How to Disable Automatic Link Previews in MacOS Ventura

Oddly enough, in my mac (running Ventura 13.0.1), the default seems to be leaving the link as is, no preview...

I never changed any of this, as in fact I only use plain text mail, but in testing for this thread all cases produced just the link until I deliberately changed it.

Maybe there is some hidden setting...

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I agree. I did not know about your post until today. I posted in November about this issue also (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254398852?login=true&page=2)

It needs a product fix. It’s a very annoying inconvenience.

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.

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.

Yes. It is super annoying on my iPhone and Mac OS.

if I wanted to actually visit links I shared in email I can. Sometimes (usually in my case) emails I send with links in are reporting some scumbag spamming/phishing fraudsters. The last thing I actually want to do is visit their crappy sites.

I did this earlier today and can confirm it works (at least for me).

Note these directories and files should be placed under the root level "Library" directory, not in your ~home directory structure. See link in diehman's comment above. I had to create the requisite sub directories which did not exist by default in my case.

I am running Ventura 13.3 on an M1 MacBook Pro.

Finally no longer have to deal with this super annoying, poorly executed and unwanted "feature" anymore. Sheesh...