How to Disable Automatic Link Previews in MacOS Ventura

I was able to disable this feature in mail, by going to Edit -> Substitutions -> Smart Links, and removing the check mark.

As a workaround pressing ⌘K, pasting the URL into the the text field and clicking OK will insert the URL as a link without converting it into a 'preview'. Without leaving the keyboard it's ⌘K, ⌘V, return – faster than clicking the arrow and converting it back that way. There definitely needs to be an option to disable it globally though.

Andreas: indeed. The underlying system is good, safe and fast, but the interface to the user has been left too much to the “designers”, many of whom seem to think they know what is best for us.

But, so, the fix posted by Thomas Templemann works, and is easy though it needs an incantation in the terminal.

I post it here again explicitly:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/Mail.plist RichLinks -dict-add Enabled -bool NO

you may have to issue

sudo chmod -R o+rX /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags

first. I will also tell Marcel Bresink, maybe he incorporates it into TinkerTool.

In the meantime I have made a collection of comments on incoherences, irritations and outright bugs in Ventura's user interfaces. That now stands at over four pages. I will send it on to Apple when it's ready, and also post it on my site.

Robert.

Yes: the fix posted by Thomas Templemann works, and is easy though it needs an incantation in the terminal.

I post it here again explicitly:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/Mail.plist RichLinks -dict-add Enabled -bool NO

you may have to issue

sudo chmod -R o+rX /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags

And if you want more about Ventura, you can look at http://www.cailliau.org/Alphabetical/A/Apple/Ventura-en.html

An effective way to disable rich links by default has been posted by user James Howard over at Ask Different. Save the following text file as /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/Mail.plist and then reboot your Mac:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>RichLinks</key>
      <dict>
        <key>Enabled</key>
        <false/>
      </dict>
  </dict>
</plist>

This saves a property to Mail's internal properties list (.plist) that tells it not to activate the "Rich Link" feature when writing an e-mail.

Grrrrr. I just ran into this issue for the first time. Apple is constantly deciding how to "make things easier", or make them look better, or to control the way we work, and if you don't like it you are SOL. This "feature" is infuriating. But New001 is right. That solution works. If you are in the middle of writing an email in Apple Mail, click your cursor where you want the link, then do ⌘K, and a little box pops up. Paste the URL into the box and click OK. The URL will insert into the email with no preview, no paste needed. This is a great workaround for a "feature" with no way to turn it off. Thanks new001!

This fix completely removes link preview

Launch Terminal and enter the following:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/Mail.plist RichLinks -dict-add Enabled -bool NO ; sudo chmod -R o+rX /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags

Enter your user password at the prompt, then reboot.

That should do the trick and it will turn off this "feature".

Found this answer may be useful to overcome the problem, it needs user manually create a plist setting for mail.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/457934/493294

In the meantime there is an option in mail settings for this. I'm on 14.4.1 with German user interface: Einstellungen > Verfassen > deselect: "Link-Vorschauen hinzufügen".

This annoying "feature" is why I am on this forum. I was searching for a way to disable it and super irritated that there's no preference for this.

The only thing I can find that seems to be helpful is to do a "paste and match style" (found in Edit menu). You can memorize the shortcut and when pasting links, instead of doing CMD-V, you can use the shortcut and it seems to work somewhat reliably. Very annoying but at least it's better than multiple steps.

Paste a URL.

Let it convert to the dreaded preview.

Mouseover top right brings up a down arrow

Click

Options are: Convert to Plain Link or Open Link

Convert to Plain Link does just that and also any subsequent URLs you paste in will automatically go to Plain Link.

This is still a feature we should be able to turn off completely, forever

I had the same problem too. My work around is to choose plain text format instead of rich. For version 13.4.1 (c) you can select Settings - Composing Tab and under composing, select Message Format: Plain text.

This works for me. Hope it helps.

This "feature" is utterly annoying.

You can type a comma, period, or any other punctuation of your choice, and paste the link right after that to keep it from being turned into a preview (no blank space before the link).

This worked for me. Thank you!

It's just one little extra step...Pressing CommandK before pasting the URL. I can live with that.

But I agree - who thought we'd always want a preview?! Not someone with a lot of business experience, I'd guess.

There is finally a way to turn this feature off, by creating a specific plist. Make sure to follow the directions exactly, and create the specified folders, if they don't already exist. Reboot, and voila!

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/457934/102683