Softonic

Facebook Debugger Link Generator

Paste a URL and get back a ready-to-click link that opens the Facebook Sharing Debugger pre-loaded with that target. Useful when you have just updated og:image, og:title or the canonical tag and need to force Facebook to scrape the page again so the correct preview shows in new shares. The debugger also surfaces the exact warnings Facebook’s crawler produced, which is the fastest way to diagnose a broken thumbnail.

How to use the debugger link

  1. 1

    Paste your URL

    Drop in the page you want Facebook to re-scrape. Use the canonical URL, not an intermediate redirect.

  2. 2

    Generate the link

    The tool wraps the URL in Facebook's `developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/?q=` format.

  3. 3

    Open the debugger

    You land on Facebook's debugger page. Click "Scrape Again" to force a fresh fetch.

  4. 4

    Review warnings

    Facebook shows missing tags, image sizes, canonical mismatches and any HTTP errors its crawler saw.

What the Facebook crawler actually checks

The crawler fetches your page as facebookexternalhit/1.1 and reads the Open Graph tags in the <head>. Here is the minimum set it expects for a clean share preview.

Required and recommended tags

Tag Required Notes
og:title Yes 40-60 characters reads best on mobile.
og:type Yes Usually website or article.
og:url Yes Must match the canonical URL.
og:image Yes 1200x630 recommended; at least 600x315.
og:description No 80-200 characters.
og:image:width No Helps the first-render preview.
og:image:height No Same.
og:locale No en_US, es_ES, etc.

Common warnings and fixes

  • “The og:image property should be explicitly provided”, you either forgot the tag or it points to a relative URL. Use an absolute URL including the protocol.
  • “Provided og:image URL was not valid”, image is 404, behind auth, or blocked by robots.txt. Check with an incognito curl.
  • “Inferred property”, Facebook fell back to scraping the page body. The preview will be unstable until you declare the property explicitly.
  • “Image too small”, minimum dimensions for rich preview are 200x200 px. Below 1200x630 the preview may be square instead of landscape.

Cache behaviour

Once Facebook scrapes, it caches the Open Graph data for up to 30 days. New shares will use the cached preview even after you fix the tags. “Scrape Again” in the debugger is the only officially supported way to invalidate the cache without waiting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. The Sharing Debugger requires a logged-in Facebook account. If you share debugger URLs with a teammate, they will be prompted to sign in before they can use the “Scrape Again” button.

People who already have the page cached in their app will still see the old preview for a short time. The clean test is to paste the URL into a new post on a different account; that forces a fresh scrape for that share.

Twitter uses its own twitter:card tags plus the Open Graph tags as a fallback. The Facebook Debugger does not validate Twitter-specific tags; use the Twitter Card Validator for that.

The link is generated locally in this tool; no record of the URL you entered is stored on our side. Facebook logs all debugger requests on their side, as expected.

Related Tools

WhatsApp Link Generator

Create a canonical wa.me link from an international phone number, add an optional encoded message, copy the URL, or scan a browser-made QR code.

Hashtag Generator

Turn a topic, keywords or a caption into Unicode hashtag candidates locally, without uploading the text or claiming trend data.

YouTube Tag Generator

Generate focused Unicode YouTube video tags and related phrase variants with a 500-character copy box for YouTube Studio.

Twitter / X Character Counter

Count characters for X / Twitter posts against the 280-character limit. HTTP and HTTPS links are weighted as 23 characters, matching X's t.co URL rule.

LinkedIn Post Counter

Count UTF-16 planning units, visible characters, words and lines in a LinkedIn post locally before you publish.

Emoji Picker

Search a curated set of 16 common emoji by local name, choose one and copy it in your browser. No account, categories or skin-tone controls.

Tool available in other languages