Twitter Card Generator

Most fields fall back to Open Graph

X reads og:title, og:description and og:image when the Twitter equivalents are absent, so duplicating a full set is unnecessary. The one tag genuinely worth declaring is twitter:card, because its default is the small thumbnail layout rather than the large image most people want.

Card types

summary shows a small square thumbnail beside the text. summary_large_image shows a full-width image above it and is what most publishers use. player embeds video or audio and requires allowlisting. app promotes a mobile application. Choosing summary_large_image is the single highest-impact change to how a link appears in a timeline.

Image requirements differ by card type

The large image card wants a 2:1 ratio, ideally 1200×600 or larger, under 5 MB. The summary card crops to a square, so an image composed for 2:1 loses its edges entirely. Text near the sides of a wide image disappears in the square crop, which is why images with captions embedded often read as truncated.

twitter:site and twitter:creator are attribution

These name the publishing account and the author's account. They add an attribution line to the card and have no effect on the preview otherwise, so they are optional rather than required.

Previews are cached and images must be public

As with Open Graph, an image behind authentication produces a blank card that renders fine to its author. Cards are cached, so a correction needs a re-scrape through the platform's validator before shared links update.