Show HN: Metacheck – preview how any link appears on social media and chat apps

[talljohnson1234]

https://metacheck.appstate.co/

Hey HN,

I’ve been an indie hacker for a while, but I haven’t had much success with my past projects. Recently, I came across Marc Lou’s advice about building free tools just for fun, so I decided to give it a shot.

I built Metacheck, a simple tool that lets you preview how any link will appear on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Whatsapp, Telegram, and other platforms. No API keys, no setup—just paste a link and see the preview.

Why I built this I often ran into issues where social platforms displayed broken or unexpected link previews. Debugging Open Graph meta tags was annoying, so I made a tool to make it easier.

How it works Fetches metadata from any URL Parses Open Graph & Twitter Card tags Shows real-time previews of how the link will look when shared

Try it out: https://metacheck.appstate.co/

[pogue]

This is very cool!

Would it be possible to add Bluesky link cards? It passes through this domain to extract the link card and can be very hit and miss on how they show up.

https://cardyb.bsky.app/v1/extract?url=

https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Abluesky-social%2Fatproto%...

[giantrobot → pogue]

Blue sky's card domain is cute and clever. I miss clever "machine" (may be a HA cluster) names.

[WD-42]

Here’s a version of the same idea but runs locally, so you can test without deploying. https://apps.gnome.org/SharePreview/

OP, maybe next step is to try a local version?

[pizzly]

This is very good. One thing though Telegram (at least the linux version) does not support transparency and makes the transparency red. However, Metacheck shows it as transparent. Having all this on one page is a massive time saver.

[rahimnathwani]

You might get more users if you had shareable URLs, e.g.

https://metacheck.appstate.co/site/news.ycombinator.com

[talljohnson1234 → rahimnathwani]

This is now possible chief, kindly try it out.

[djhn → rahimnathwani]

That is such a great growth hack. As in, it’s both a useful feature AND a growth mechanism.

[gigatree]

Probably want to have https appended automatically

[talljohnson1234 → gigatree]

Would push a fix for this, apologies for the inconvenience.

[talljohnson1234 → talljohnson1234]

a fix has been pushed for this, you can try it now.

I Deeply appreciate the feedback.

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

Ah I'd been using https://www.opengraph.xyz/

[kridsdale1]

This doesn’t work for google maps links. It shows an icon and not the open graph images associated with a shared location.

Try this for instance: https://maps.app.goo.gl/jfj2vTjeZDTYSGMv9?g_st=com.google.ma...

[eddiejaoude]

Awesome! Love these previews tools! Super useful.

I am creating a free tool to preview the whole social post.

[ulrischa]

A good idea bit the visualisation ist wrong. I.e. the preview image will not be shown correctly

[2big2fail_47 → ulrischa]

yeah it doesn’t work if you try it with https://youtube.com

i really like the idea though

[talljohnson1234 → 2big2fail_47]

Would investigate why it wasn't working and push out a fix. thanks for trying it out.

[vivzkestrel]

An error occurred in the Server Components render. The specific message is omitted in production builds to avoid leaking sensitive details. A digest property is included on this error instance which may provide additional details about the nature of the error.

[toteroni]

This is awesome! I can’t believe this never occurred to me- my wife texts me links to her UX all the time to see how her changes look before the changes go to prod.

[gazook89]

I like it, and one additional thing (because isn’t there always): It’d be nice if this could be offline to use with local development.

[marcellus23]

Should add support for Apple platforms (i.e. LPLinkView used in Notes/Messages/Mail etc.)

[talljohnson1234 → marcellus23]

Dully noted, will push this in the next update.

[imcritic]

An error occurred in the Server Components render. The specific message is omitted in production builds to avoid leaking sensitive details. A digest property is included on this error instance which may provide additional details about the nature of the error.

[talljohnson1234 → imcritic]

Will look into this issue and push a fix.

[imcritic → talljohnson1234]

Seems to work today. Nice service, thank you for it!

[vladkens]

Great idea! Quick and easy link previewing is super useful.

[talljohnson1234 → vladkens]

Thanks for the feedback, really means alot.

[uneekname]

Well done! I was recently looking around for something like this and didn't love the options. Bookmarked Metacheck :)

[talljohnson1234 → uneekname]

Thanks, really means alot.

[mediumsmart]

Very good. I use metatags.io at the moment. Local version would be great.

[talljohnson1234 → mediumsmart]

Local version is coming soon.

[colesantiago]

Is this open source?

I'm assuming it is since I see a GitHub logo on it, although it isn't working...

[talljohnson1234 → colesantiago]

Here is the repo link

https://github.com/oyeolamilekan/metacheck

[talljohnson1234 → colesantiago]

Sorry, it was just an oversight. I will append the URL in the next deployment.

[flas9sd]

well done.. made me enable my static-sitegens opengraph plugin, add images, rewrite summaries, thanks!

Mastodon preview? :)

[talljohnson1234 → flas9sd]

Done, this has been deployed.

[talljohnson1234 → flas9sd]

Coming soon hopefully, this Saturday.

[brianfryer]

10/10; thank you so much!

[talljohnson1234 → brianfryer]

Thanks for the feedback.

[vawogbemi]

can i see the code?

[talljohnson1234 → vawogbemi]

Sure, will make it open source soon.

[dbg31415]

Another good site for previewing metadata.

https://socialsharepreview.com/

[swagatkonchada]

it doesn't recognise a url without the scheme? come on!

[talljohnson1234 → swagatkonchada]

Will push a fix for this, sorry about that.

[bryanhogan]

Can anyone tell me why WhatsApp seems so random whether it display the social preview image and text or not? E.g. for my own website https://bryanhogan.com/ it shows up in the tool but not in actual chats.

[mh- → bryanhogan]

I've noticed this just as a casual user of WhatsApp, when pasting links into a conversation. I'm not sure what triggers it either, but I can say that it sometimes works for (e.g.) one tweet and not another.

[leonhard → bryanhogan]

I just tried your URL on my WhatsApp and it shows up exactly as in the preview from the tool. My experience is is has to be the full URL with https:// and it only shows the first link, and it sometimes gets confused when you have multiple links in a message and shuffle them around/delete some of them.

[esafak → bryanhogan]

Maybe it times out depending on the load.