Notes app making random text into links

Yes it doesn't require pasting. Even if you delete the sentence and retype it, the link returns! And I'm not using icloud nor syncing. It's localized to the ios app.

For example, I have a note that won't let me type the word "spectral" in a sentence without turning the word into a link to the first thing that shows on a google search, i.e., the Netflix movie - which I had never heard of and has nothing to do with the content of my note. Likewise, I have a bunch of unfixable notes with random links in them just like the example in the original post.

There are other weird bugs in the Notes app such as randomly lightened text which is subtly gray rather than black, noticable when the two are adjacent.

*** Apple? There's no place to leave feedback about the Notes app. Just shouting into the void here.

Ps

Assuming the [for every software bug fixed create three more] hypothesis, this post here, from 2013, may shed a bit of light on the cause of the issue:

Why is it that a website hyperlink is highlighted in Notes, but when I click on it, nothing happens?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5568415?start=0&tstart=0

I'm having the same problem. I am using the Notes app on both my iPhone 6 Plus and iMac and both are syncing. The problem seems to be isolated to the iOS app. I just performed a test by creating a new note in the iOS app on my iPhone and added a bunch of links. There appeared a section of that note that became a link (the letters are colored gold like the other links). It has the same target as another link in the same note. If I try to delete the letters that are now highlighted gold, they go away until I type something in their place which also becomes a link. I went to the Notes app on my iMac and the new note had synced. All the standard links appeared but the link that is the text in the IOS app is not a link in the Mac Notes app. Again, it appears to be isolated to the iOS app. This is creating havoc with my notes. We need a solution!

By the way, I use the Notes app all the time as outlines for presentations I give. I add many links. The problem with random note text become a link seems to not show up until I have quite a bit of text in the note. It happens as I continue creating my outline. I think it's possible that the problem is an issue of note size or complexity.

Any word from the iWork team? I also had a random hyperlinking note earlier this year. I deleted the note and haven't had a problem since. Maybe this is due to [length of note] hypothesis - none of my notes since have had lengthy paragraphs.

In any case I'd be reassured to know the cause of the bug, and how best to deal with it.

In my experience, the thread for which you provided a link does not apply to this problem. Nothing mentioned there is the problem I have and am still experiencing. I am almost certain this is an iOS issue. It happens to me consistently every week. I have a weekly meeting I prepare an outline for. I create it in the Notes App on my iPhone 6 Plus running the latest iOS. All my outlines include numerous hyperlinks which, when using my outline in the meeting to make my presentation, I jump to. As I create my outline and it becomes larger (more complex?), I suddenly discover this random hyperlink behavior; some text in the body of the outline has become a hyperlink. It is always a copy of a nearby, valid link. I've found that if I then go to my iMac and open the outline in the macOS Notes app, the same random text is highlighted as a hyperlink. I select all of the text in the entire note and remove all links using Command-K > Remove Link. All the hyperlinks go away. The note then syncs to my iOS app on my iPhone and I look at it there. All the hyperlinks are gone until I edit something, at which point the valid hyperlinks are restored. At this point the behavior becomes inconsistent for me. There are times when the random text hyperlinks appear again, and times when they do not. I do not know what the trigger is for that. Sometimes I have to go back to the outline in my macOS Notes app and highlight the offending text and, using Command-K again, create the text into a different link, then remove it again with Command-K. This sometimes corrects the problem in the iOS Notes app, and sometimes it doesn't. This is all weird and extremely annoying behavior. Again, I contend this is an iOS issue.

Something else I failed to mention. When the iOS Notes app automatically recognizes something as a hyperlink, it changes the text into gold color. That is normal and good behavior. Whenever entering edit mode in the note (by tapping anywhere in the note), the gold colored text disappears and the hyperlink can then be edited until you leave edit mode (by clicking on "Done" in the upper right hand corner of the screen). The hyperlink's text is then colored gold again because the Notes app has recognized it as a hyperlink. The odd behavior, however, and which seems to be associated with the random text hyperlinking issue, is that as I continue to create my outline, I notice that when I enter edit mode the gold colored text of hyperlinks does not go away. Even in edit mode, the text remains gold colored. The link can be edited in edit mode but not properly. When I try to edit it, my edits are not gold colored but are in black. When I then leave edit mode, part of the link is gold colored and part is black. When I tap on the hyperlink, it does not jump to the correct, edited location because the link is somehow broken at that point.

I am having the same problem and have been having it for a while. It must be a preset function int he system that looks to recognize anything it thinks may be a hyperlink but it is inevitably a malfunction and I wonder what can really be done about it.

This has been SOOOO annoying to me. I use my notes as a daily journal, one page per day, To do items, some hyperlinks. I'll go thru my daily journal, no hyperlinks and come back to that page later and it's loaded with hyperlinks that are not relevant to the text. If you click on the hyperlink it goes to a link that I may have used weeks ago. There has to be a way to stop this randomness of the APP just deciding to hyperlink and just allow the user to hyperlink when it's needed. I get Apple trying to be fluid in relating all apps together by making assumptions on hyperlinking addresses, dates, etc., but in this instance the fluidness I more of an annoyance. How can one just turn this feature off?

Where are you pasting this from?

My suspicion is that you are probably not pasting plain text.

Try selecting some of that text, copy, paste into a plain text application (like BBEdit, TextWrangler, or Smultron); then copy from there (this is to ensure that only plain text is on the clipboard, no formatted text) and paste into a new note.

Do you still see links cropping up?

What Luis says. But you don't have to use an extra app: just force Notice to lose the formatting. Pastethe text by pressing shift-alt-cmd-V.

Thanks for the clarification. This is extremely weird: at this point I'm clueless. 😕