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How to Disable Automatic Link Previews in MacOS Ventura

It appears there is a new *feature* in MacOS Ventura (v13.0) where Mail automatically changes URLs to Link Previews in rich text emails.


But I would rather NOT have it automatically change them — I prefer to have the URLs spelled out — and I cannot find a way to turn this feature off.


A colleague said he read somewhere that once you manually change it back that the application will recognize and not do it again. This did not work for me.


Anybody know how to make it stop making the Link Previews? Help...



[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iMac

Posted on Nov 4, 2022 6:51 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Mar 13, 2024 6:06 PM

This has been fixed in Sonoma. Go to Mail > Settings > Composing and turn off "Add link previews".

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Dec 10, 2022 3:54 PM in response to stumpjumper

Chiming in here to state that yes this is really annoying.


There should always be a method to opt out of such "features".


I need to be able to paste links into emails without all the formatting and preview garbage being "automagically" generated. The vast majority of the time (all the time?) I just want plain text emails. Thanks but no thanks.

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Dec 16, 2022 9:59 AM in response to stumpjumper

Agreed is it is awful and not only that it doesn't work. I've linked to movies and if you click on the wrong part of the "link" (sic) the recipient sees a JPG not a movie.

I now put the link in "...." which preserves the link but it is all effort to overcome this junk idea.

I doubt the programmer was 17, more likely a student with a summer project.

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Jan 11, 2023 11:38 AM in response to claas

Claas,


Thank you VERY MUCH for posting this simple and effective workaround to turn off automatic previews of links added to Apple Mail messages. Your workaround tip should be the first thing that people see when they are directed to this question on the forum. Unless I had scrolled way down and read many other comments first, I would have missed this. I wrote it on a PostIt and stuck it on my iMac Pro.


I truly hate how Apple makes unnecessary changes to its programs, and then refuses to admit that they were wrong and get rid of them. They have done this before and, no doubt, will continue to do so. For example, in Apple Mail I used to be able to flag email messages with a color-coded dot on the left of the listed messages, so that I would know that I want to return to them later, but in an update to Apple Mail, Apple removed that extremely useful feature. Now, if I flag a message, that color-coded flag is only visible when I click on or open that particular message — which is pretty much useless. I complained to Apple about that but they never did anything to fix it.


Jan

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Jan 11, 2023 2:25 PM in response to VikingOSX

VikingOSX. Edit menu > Substitutions [off] makes no difference. Link "previews" persist.


I suppose one solution is to use a different email client. There are a variety of desktop app alternatives to Apple Mail out there, though switching email clients could/would be a PITA.



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Jan 23, 2023 1:15 PM in response to UserFeedbackAccount

I have found that you post the first link, waste time turning off the feature by mouse over at the top right, Click "Convert to Plain Link". All this is unnecessary as we should be able to disable something as bad as this in Preferences. However the good news is that subsequent links are put in as Plain Links.


I hate this "feature" with a vengeance.

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Jan 24, 2023 3:15 PM in response to stumpjumper

This is one of the most poorly implemented 'feature' in a long time. and, it's getting worse. Anytime I share a link in emails it causes me issues. Forget about sending a URL to a multi-page PDF - that's an absolute disaster.


It's really bad if you want to manually type a slug after pasting a url. It will create the preview while you're typing, causing you to have to then tell it to remove the preview, then you have to remove formatting, then you can continue to type.


I cannot put into words just how horrible this 'feature' is... which cannot be turned off as a setting.


Never ever ever have I heard of anyone receiving an email appreciate having a preview. It's actually quite the opposite - everyone hates getting them. It causes confusion, errors, previews of page 1 of a pdf as a PNG attachment (which not only causes confusion but makes the recipient(s) think that I'm incompetent.


This causes me more time, frustration and issues using mac mail for business use. It's terrible, useless and embarrassing.

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Jan 27, 2023 6:24 AM in response to stumpjumper

This is a crazy bad idea and very really slowing my workflow dow. I really can't understand if this is tested by anyone that uses e-mail all day how someone could even think this serves the user's in a good way.


In more that 10+ years usage of MacOS this is the second time I post something on this forum. It is so frustrating.

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Feb 9, 2023 9:04 AM in response to HsuJay

In a separate issue my "indexing" is borked for the 2nd or 3rd time. I'm gonna do a full spotlight reset over the weekend and if that doens't resolve I might abandon mail.app and flip over to Thunderbird which is very reliable.

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Feb 13, 2023 10:37 AM in response to new001

Thank you for that, this feature has had me pulling my hair out. If you paste a link to a YouTube video, it creates a giant embedded video, with a different menu that does not let you disable the link preview. That's when I started searching for a solution to disable this unwanted feature, and the "⌘K, ⌘V, return" works well.


Hopefully Apple includes an option to disable this "feature" in a future Mail release. Might be time to start looking at third-party macOS mail solutions to see how mature they are now. I'm getting tired of Apple's shenanigans.

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Feb 28, 2023 4:17 AM in response to HelloIdeas

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

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Mar 13, 2023 9:05 PM in response to PSH1970

Correction to my post above. My thread at that link was specifically about iOS on the iPhone and this “feature” - I think it needs fixing in both Mac and iPhone (probably iPad too if that is different)


What some people are missing when responding is that once created, the preview of the link means that the destination has been visited by you. So if you report spam/phishing/malware links, when you paste them with the parameters in the URL, you confirm to the spammer/fraudster/bad actor that you received the link. You would never intentionally click and visit them but thanks to this feature you now do exactly that. Terrible and not thought out.


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Mar 20, 2023 6:12 PM in response to azbondgirl

@photowc

Thank you for the link.


Over 1-2 years, I've had increasing probs with Apple --even with locating info via website search/filter for any products >2 years.


iPhone upgrades+updates often add/change settings or features. In so doing, Menu resets to default, erasing preference sets.


Unfortunately, discovery is incidental-occurring thru hours/days of use after software updates.

Worse still are conceivable vulnerabilities posed in interim. I'm at the point where I loathe applying updates--especially for big upgrades like iOS 15, 16 or similar MAC OS


Chief gripe being areas for a few Settings are often affected time and again. Re-selecting the same choices more than twice due to deletion of my earlier preferences seems unreasonable and archaic for a company with Apple's capabilities & resources...


Would be great if there were a red indicator dot on iPhone settings menu as a breadcrumb trail to new features or altered/reset selections.



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How to Disable Automatic Link Previews in MacOS Ventura

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