How to Refresh a Link Preview — Clear Cache on Every Platform

You updated your page's title, description, or image — but when you share the link, the old preview still appears. This happens because every major platform caches link previews, sometimes for hours or days.

Updating your metadata on the page is only step one. You also need to force each platform to re-fetch it.

Why Link Previews Get Stuck

When a platform first sees a URL, it fetches the page metadata and stores it in a cache. The next time someone shares that URL, the platform serves the cached version instead of fetching fresh data — it's faster and reduces server load.

The downside: if you update your og:title, og:description, or og:image, those changes won't appear until the cache expires or you manually force a refresh.

Cache lifetimes vary by platform — from a few hours (Slack) to several days (Facebook, LinkedIn).

Before You Refresh

First, confirm your metadata is actually correct on the live page. Use TryUnfurl.com to check — it always fetches the live page with no internal cache, so if your update is showing there, it's live and ready. Then use the platform-specific steps below to clear the cached preview.

-> Verify your metadata on TryUnfurl first

How to Refresh on Each Platform

Facebook / Meta

Use the Facebook Sharing Debugger:

1. Go to developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
2. Paste your URL and click Debug
3. If old data is shown, click Scrape Again
4. Repeat until the correct metadata appears
5. Share the link again — Facebook will now use the fresh data

Twitter / X

Use the Card Validator:

1. Go to cards-dev.twitter.com/validator
2. Paste your URL and click Preview Card
3. Twitter re-fetches the metadata on each validation — this clears the cache
4. Your next tweet with the URL should show the updated card

LinkedIn

Use the Post Inspector:

1. Go to linkedin.com/post-inspector
2. Enter your URL and click Inspect
3. Click Regenerate preview to force a fresh fetch

LinkedIn's cache can be slow to clear — if the preview still looks wrong after regenerating, wait 5–10 minutes and try again.

Slack

Slack has no public cache-clearing tool. Your options:

• Delete the original message and re-share the link — Slack fetches metadata fresh each time a link is first shared in a channel
• In some workspaces, hovering over an unfurl preview shows a refresh icon — click it to force a re-fetch
• Wait — Slack's cache typically expires within a few hours

Discord

Discord has no cache-clearing tool either. Options:

• Add a query parameter to the URL when re-sharing: https://example.com/page?v=2 — Discord treats this as a new URL and fetches fresh metadata
• Wait — Discord embed caches typically expire within a few hours to a day
• Re-share the link in a new message after the cache has expired

WhatsApp

WhatsApp caches previews per device:

• Delete the message and resend
• The recipient may need to update WhatsApp or clear their local cache if they still see the old preview
• WhatsApp's cache can take longer to clear than other platforms

iMessage / Apple

iMessage caches previews on the recipient's device. There's no server-side cache to clear. The recipient can:

• Long-press the message and delete it, then resend
• Or wait — the cache usually expires naturally

Quick Reference

If the Preview Still Won't Update

If you've cleared the platform cache but the old preview persists:

1. Check your CDN — if you use Cloudflare, Fastly, or another CDN, it may be serving a cached HTML response. Clear the CDN cache for the affected URL.
2. Check your redirects — if the URL redirects, make sure the final destination has the correct metadata.
3. Verify with TryUnfurl — paste the exact URL (including any redirects) into TryUnfurl.com to confirm the live page is actually serving the updated tags.

-> Check what your page is actually serving now