--- title: "How to Check URL Metadata & Link Previews - TryUnfurl Guide" description: "Learn how TryUnfurl works to check URL metadata and test link previews on social platforms. Free URL unfurl tool for debugging Open Graph tags." keywords:

• URL unfurl
• how to check URL metadata
• link preview checker
• open graph tester
• url preview tool
• link unfurl tool
• og tag validator
• how to check link preview
• test open graph tags
• link preview debugger
• metadata checker
• tryunfurl how it works datePublished: "2026-01-15" dateModified: "2026-04-14"

How to Check URL Metadata & Link Previews — The TryUnfurl Guide

TryUnfurl.com is a free URL unfurl tool and link preview checker. Paste any public URL and instantly see how it will look when shared on Slack, Discord, Twitter/X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and iMessage — along with a full breakdown of every piece of metadata the page exposes.

No login. No installation. No cost.

→ Try it now — paste your URL

What Is URL Unfurling?

URL unfurling is what every social network and chat app does silently in the background whenever someone shares a link. The platform fetches the page, reads a handful of <meta> tags, and builds the rich preview card — title, description, image, site name — that your audience actually sees in-feed.

When a tag is missing, malformed, or points to an image the crawler can't reach, the preview breaks. TryUnfurl is the open graph tester built to catch those problems before they ship, so every URL unfurl you send out looks the way you intended.

Privacy and Data Security

TryUnfurl was built to provide a simple, convenient service for end users. We are not interested in your data.

We don't build profiles, track individual usage, sell your information, or associate submitted URLs with you as a person. When you paste a URL, we fetch its publicly available metadata to show you the preview — that's it.

The "Recent History" sidebar is powered entirely by your own browser's local storage. We store the last 12 URLs you've checked directly on your device so you can quickly reference recent work. This data never leaves your browser and is never transmitted to our servers as user history. We have no way to see it, and we don't try to.

You can verify this yourself: clear your browser's local storage (or open TryUnfurl in a private/incognito window) and the sidebar will reset to our default list of example sites — because your history only ever existed on your device.

What TryUnfurl Does

When you share a link on a social platform or messaging app, that platform silently reads hidden metadata from your page to generate a preview card — the title, description, and image that appear before anyone clicks.

TryUnfurl does the same thing those platforms do, and shows you the results.

You see exactly what Slack sees. Exactly what Discord fetches. Exactly what Twitter/X renders. All at once, before your users ever encounter it.

This means you can:

• Catch broken or missing previews before sharing publicly
• Verify your Open Graph tags and Twitter Card tags are working correctly
• Spot inconsistencies between platforms (e.g., great on Facebook, broken on Slack)
• Confirm your og:image loads correctly and meets size requirements
• Audit any URL — your own pages or anyone else's

Who TryUnfurl Is For

TryUnfurl is useful for anyone who shares links online — no technical background required.

Marketers and content creators

You're writing a campaign, launching a product page, or publishing a blog post. Before you share the link anywhere, paste it into TryUnfurl to confirm it looks exactly as intended — right title, right image, right description. Fix issues before they go live rather than after thousands of people have already seen a broken preview.

Web developers and engineers

You're implementing Open Graph tags, troubleshooting why Slack shows the wrong image, or verifying that your SSR (server-side rendering) is correctly injecting meta tags into the initial HTML. TryUnfurl gives you the raw metadata your page is serving to crawlers — no guesswork, no cached results from platform-specific tools.

SEO specialists

You're auditing a site for metadata health. TryUnfurl surfaces every detected metadata value — og:title, og:description, og:image, twitter:card, <title>, meta name="description", and favicon — so you can identify gaps and inconsistencies at a glance.

Business owners and teams

You're sharing your company's website in sales decks, Slack channels, LinkedIn posts, and email campaigns. TryUnfurl gives you confidence that your brand looks professional wherever the link appears — even in places you can't directly control.

Step-by-Step: How to Check URL Metadata With TryUnfurl

Using TryUnfurl takes less than 30 seconds.

The complete how-to-check-URL-metadata workflow takes less than 30 seconds. No tooling to install, nothing to sign up for.

