og:image:width and og:image:height tells it the size straight away. A white box means the image was too big, was removed or could not be fetched in time. Meta says to keep it under 8 MB and serve it fast.

Instagram and Messenger do not allow a link or a button in the first message that goes to someone who commented on a post. Tools such as DMFast send a plain-text question first, for example asking the person to reply YES, and the link card comes after they answer. That is the moment the image size matters: a 1.91:1 card image keeps the card tidy and uncropped in the conversation.