PREVU

The Postman for OG Images.
Inspect, validate, and preview your site's social metadata — no public URL needed.

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🎬 See It in Action

▶️ Watch the full demo on YouTube

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✨ Why PREVU?

Most OG image issues are discovered only after deploying. PREVU closes that feedback loop — paste any URL and instantly see how it renders across every major social platform, with full validation, right on your local machine.

No more pushing to staging just to check a link preview. No more broken thumbnails going live. Ship with confidence.

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📸 Screenshots

Home	Preview	Validation

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🚀 Features

	Feature
🔍	Inspect any URL — localhost, staging, or production
🏷️	Extract all metadata — Open Graph and Twitter Card tags at a glance
✅	Validate — required tags, image dimensions, aspect ratio, and file size
👀	Social Previews — realistic renders for Twitter, LinkedIn, Discord, WhatsApp & Facebook
📋	Clipboard auto-preview — automatically inspects URLs you copy
🔄	Watch mode — re-inspects every 5 seconds during active development
⚡	CLI included — prevu inspect <url> shares core logic with the desktop app
🪶	Lightweight — Tauri binary with a minimal memory footprint

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📦 Download

Get the latest installer from the Releases page →

Platform	Installer
🪟 Windows	.exe (NSIS) · .msi
🍎 macOS	.dmg (Intel & Apple Silicon)
🐧 Linux	.AppImage · .deb · Arch AUR

⚠️ Builds are currently unsigned. See the platform-specific notes below to bypass Gatekeeper / SmartScreen.

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🛠️ Installation

🪟 Windows

Using the NSIS installer (.exe) — recommended

1. Download PREVU_x.x.x_x64-setup.exe from Releases
2. Double-click the installer
3. If Windows SmartScreen blocks it → More info → Run anyway
4. Follow the wizard and launch from the Start Menu

Using the MSI installer (.msi)

1. Download PREVU_x.x.x_x64_en-US.msi
2. Double-click and follow the wizard (SmartScreen → More info → Run anyway)

SmartScreen appears because PREVU is not Authenticode-signed yet. The app is safe — verify the source here.

🍎 macOS

1. Download the .dmg for your chip — x64 (Intel) or aarch64 (Apple Silicon)
2. Open the .dmg, drag PREVU to Applications, then eject the volume
3. Launch from Launchpad or Applications

If macOS says the app is "damaged" or "cannot be opened":

Option A — GUI:

System Settings → Privacy & Security → scroll down → Open Anyway

Option B — Terminal:

xattr -cr /Applications/PREVU.app

macOS Gatekeeper blocks apps not signed with an Apple Developer ID. PREVU is not notarized yet — xattr -cr is the standard developer workaround.

🐧 Linux

Arch Linux (AUR) — install directly on your Arch machine with:

yay -S prevu

AppImage — universal, recommended

chmod +x PREVU_x.x.x_amd64.AppImage
./PREVU_x.x.x_amd64.AppImage

# Optionally move to PATH
mv PREVU_x.x.x_amd64.AppImage ~/.local/bin/prevu
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc

Debian / Ubuntu (.deb)

sudo dpkg -i PREVU_x.x.x_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get install -f  # fix any missing deps
prevu

Uninstall

rm ~/.local/bin/prevu          # AppImage
sudo dpkg -r prevu             # .deb

PREVU requires a WebKitGTK runtime. If the app fails to launch:

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt-get install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0
# Fedora
sudo dnf install webkit2gtk4.1
# Arch
sudo pacman -S webkit2gtk-4.1

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💻 CLI

cargo run --manifest-path cli/Cargo.toml -- inspect https://example.com
cargo run --manifest-path cli/Cargo.toml -- inspect https://example.com --json

Example output:

[OK]   og:title detected
[OK]   og:description detected
[WARN] Missing twitter:card
[WARN] Image resolution too small (500x260). Minimum is 600x315

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🏗️ Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Desktop shell	Tauri (Rust)
Frontend	React + Vite + TypeScript + TailwindCSS
HTML parsing	reqwest + scraper
Image analysis	image crate
Clipboard	arboard
Serialization	serde + serde_json
Async runtime	tokio

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🗂️ Project Structure

prevu/
├── frontend/               # React + Vite frontend
│   └── src/
│       ├── components/     # PreviewCard, MetaTable, etc.
│       └── pages/
├── src-tauri/              # Tauri Rust backend
│   └── src/
│       ├── main.rs
│       ├── parser.rs
│       ├── validator.rs
│       ├── image_checker.rs
│       └── clipboard_watcher.rs
└── cli/                    # Standalone CLI
    └── prevu-cli.rs

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🧑‍💻 Development

Prerequisites: Node.js 20+, Rust stable, platform Tauri deps (WebView2 on Windows, WebKitGTK on Linux)

# Install dependencies
npm install
npm --prefix frontend install

# Run
npm run tauri:dev     # Full desktop app with hot reload
npm run dev           # Frontend only (browser)

# Build
npm run tauri:build

Adding a new platform preview:

1. Update the platform union type in PreviewCard.tsx
2. Add the style mapping for the new platform
3. Render the card in the preview tab in Home.tsx

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read CONTRIBUTING.md and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md before opening a pull request.

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📈 Star History

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☕ Support

If PREVU saved you from shipping a broken link preview, consider buying me a coffee!

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📄 License

MIT © Dhanush Kandhan