When someone posts a URL in a Discord message, Discordbot requests that page and collects information such as its title, description, and an image for the link preview. An og:image tag is the Open Graph standard way to identify a representative image, but Discord does not publish a complete parser specification or promise that it relies exclusively on Open Graph. The preview can also be hidden by the viewer’s Discord settings, and Discord may temporarily cache linked media.
What happens when a link is shared
Discord’s Support explanation, dated August 5, 2026, describes a request-driven process:
- A person sends a message containing a web URL.
- Discordbot visits that URL and retrieves page information, including data such as the title, description, and image.
- Discord builds a link-preview card and delivers the preview to clients through its service.
Discord says this is triggered by a link being shared. It does not continuously crawl websites on its own. The exact fields Discord accepts, the order in which it chooses competing image candidates, and its fallback rules are not fully documented. Therefore, adding Open Graph metadata is the best standards-based way to express your preference, not a guarantee of one particular card appearance.
Discord also says that a copy of a linked image or video may be saved temporarily so it can load faster later. The documentation does not specify how long that copy remains.
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How Open Graph identifies the preview image
The Open Graph Protocol describes a page as a rich object. Its four required properties are og:title, og:type, og:image, and og:url. The image property is the URL of an image that represents the object.
| Property | Purpose | Status in the Open Graph specification |
|---|---|---|
og:title |
The page or object title. | Required |
og:type |
The object type, such as a website or article. | Required |
og:image |
The representative image URL. | Required |
og:url |
The canonical URL of the object. | Required |
og:image:secure_url |
An HTTPS version of the image URL when one is available. | Optional structured image property |
og:image:type |
The image MIME type, such as image/jpeg. |
Optional structured image property |
og:image:width |
The image width in pixels. | Optional structured image property |
og:image:height |
The image height in pixels. | Optional structured image property |
og:image:alt |
Alternative text describing the image. | Optional, but the specification says it should be supplied when og:image is supplied |
The Open Graph specification illustrates a JPEG that is 400 pixels wide and 300 pixels high. Those values are examples from the protocol, not Discord requirements. Discord’s published material does not state a required width, aspect ratio, byte limit, or complete list of accepted formats for automatic website previews.
How to add an Open Graph image to a page
Put the tags in the HTML document’s <head>, and use the URL of the image you want associated with that page:
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Example article</title>
<meta property="og:title" content="Example article">
<meta property="og:type" content="article">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/articles/example">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/images/example.jpg">
<meta property="og:image:secure_url" content="https://example.com/images/example.jpg">
<meta property="og:image:type" content="image/jpeg">
<meta property="og:image:width" content="400">
<meta property="og:image:height" content="300">
<meta property="og:image:alt" content="A short description of the example article image">
</head>
<body>...</body>
</html>Change the title, canonical URL, image URL, type, and description for each page. If your site generates pages with a template or a content-management system, make sure the tags are generated in the server-rendered HTML that a new request receives, rather than being added only after a browser-side script runs. The Discord documentation does not promise how much client-side JavaScript it executes, so server-rendered metadata is the less ambiguous choice.
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What Discord has and has not documented about image selection
Discord confirms that it retrieves an image when it fetches a shared page, while Open Graph gives publishers a standard place to declare one. Discord has not published an exhaustive statement that og:image is its only input, nor has it documented precedence when a page contains several possible images. A correct tag therefore improves the odds that the intended image is found, but cannot establish an exact fallback result.
Do not turn the Open Graph example’s 400-by-300 dimensions into a Discord rule. No current official Discord source reviewed for this article states a mandatory size, ratio, maximum file size, or complete accepted-format list for HTML-page previews. A direct image or GIF URL pasted into chat is a separate case: Discord’s image-upload guidance says such a URL can display the image in a link preview. That observation does not prove a particular Open Graph parsing rule for an HTML page.
Why a website image may not appear in Discord
The preview is disabled on the viewer’s account
On Discord for desktop, open User Settings → App Settings → Accessibility and check Show embeds and link previews. Discord’s display-settings guidance says this control can prevent web-link previews from appearing automatically. A user’s setting can therefore hide a valid preview without any change to your HTML.
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Confirm that the message contains the page URL, not an internal image path that requires authentication. A direct image or GIF link follows a different display path from an HTML page with Open Graph metadata.
The fetch is blocked or fails
Review web-server logs for a request whose User-Agent contains Discordbot. Discord gives this example:
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Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Discordbot/2.0; +https://discordapp.com)Discord notes that other parts of this string can change and that User-Agent strings can be forged. For firewall decisions, check the requesting IP against Discord’s official published public IP ranges and recheck those ranges periodically because they can change. Avoid allowing or denying traffic solely on a brittle full-string match.
The page exposes stale or competing metadata
Inspect the HTML returned to a fresh request and verify that the intended og:title, og:url, and og:image are present in the document head. If a deployment changed the image recently, Discord may still have a temporary copy of linked media; its Support article does not give a cache lifetime. Sharing a URL again after the page is corrected can cause another fetch, but Discord does not document an instant cache purge or a guaranteed refresh schedule.
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The image itself is unsuitable for the request
Check that the image URL responds without a login session, redirects sensibly, and returns image data rather than an HTML error page. Open Graph allows you to declare the MIME type, dimensions, secure URL, and alternative text, but Discord has not published acceptance thresholds for those values.