Step 1 — Paste your URL

Go to TryUnfurl.com and paste any public URL into the input field. This can be:

• Your homepage or a specific landing page
• A blog post or article you're about to share
• A product or campaign page
• Any third-party URL you want to inspect

The URL must be publicly accessible — TryUnfurl fetches the page the same way platform crawlers do, so anything behind a login wall or blocked by robots.txt won't return results.

Step 2 — Click to preview

Hit the preview button. TryUnfurl fetches the live page, parses all metadata standards, and generates platform-specific preview cards.

Results appear in seconds.

Step 3 — Review your platform previews

You'll see rendered preview cards showing how your link will look on each major platform:

Step 4 — Inspect the raw metadata

Below the visual previews, TryUnfurl shows every piece of metadata detected on the page, organised by standard:

• Open Graph tags — og:title, og:description, og:image, og:type, og:url, og:site_name, and all other OG properties
• Twitter Card tags — twitter:card, twitter:title, twitter:description, twitter:image, twitter:site
• HTML meta tags — <title>, meta name="description", canonical URL
• Favicon — detected site icon

Any missing or potentially problematic values are surfaced so you know exactly what to fix.

Step 5 — Fix and re-test

If you find issues, update your page's HTML or Open Graph tags, redeploy, and paste the URL again. TryUnfurl always fetches the live page — no cached results — so you see changes immediately.

Understanding Link Preview Components

A rich preview card is the sum of a handful of simple ingredients — and every one of them can be wrong. When you check URL metadata with TryUnfurl, you're validating each piece in isolation:

• Title — comes from og:title, twitter:title, or the HTML <title> tag, in that priority order depending on the platform.
• Description — pulled from og:description, twitter:description, or <meta name="description">.
• Preview image — the hero of the card. Controlled by og:image and twitter:image. Needs to be absolute, publicly reachable, and ideally 1200×630px.
• Site name — og:site_name gives your brand a consistent byline across every card.
• Canonical URL — og:url ensures aggregators and previews resolve to the right page.
• Favicon — used as a compact icon in iMessage, Slack, and browser tabs.

If any of these are missing or broken, TryUnfurl flags it — so you know exactly which component to fix.

Supported Platforms

The link preview checker renders the card for every platform your team actually ships links on:

• Twitter / X — summary card and summary_large_image card
• Facebook — standard Open Graph preview
• LinkedIn — professional feed preview with strict image rules
• Slack — unfurl embed as it appears in a channel
• Discord — server embed with its own cache behavior
• iMessage — iOS thumbnail preview

Every URL unfurl is generated with the same rules each platform's crawler uses, so what you see in TryUnfurl is what your audience will see in-app.

What TryUnfurl Checks

TryUnfurl analyses all major metadata standards that platforms use to generate link previews:

How TryUnfurl Works Under the Hood

For the technically curious — here's what happens when you submit a URL.

1. Server-side fetch

TryUnfurl fetches your URL from a server, not from your browser. This mirrors how real platform crawlers work — Slackbot, Discordbot, facebookexternalhit, LinkedInBot, and Twitterbot all fetch pages server-side. This means:

• JavaScript is not executed — same as most platform crawlers
• The raw HTML response is what gets analysed
• If your page only injects meta tags via JavaScript (e.g., a React SPA with client-side rendering and no SSR), TryUnfurl will show you the blank metadata state that real crawlers also see

This is intentional — if TryUnfurl shows missing metadata, that's exactly what Slack and Discord are seeing too.

2. Multi-standard metadata parsing

TryUnfurl parses the fetched HTML and extracts metadata from all standards simultaneously:

• Open Graph <meta property="og:*"> tags
• Twitter Card <meta name="twitter:*"> tags
• Standard HTML <title> and <meta name="description">
• Favicon from <link rel="icon"> or /favicon.ico

Each value is stored and used to generate platform-specific previews according to each platform's known priority rules. For example: Twitter prefers twitter:title over og:title; LinkedIn ignores Twitter Card tags entirely.

3. Platform-specific preview rendering

Using the extracted metadata, TryUnfurl renders visual mockups of how each platform's preview card will look — applying each platform's title length limits, image crop rules, and card layout. This gives you an accurate visual representation without needing to actually share the link anywhere.

