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  • talljohnson1234(17)

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

(metacheck.appstate.co)
165 points talljohnson1234 | 48 comments | 11 Mar 25 20:53 UTC | HN request time: 1.115s | source | bottom

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/

1. vawogbemi ◴[15 Mar 25 00:22 UTC] No.43368730[source]▶
can i see the code?
replies(1): >>43373110 #
2. pogue ◴[15 Mar 25 11:06 UTC] No.43371708[source]▶
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%...

replies(1): >>43372346 #
3. gigatree ◴[15 Mar 25 11:07 UTC] No.43371720[source]▶
Probably want to have https appended automatically
replies(1): >>43372979 #
4. colesantiago ◴[15 Mar 25 11:54 UTC] No.43371934[source]▶
Is this open source?

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

replies(2): >>43373117 #>>43413229 #
5. pizzly ◴[15 Mar 25 13:05 UTC] No.43372278[source]▶
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.
6. giantrobot ◴[15 Mar 25 13:16 UTC] No.43372346[source]▶
Blue sky's card domain is cute and clever. I miss clever "machine" (may be a HA cluster) names.
7. imcritic ◴[15 Mar 25 14:32 UTC] No.43372784[source]▶
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.
replies(1): >>43372957 #
8. gazook89 ◴[15 Mar 25 14:49 UTC] No.43372896[source]▶
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.
9. swagatkonchada ◴[15 Mar 25 14:50 UTC] No.43372901[source]▶
it doesn't recognise a url without the scheme? come on!
replies(1): >>43372954 #
10. vivzkestrel ◴[15 Mar 25 14:58 UTC] No.43372946[source]▶
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.
11. talljohnson1234 ◴[15 Mar 25 15:00 UTC] No.43372954[source]▶
Will push a fix for this, sorry about that.
12. talljohnson1234 ◴[15 Mar 25 15:01 UTC] No.43372957[source]▶
Will look into this issue and push a fix.
replies(1): >>43378054 #
13. talljohnson1234 ◴[15 Mar 25 15:04 UTC] No.43372979[source]▶
Would push a fix for this, apologies for the inconvenience.
replies(1): >>43413789 #
14. talljohnson1234 ◴[15 Mar 25 15:23 UTC] No.43373110[source]▶
Sure, will make it open source soon.
15. talljohnson1234 ◴[15 Mar 25 15:25 UTC] No.43373117[source]▶
Sorry, it was just an oversight. I will append the URL in the next deployment.
16. WD-42 ◴[15 Mar 25 15:59 UTC] No.43373341[source]▶
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?

17. brianfryer ◴[15 Mar 25 16:35 UTC] No.43373561[source]▶
10/10; thank you so much!
replies(1): >>43416298 #
18. 01HNNWZ0MV43FF ◴[15 Mar 25 16:41 UTC] No.43373597[source]▶
Ah I'd been using https://www.opengraph.xyz/
19. toteroni ◴[15 Mar 25 17:12 UTC] No.43373813[source]▶
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.
20. bryanhogan ◴[15 Mar 25 17:50 UTC] No.43374067[source]▶
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.
replies(3): >>43374375 #>>43375466 #>>43376973 #
21. ulrischa ◴[15 Mar 25 18:18 UTC] No.43374253[source]▶
A good idea bit the visualisation ist wrong. I.e. the preview image will not be shown correctly
replies(1): >>43374340 #
22. 2big2fail_47 ◴[15 Mar 25 18:33 UTC] No.43374340[source]▶
yeah it doesn’t work if you try it with https://youtube.com

i really like the idea though

replies(1): >>43374555 #
23. mh- ◴[15 Mar 25 18:38 UTC] No.43374375[source]▶
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.
24. talljohnson1234 ◴[15 Mar 25 19:12 UTC] No.43374555{3}[source]▶
Would investigate why it wasn't working and push out a fix. thanks for trying it out.
25. rahimnathwani ◴[15 Mar 25 20:52 UTC] No.43375078[source]▶
You might get more users if you had shareable URLs, e.g.

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

replies(2): >>43376201 #>>43413088 #
26. esafak ◴[15 Mar 25 22:11 UTC] No.43375466[source]▶
Maybe it times out depending on the load.
27. flas9sd ◴[15 Mar 25 22:36 UTC] No.43375599[source]▶
well done.. made me enable my static-sitegens opengraph plugin, add images, rewrite summaries, thanks!

Mastodon preview? :)

replies(2): >>43413823 #>>43416510 #
28. marcellus23 ◴[16 Mar 25 00:40 UTC] No.43376144[source]▶
Should add support for Apple platforms (i.e. LPLinkView used in Notes/Messages/Mail etc.)
replies(1): >>43413807 #
29. djhn ◴[16 Mar 25 00:57 UTC] No.43376201[source]▶
That is such a great growth hack. As in, it’s both a useful feature AND a growth mechanism.
30. uneekname ◴[16 Mar 25 02:24 UTC] No.43376543[source]▶
Well done! I was recently looking around for something like this and didn't love the options. Bookmarked Metacheck :)
replies(1): >>43413098 #
31. dbg31415 ◴[16 Mar 25 03:23 UTC] No.43376752[source]▶
Another good site for previewing metadata.

https://socialsharepreview.com/

32. leonhard ◴[16 Mar 25 04:41 UTC] No.43376973[source]▶
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.
33. mediumsmart ◴[16 Mar 25 05:30 UTC] No.43377091[source]▶
Very good. I use metatags.io at the moment. Local version would be great.
replies(1): >>43416293 #
34. imcritic ◴[16 Mar 25 10:51 UTC] No.43378054{3}[source]▶
Seems to work today. Nice service, thank you for it!
35. vladkens ◴[17 Mar 25 15:16 UTC] No.43389458[source]▶
Great idea! Quick and easy link previewing is super useful.
replies(1): >>43416288 #
36. kridsdale1 ◴[17 Mar 25 21:24 UTC] No.43392861[source]▶
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...

37. eddiejaoude ◴[19 Mar 25 01:19 UTC] No.43407339[source]▶
Awesome! Love these previews tools! Super useful.

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

38. talljohnson1234 ◴[19 Mar 25 15:14 UTC] No.43413088[source]▶
This is now possible chief, kindly try it out.
39. talljohnson1234 ◴[19 Mar 25 15:14 UTC] No.43413098[source]▶
Thanks, really means alot.
40. talljohnson1234 ◴[19 Mar 25 15:22 UTC] No.43413229[source]▶
Here is the repo link

https://github.com/oyeolamilekan/metacheck

41. talljohnson1234 ◴[19 Mar 25 16:04 UTC] No.43413789{3}[source]▶
a fix has been pushed for this, you can try it now.

I Deeply appreciate the feedback.

42. talljohnson1234 ◴[19 Mar 25 16:04 UTC] No.43413807[source]▶
Dully noted, will push this in the next update.
43. talljohnson1234 ◴[19 Mar 25 16:05 UTC] No.43413823[source]▶
Coming soon hopefully, this Saturday.
44. talljohnson1234 ◴[19 Mar 25 19:25 UTC] No.43416288[source]▶
Thanks for the feedback, really means alot.
45. talljohnson1234 ◴[19 Mar 25 19:25 UTC] No.43416293[source]▶
Local version is coming soon.
46. talljohnson1234 ◴[19 Mar 25 19:25 UTC] No.43416298[source]▶
Thanks for the feedback.
47. talljohnson1234 ◴[19 Mar 25 19:48 UTC] No.43416510[source]▶
Done, this has been deployed.