The right Open Graph image size for a Shopify store is 1200 × 630 pixels, a 1.91:1 ratio, saved as a JPG well under 1 MB. That one size works for Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Slack and iMessage, and X trims it to 2:1 with almost nothing lost. The size is the easy part. The hard part on Shopify is that you mostly don’t choose the image. Your theme takes it from whatever photo the page already has, and that photo is usually square.
My opinion, plainly: most Shopify share previews don’t look bad because the store skipped an app. They look bad because a square or portrait product photo is being pushed into a wide card. Fix that one thing and you’ve fixed most of it. Before you change anything, drop your current image into the free OG Image Size Checker for Shopify. It shows the size, ratio and file size, what each platform cuts off, and can make a 1200 × 630 version in your browser.
The sizes, once, so you can stop searching
| Where the link is shared | Card shape | What to give it | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.91:1 | 1200 × 630 | Under 600 × 315 you get a small thumbnail instead of the large card. Max file size 8 MB. | |
| 1.91:1 | 1200 × 627 (630 is fine) | Small images become a thumbnail beside the text. Max file size 5 MB. | |
| X (Twitter) | 2:1 for the large card | 1200 × 630 works. 1200 × 600 is exact. | A 1.91:1 image loses a thin strip from top and bottom. Max file size 5 MB. |
| Small thumbnail or wide preview, depending on the app and image | 1200 × 630, kept light | Big, heavy files are the most common reason a preview shows no image at all. | |
| Slack, iMessage, Discord | Wide preview | 1200 × 630 | All read the same og:image tag. If it works on Facebook, it works here. |
| Shopify Preferences | 1.91:1 | Shopify suggests 1200 × 628 | Close enough to 630 that nobody can tell the difference. |
Don’t make five versions for five platforms. Your store outputs one og:image per page, so you only get one image anyway. Make it 1200 × 630 and keep the important part away from the edges.
Where Shopify actually gets the image
Dawn and most Online Store 2.0 themes write the Open Graph tags in a snippet usually called meta-tags.liquid. They use Shopify’s page_image, which changes depending on the page:
- Product page: the product’s first media item. Drag a different photo to the first spot in the product editor and the share image changes with it.
- Collection page: the collection image you set under Products → Collections.
- Blog post: the article’s featured image.
- Home page and plain pages: the store-wide Online Store → Preferences → Social sharing image. Some themes also have a share image under Customize → Theme settings → Social media. If you’ve uploaded one in Preferences and it never shows up, check there.
So “what’s my OG image size?” really means four different questions. Your home page image is something you design. Product, collection and blog images are photos you already have that also end up as share images. Most stores only ever look at the first one.
What a square product photo loses
A 1.91:1 card is wide and short. When Facebook or LinkedIn get a square image, they keep the middle and cut the top and bottom. Simple maths:
- Square (1:1), e.g. 2048 × 2048: about 52% of the height is shown. Roughly a quarter goes from the top and a quarter from the bottom.
- Portrait (4:5), e.g. 1600 × 2000, which a lot of fashion stores use: only about 42% of the height is shown.
- Tall portrait (2:3): about 35%.
- Wide (1.91:1), 1200 × 630: 100%. Nothing is cut.
Here’s what that looks like on a store. Saffron & Sole is a fictional sandal brand that shoots every product as a 4:5 model shot, with the sandal at the bottom of the frame. On Instagram that’s a great photo. Shared on Facebook, the card shows a pair of knees. The product is literally the part that gets cut. Swapping the first media item to a 3/4 angle shot of the sandal on a plain background fixes every share of that product, and it takes about half a minute per product.
Don’t change your whole catalogue to 1.91:1 because of this. Square and portrait photos are right for the collection grid and for mobile product pages, and that’s where people actually buy. Social cards matter less. Just make sure the first image still makes sense when only its middle half is shown.
