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If you share a link in WhatsApp, it gives a preview, which remains the same even after you update the link externally, for example a YouTube video link.

Is there a way to force WhatsApp to refresh this preview?

This question is regardless of the device you use (Desktop, Mobile, etc.).

Kind of like Scrape Again in https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/ :

Facebook's Scrape Again

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2 Answers 2

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I've found that adding random text to the end of the hyperlink clears the cache. so: https://yoursite.com/?876564 Also, make sure you have flushed your site cache before.

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  • What do you mean flushed your site cache before? We're talking about sharing a link from a random site.
    – LWC
    Nov 25, 2022 at 10:50
  • @LWC No we are not talking about sharing from random sites. We are talking about sharing your own links that you have updated and you want to update the preview snippet on WhatsApp as well. The proposed solution here is the correct answer, append a random query string to the URL to force WhatApp to scrape again.
    – GeorgeP
    Feb 7 at 19:08
  • Cool, but since the question wasn't about self links, if one must flush then it solves a rather particular case of a general question.
    – LWC
    Feb 8 at 20:50
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Found in this answer:

Removing the http:// or https:// from the link will disable the Whatsapp rich-link previews:

enter image description here

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  • Thanks, but my question was how to make sure the preview is up to date, not how to remove it altogether.
    – LWC
    Aug 19, 2021 at 18:25
  • Please read the question again carefully. Your answer does not answer the original question.
    – DavidPostill ♦
    Aug 19, 2021 at 19:53
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    That's the best answer I can give. There's no way to have a dynamic preview because of the way that Whatsapp works: The sender constructs the entire message (with the preview) and sends it as rich text. The text then goes into the recipient's chat as-is, as a local copy that is no longer related to the original and that can no longer be modified (only deleted). To have the preview re-generated, the message needs to be resent, because it's the sender that creates it.
    – harrymc
    Aug 19, 2021 at 20:02

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