How to Disable Automatic Link Previews in MacOS Ventura

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.

This is unacceptable. I create documents on overleaf and want to send links to them. The writable and read-only links appear with the same image in Apple Mail. Who ever thought that this new "feature" is an improvement? That person's manager should be fired.

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.

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.

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.

It's been three months and counting. Please turn off the feature as default and give us a way to turn it off now! I like Apple Mail, but I need to move on soon if this is not fixed. One of the worst features I've ever encountered.

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.

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.

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

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

That's what I said.

It is the work around I use to send loads of URLs.

And I can see what the email will look like to the recipient.

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.

@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.

Very annoying, indeed. As a workaround, I created a macro in Keyboard Maestro, and bound it to "⇧ ⌘ V", to paste the link using the ⌘K, ⌘V, <enter> sequence. I have to remember to use that keyboard combo, but at least it's a single key(combo)-press to paste a link.

Ugh, I could not agree with you more: The sheer presumption here that every user would find this automatic feature helpful — without even offering an option anywhere to turn the stupid thing off — is incredibly irritating. Being able to share the spelled-out version of links is vital!

Anyway, I found a super-simple workaround on my iPad for myself that I wanted to share, in case it’ll save anyone else from torturous frustration: If you type the URL after a square bracket (i.e., “[link.com”) and then delete the bracket, it’ll leave your link alone without converting it to a Link Preview.

Cheers!

It is really annoying, no-one need it, and usually if I send this link preview email, the receiver can not read it, if not using mac. I want to write rich text email, like I did it from 2004 as bought my first mac, and want to cmd+V a link, like I did it in the past. not want to make extra clicks, or cmd+K cmd+V enter, 3 typo for one f.. thing. Must add a setting in the mail settings for this useless and annoying stuff.