The home page image is the one you should design
Your home page link gets shared in places that matter: a WhatsApp group, a supplier’s Slack, a LinkedIn post about your launch, your own email signature. It’s also the one share image Shopify lets you fully control, and on many stores I look at it’s either empty, the logo or a hero banner with the text cut off.
Take Kettle Ridge Coffee, a fictional subscription roaster. Its homepage hero is 2400 × 900 with “Fresh roasted, every two weeks” written on the left. Used as a share image, the platform crops it to 1.91:1, so the start of the headline gets trimmed and the card reads “…roasted, every two weeks”. A proper share image for that store would be:
- 1200 × 630, JPG, roughly 100–300 KB.
- The logo, one bag of coffee and one short line, all inside the middle of the canvas, with about 60 px of empty space on every side. LinkedIn rounds the corners and X trims the top and bottom slightly.
- Text at least 40–50 px tall. These cards are often shown at around 500 px wide on a phone, so anything smaller can’t be read.
- No “Shop now” button drawn into the image. Nobody can click a picture of a button.
Upload it in Online Store → Preferences → Social sharing image, save, and you’re done for the home page and every page that doesn’t have its own image.
File size: lighter than the limits say
Facebook allows 8 MB and LinkedIn and X allow 5 MB. Those are upper limits, not targets. The problem on Shopify is that your theme may point og:image at the original upload. If you uploaded a 5000 × 5000 PNG from the photographer, that’s the file every scraper has to download. Slow or very heavy images are the usual reason a preview turns up with no picture, especially on WhatsApp.
My rule: keep share images under 1 MB, and under 300 KB if you can. A 1200 × 630 JPG at normal quality usually comes in well under that. If your product photos are huge originals, resize them before upload. That helps your page speed too. The Shopify Product Image Resizer and Compress Image to 100KB tools both run in your browser.
How to check what your store is really sending
- Open the page, view the page source, and search for
og:image. Dawn also writesog:image:widthandog:image:height, so you can see the size straight away. - Copy the image URL into the OG image checker to see the ratio, file size and the crop each platform makes.
- If something looks wrong, fix it in Shopify (reorder product media, set the collection image or upload a Preferences image).
Changed it and the old image still shows? That’s the cache
Platforms save a preview the first time a link is shared and keep showing it. Updating Shopify doesn’t tell them anything changed.
- Facebook: paste the URL into the Sharing Debugger and click Scrape Again. Sometimes it needs a second scrape before the new image appears.
- LinkedIn: run the URL through Post Inspector, which fetches it fresh.
- X: there’s no public refresh button any more. It usually picks up the change on its own after a while.
- WhatsApp, Slack, iMessage: they keep their own copies. For a link you’re about to share, add a harmless query string such as
?v=2so it counts as a new URL.
One more trap: if you replace a product image with a new file that has the same name, the old one can stay in caches longer. Upload it with a new file name.
What I’d do this week
- Design one 1200 × 630 home page image and upload it in Preferences. It takes an hour and covers your most-shared link.
- Check your 10 best sellers and anything you run ads or influencer links to. If the first media item doesn’t survive a 1.91:1 crop, move a better shot to the first spot.
- Set a collection image on the collections you link to from campaigns, so they don’t fall back to something generic.
- Leave the other 600 products alone until they matter. A custom share image for every SKU, using a metafield and a theme edit, is only worth it for products you actively promote.
- Re-scrape the changed URLs in the Facebook Sharing Debugger and LinkedIn Post Inspector.
While you’re improving how your links look in search too, Meta Title Length for Google in 2026 covers the title people see before they click, and Favicon Sizes for a Shopify Theme covers the small icon next to it.
Work with me
I’m Faraz, a Shopify and AI automation consultant. If you want your store’s share images, metafields and search setup handled properly, including per-product share images for the products you advertise, I can help. Get in touch at farazhussain.com or WhatsApp +92 334 3454747.
Saffron & Sole and Kettle Ridge Coffee are fictional example stores. Platform sizes and limits are taken from each platform’s published guidance at the time of writing, and they can change how previews are displayed, so always check your own links in their debug tools.