Forwarding Appreciated: A WhatsApp Link Sharing Bug That Cannot Be Reported

Published on March 12, 2025, filed under Development (RSS feed for all categories).

Do you work on WhatsApp, or know someone who does? Please pass on this bug report so that WhatsApp can fix an issue around how they display links. Thanks!

Since it added Open Graph support to its messenger—which enhances link sharing, and which I’ll also refer to as “web page previews” ^*—, WhatsApp has had a link sharing bug:

One consequence of this bug and WhatsApp (as well as Signal and LinkedIn) not parsing HTML well enough is that fewer links show as intended. Another consequence is that site owners—we—need to use more verbose code than necessary to have images and metadata displayed, because we are forced to use non-required HTML tags and quotes. ^†

I’ve informed WhatsApp about this issue back in 2021, but similarly to now, the issue report was effectively mishandled by WhatsApp’s support automation.

I’ve informed WhatsApp again these days (via messenger ‡ and through their support form), with the following report:

Hi WhatsApp team—

there is an issue in the way WhatsApp displays web pages and their previews [i.e., how WhatsApp handles links]. This issue likely affects a sizable number of pages and users.

In layman’s terms, if web pages use certain code, they are being shown with a preview image and special metadata.

The problem is that some web pages do use the necessary code, but WhatsApp does not show the previews and the metadata.

This is where we need to be more technical, something that should help your engineering team debug and fix this issue:

Technically, the WhatsApp preview parser has a problem with both omitted HTML tags and omitted HTML quotes.

First, here are two test pages (which you can share on WhatsApp—as in a note [i.e., message] to yourself—to tell the problem). Please ignore that the tests say “LinkedIn”—LinkedIn has a similar problem, and [I’ve reached out to them] to get this fixed as well.

1. hell.meiert.org/temp/­linkedin/sharing.html (this code works)
2. hell.meiert.org/temp/­linkedin/sharing-gap.html (this code is technically the same and should also work and show preview image and metadata—but doesn’t)

To fix this issue:

• It’s important to understand the HTML specification, which allows the omission of certain HTML tags and quotes. (The second, “gap” page that I shared uses this feature.)

• Accordingly, test page 2 uses perfectly valid HTML and is where WhatsApp previews are broken. For WhatsApp to be able to show more previews correctly, 2) would need to have the same result when shared as 1) does.

• To understand that WhatsApp’s current behavior is broken, it may be helpful to compare the source code of the pages that I shared with the resulting DOM. The DOM is identical, but the WhatsApp preview parser can’t handle the HTML code itself.

As this affects users and web pages and is a bit technical, I highly recommend passing this issue on to the team in charge of previews. This part of WhatsApp previews is simply broken.

I’m there and happy to help if you or the team have follow-up questions.

Now, why share?

In essence, WhatsApp has designed their support so that there is no support, including that WhatsApp doesn’t learn about wider issues with their messenger.

The automated responses to my two contact attempts were answered by software, which didn’t “understand” a thing, and seemed to be happy to leave it at that.

(That software is dumb—it ended giving guidance to “complete the registration process and activate my account.” That this is both bad for users and bad for business, well, I skip that.)

This leads me to the start: If you work on WhatsApp, or know someone who does, please pass on this bug report so that WhatsApp can fix this issue around link sharing, that also affects site owners and their code quality. Thank you!

As you could tell from the intro and this correspondence, it’s not just WhatsApp—LinkedIn and Signal have buggy HTML support, too, which also prevents them from showing more links correctly. I’ve contacted LinkedIn and Signal, but while they might confirm and take action, I don’t have any affirmative feedback from them yet. That means, if you know someone at Linked or Signal who could check on this issue, that would help, too. Their preview parsing is as bad as WhatsApp’s, and we really need them to fix this issue, too. Cheers!

^* I know, Open Graph markup does not represent a “preview.” In my correspondence, I spontaneously went for this expression not to be too technical in my report, but missed challenging the wording.

^† This does all work elsewhere: Mastodon, Bluesky, and Twitter/X, for example, all show links correctly even when using minimal markup.

‡ I prefer Signal and use WhatsApp—with notifications off—only for some contacts important to me. But still, yes, I currently have WhatsApp installed.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a web developer, manager, and author. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager for small and large enterprises, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)