4. Local history — no server-side tracking

TryUnfurl stores your last 12 checked URLs in your browser's local storage — not on any server. This lets you quickly revisit recent URLs during a testing session without needing an account. You can clear this history at any time through your browser settings.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

The same handful of issues show up again and again when you check URL metadata at scale:

• Tags look correct, but the card is still wrong on Facebook or LinkedIn. The platform has an old URL unfurl cached. Run the page through the Facebook Sharing Debugger or LinkedIn Post Inspector to force a re-scrape.
• og:image is set but doesn't load. The image URL returns 403 or 404, is blocked by authentication, or uses a relative path. Open the image URL directly in an incognito window.
• TryUnfurl shows an empty card on your own page but the browser looks fine. Your page probably renders client-side with JavaScript. Platform crawlers and this open graph tester both read the initial HTML, so meta tags must be server-rendered (SSR, SSG, or pre-render).
• Preview image is tiny. LinkedIn downgrades anything under 1200×627px. Fix the asset and rerun the URL unfurl test.
• Different platforms, different previews. Each platform has its own priority order for tags. Twitter prefers twitter:title over og:title; LinkedIn ignores Twitter Cards entirely. TryUnfurl surfaces every tag so you can see exactly which one is in play.
• Old preview stuck in Slack. Delete the message and re-share the URL. Slack caches at share time, not at fetch time.

For platform-specific fixes, see our link preview troubleshooting guide and how to fix link preview problems.

Why TryUnfurl Instead of Platform-Specific Debuggers?

Every major platform offers its own debugging tool — Facebook's Sharing Debugger, Twitter's Card Validator, LinkedIn's Post Inspector. So why use TryUnfurl?

The practical workflow: use TryUnfurl first to spot issues across all platforms at once, then use the platform-specific tools to force cache refreshes once you've confirmed your metadata is correct.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is TryUnfurl free to use?

Yes. Completely free — no login, no account, no cost.

Does TryUnfurl store my URLs?

TryUnfurl stores your recent URLs in your own browser's local storage only — not on any server. We collect aggregated usage metrics but do not maintain personal URL histories tied to individuals. See the Privacy Policy for full details.

Why does TryUnfurl show different results than what I see in my browser?

TryUnfurl fetches the page without executing JavaScript, exactly like platform crawlers (Slackbot, Discordbot, etc.) do. If your page uses a JavaScript framework that renders content client-side, your browser will show the full rendered page, but TryUnfurl — and social platform crawlers — will only see the initial HTML. The fix is to use server-side rendering (SSR) or static site generation (SSG).

Can I test pages behind a login?

No. TryUnfurl can only fetch publicly accessible URLs, the same as any external crawler. Pages behind authentication, VPNs, or local development servers cannot be fetched.

Why does TryUnfurl show my old metadata even after I updated my page?

TryUnfurl always fetches the live URL with no internal cache. If you're seeing old metadata, it's coming from your page directly — likely your CDN is serving a cached HTML response, or your deployment hasn't fully propagated yet. Check your CDN cache settings or wait a few minutes and re-test.

Can I check competitor or third-party pages?

Yes — TryUnfurl works on any publicly accessible URL. It's useful for researching what metadata other sites are using, comparing your implementation against industry benchmarks, or inspecting any link before sharing it.

Does TryUnfurl work for Slack-specific issues?

Yes. TryUnfurl fetches pages the same way Slackbot does — server-side, no JavaScript execution. If TryUnfurl shows correct metadata but Slack still shows an old or wrong preview, the issue is Slack's cached result. Delete and re-share the link in Slack to force a fresh fetch.

Does TryUnfurl work for Discord embed problems?

Yes. TryUnfurl shows exactly what Discord's crawler reads from your page. If TryUnfurl confirms your metadata is correct but Discord still shows the old embed, try adding a cache-buster query string to the URL when resharing (e.g., ?v=2) — Discord treats it as a new URL and fetches fresh metadata.

In Summary

TryUnfurl.com shows you exactly how your website will look when shared — on every major platform, all at once, in under 30 seconds.

• Free to use, no login required
• Checks Open Graph, Twitter Cards, and HTML meta tags
• Renders visual previews for Twitter/X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, and iMessage
• Shows all raw metadata so you can diagnose and fix problems

-> Paste your URL and see your previews now