Discord’s cache and the privacy effect
Discord says that linked image and video copies may be stored for a while and then delivered through Discord’s servers instead of being fetched directly from the original host every time a person views the message. The stated privacy effect is that the viewer’s IP address is not sent to the original media host merely because the viewer loads the Discord preview. “For a while” is the only duration given; do not assume a fixed number of minutes, hours, or days.
This behavior means that changing an image file at the same URL may not immediately change every already-generated preview. Use a new image URL when you need an unambiguous asset identity, and understand that this is a cache-management tactic, not a documented Discord invalidation command.
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Automatic previews versus bot and webhook embeds
An automatic website preview is generated from a URL that a person posts. Discord separately supports custom embed objects authored by bots or webhooks. Its webhooks and embeds guidance describes fields such as an embed image and thumbnail that the developer supplies directly. Those fields are not evidence of how Discord parses Open Graph tags from ordinary web pages.
Discord’s API reference for image formatting and image data likewise documents API embed objects. Use that API when your bot should control an embed explicitly; use page metadata when you want Discord to create a preview for a shared URL.
A practical verification workflow
- Open the final URL in a normal browser and confirm it resolves without a login requirement.
- View the delivered HTML source and verify the Open Graph tags are in the
<head>. - Request the page from a server or monitoring host and inspect web-server logs for Discordbot requests.
- Post the URL in a test channel where link previews are enabled in the viewing account.
- If the image is missing, separate the possibilities: metadata not delivered, fetch blocked, temporary caching, or a user setting hiding embeds.
This process tests your page and account settings; it cannot reveal an undocumented Discord parser rule or force Discord to discard a cached copy.
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If you only need a clean visual check of the page you are about to share, ScreenshotNeo can capture the rendered URL through one request. It is not a replacement for Discord’s own fetch or a guarantee of the Discord card, but it can show whether your page renders correctly before you troubleshoot metadata.
cURL (see the ScreenshotNeo documentation):
curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://stripe.com -o shot.webpPython:
import requests
r = requests.get("https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot", params={"access_key": "YOUR_API_KEY", "url": "https://stripe.com"}, timeout=90)
open("shot.webp", "wb").write(r.content)Node.js:
const q = new URLSearchParams({ access_key: 'YOUR_API_KEY', url: 'https://stripe.com' });
const res = await fetch(`https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot?${q}`);ScreenshotNeo removes cookie-consent banners, newsletter popups, and chat widgets before the capture; bot checks, blank pages, failed loads, timeouts, and cache hits are not billed, and response headers identify the page verdict and billing status. Its MCP server provides take_screenshot, get_page_info, and capture_pdf tools for Claude, Cursor, and other MCP clients. The free plan includes 1,000 screenshots each month with no card, and paid plans start at $5 for 3,000 shots. Sign up for the free plan.
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Common diagnostic cases
| Symptom | Likely area | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| No card appears for anyone | Page fetch or metadata | Share the URL again, request the HTML directly, confirm the tags are server-rendered, and inspect logs for Discordbot. |
| One person sees no card, others do | Client display setting | Check Show embeds and link previews under desktop Accessibility settings. |
| Title and description appear but not the image | Image URL or image selection | Verify og:image is present, reachable without authentication, and returns an image; Discord’s selection precedence is undocumented. |
| A recently changed image is still visible | Temporary Discord copy | Allow for an unspecified cache period and consider a new asset URL; there is no documented purge control. |
| Your firewall never shows a request | Network policy or wrong user-agent assumption | Search for requests containing Discordbot, account for changing User-Agent text, and validate source IPs against Discord’s published ranges. |
| A bot message has a different image | Custom embed object | Inspect the bot or webhook payload; its image or thumbnail fields are independent of the page’s Open Graph metadata. |
Frequently asked questions
Does og:image:alt become visible text in Discord?
The Open Graph specification defines it as alternative text and recommends supplying it with og:image. Discord’s link-preview documentation does not say whether that value is displayed to users, announced by accessibility tools, or used only internally, so do not treat it as visible card copy.
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Can I rely on a particular image format for an HTML-page preview?
No complete Discord-specific format list is published in the sources cited here. Declare the MIME type with og:image:type when known, serve the image at a reachable URL, and avoid presenting any unlisted format or size as a Discord requirement.
Is a direct GIF URL the same as an Open Graph image?
No. Discord’s upload guidance says a pasted direct image or GIF URL can display as a preview. That is a direct-media behavior and does not establish how Discord parses an HTML page’s Open Graph tags.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does og:image:alt become visible text in Discord?
The Open Graph specification defines it as alternative text and recommends supplying it with og:image. Discord’s link-preview documentation does not say whether that value is displayed to users, announced by accessibility tools, or used only internally, so do not treat it as visible card copy.
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Can I rely on a particular image format for an HTML-page preview?
No complete Discord-specific format list is published in the cited sources. Declare the MIME type with og:image:type when known and serve the image at a reachable URL.
Is a direct GIF URL the same as an Open Graph image?
No. A pasted direct image or GIF URL follows Discord’s direct-media preview behavior and does not establish how Discord parses an HTML page’s Open Graph tags.
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