Sharing podcasts no longer works
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@cheerfully34daf800ca could you share the link that you’re having trouble with? We can take a look on our end to see what might be causing the trouble.
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I am not sure about other use-cases, but my messaging app (Viber) still cannot display/preview those urls correctly (it could in the past).
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@nnone77 When sharing from Pocket Casts, the preview card you select in the sharing screen doesn’t actually change how the link appears in all apps. Most messaging platforms don’t support our preview formatting or may ignore it entirely. Instead, they just display a plain link.
The preview layout option was originally designed for sharing as a video (like to Instagram Stories).
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Alright, I got it, my main point then, is that it used to kind of work, so this feels like a regression.
[url=https://postimg.cc/30K4pq9z][img]https://i.postimg.cc/30K4pq9z/viber-image-2025-06-26-01-24-33-084.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=https://postimg.cc/zbwHyNwn][img]https://i.postimg.cc/zbwHyNwn/viber-image-2025-06-26-01-24-33-152.jpg[/img][/url]
(the same url then and now)
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Hi @nnone77!
We’ve been investigating this issue, and the problem specific to Viber is that the User-Agent header they’re sending in their requests from their preview/scrapper bots is indistinguishable from a real end user.
Currently, given the way our server side rendering works, it needs to be able to recognize bots. If we can’t recognize them, then we cannot serve them the right information they need to generate these previews. I’m pretty sure this is an issue not just with us, but with any other service that relies on being able to identify bots for server pre-rendering.
We have plans to improve our server side rendering system (no timeline available for this yet) to workaround these situations in the future but as things are right now there isn’t much we can do to fix the immediate problem.
Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.
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Thank you for the explanation. I think this problem pertains to other messaging apps as well, btw.
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Hi guys! First, thanks for the wonderful app! I’m using it like 3+ years, love this app!
I just want to add to the discussion an information and maybe let, following the point commented by the first person, a suggestion and request about a point.
I’m brazilian, and here in Brazil we use the most whatsapp for any circuntance, since free talking and family to enterprizes services and actions. So, all we talk day by day is almost all in WA. Then, whit this info, I mean that if we will share something, anything, will be through WA. And I’m sad by few months now because of this issue about thumbnails not appearing. I send a lot of podcasts sharing to my friends and famiily, and it’s been a hard work to me sending the link with a cover art downloaded in google to illustrate a little. I’m saying this because the comments about “Most messaging platforms don’t support our preview formatting or may ignore it entirely. Instead, they just display a plain link.” by Frank. And this IS important to a great number of people.
Perhaps you could simplefy again the process of sharing? We really need this so advanced layout? :/ Minor is more.
And finally, the request/suggestion about (still) the sharing.. If we really have to stay this advanced layout to share, could you let in the first screen already the option to send through the many options of plataforms? To me either, like the first commenter of this thread, it’s too many clicks to share the podcast, before it was so simple… I miss it, the new wayit’s very boring. I think this suggestion coul resolve the question to manyu people, like me and the first guy (sorry man, page 2, I can’t see you name now).
Trying here to make an image of example to you understand how could be. The text is in portutguese. Hope you like <3
https://ibb.co/bgGvL5fP
That’s all, the rest I appreciated very much the improvements you made, awesome, still the best app!
Congrats to you all! -
Hi wonderlucy!
Regarding the links not showing a preview in WhatsApp, would you please share some of those links here for us to investigate?
Regarding to your suggestion about sharing, I’ll share the feedback with our design team and we’ll take it into account for upcoming iterations.
Thanks a lot for your feedback!
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Hello dear Manuel staff!
Thanks for the reply! Sorry for the late return, I had no time to come make this post with details!
Last month I had the situation sharing all podcasts, where the post was like this:
https://ibb.co/DDG7PVNY (screen print)
Now most of it returned to the previously thumbnail, with no image:
https://ibb.co/TqWtpr4t (screen print)
Before the new layout, everything was going in perfect way in all podcasts. -
I also have this problem from time to time. Then it helps to close Whatsapp so that it tries to load the link preview again.
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This is examples of some of the podcasts with the problem (this occurs with all the episodes of the feed):
- No img in thumbnail:
- <a href=”https://pca.st/episode/3ead0a7b-9356-4666-abb0-efed828df238 “>https://pca.st/episode/3ead0a7b-9356-4666-abb0-efed828df238
- <a href=”https://pca.st/episode/c3bdcbc1-2c95-4812-ba12-2acab3e6ce93 “>https://pca.st/episode/c3bdcbc1-2c95-4812-ba12-2acab3e6ce93
- <a href=”https://pca.st/episode/787b00b7-b24a-4377-814f-1e5082b77f89 “>https://pca.st/episode/787b00b7-b24a-4377-814f-1e5082b77f89
- <a href=”https://pca.st/episode/3322393a-bdac-49e3-b094-7111b737c48a “>https://pca.st/episode/3322393a-bdac-49e3-b094-7111b737c48a
- <a href=”https://pca.st/episode/6c4c6e58-a7dc-4d5c-875d-d6af8df14249 “>https://pca.st/episode/6c4c6e58-a7dc-4d5c-875d-d6af8df14249
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- No thumbnails at all:
- <a href=”https://pca.st/episode/c5462b1d-880c-4adc-926a-4efd0a311fc4 “>https://pca.st/episode/c5462b1d-880c-4adc-926a-4efd0a311fc4
- <a href=”https://pca.st/episode/3d77d452-0a22-4bd4-89ee-a9206cc8e21d “>https://pca.st/episode/3d77d452-0a22-4bd4-89ee-a9206cc8e21d
- Thumbnails correct, with the cover art:
- <a href=”https://pca.st/episode/5f6b60d6-470d-45bd-8f45-51e154cb2279 “>https://pca.st/episode/5f6b60d6-470d-45bd-8f45-51e154cb2279
- <a href=”https://pca.st/podcast/f48614a0-1a2a-0131-6eb6-723c91aeae46 “>https://pca.st/podcast/f48614a0-1a2a-0131-6eb6-723c91aeae46
- <a href=”https://pca.st/podcast/a94a5fe0-71e7-0139-3450-0acc26574db2 “>https://pca.st/podcast/a94a5fe0-71e7-0139-3450-0acc26574db2
- https://pca.st/episode/e78c28d7-3200-42e3-b985-10637568fd14
These are tests with the most famous/listened podcasts we have in Brazil.
Thanks a lot for the attention! Love you and your work! <3 -
Oyood, To me it doesn’t work, not even clearing the cache of pocketcast and WA. My internet connection here is good. And it occurs with just half of feeds, so I don’t think the problem is WA. ;)
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Guys, sorry for the ugly post with the links, I can’t edit to correct it, or delete to repost it.
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This one is solvable by restart WhatsApp once or twice (deleting of cache not nessary):
https://ibb.co/DDG7PVNYBut yes, the question remains as to why the data for the link preview is not delivered within the Whatsapp timeout.
The missing preview image is another problem that I can reproduce with your links. -
Hi wonderlucy!
Thanks a lot for those links. Having these examples helped us a lot to investigate what’s going on.
We’ve found out that some preview systems (such as WhatsApp) have some limitations on the image sizes, and that’s why it is not loading them for some episodes.
We are working on a solution to this, which we expect to ship within the next couple weeks.
Once that fix is published I’ll come back here to ask you to try again.
Once again, thanks a lot for your help and for your patience.
Pocket Casts Forum 
