How to default to Display URL vs. Display Inline for links?

Question

Whenever I add a link in a Confluence page, it defaults to Display Inline.
I want it to default to Display URL (thereby displaying the full text.)

We use Confluence to keep track of links posted elsewhere. When they are displayed inline and I copy/paste, I only get the inline text, rather than the full URL.

Thanks!

Andy Gladstone · Accepted Answer

@Jesse Gay the current default in Confluence Cloud is for the editor to resolve URLs into smart links and provide the page title as the link - there are a couple other display options to bring more of the linked content into the page, which can be helpful depending on the context of your page.

However, for simply creating basic hyperlinks, the "display as URL" option you noted is necessary in order to make sure text copied onto another platform will retain the correct URL. (Copying and pasting into Confluence itself or Jira should render the links properly still). There's an open suggestion to change how smart links work or provide some configuration options around them. I would highly recommend watching that suggest, as work is being done on it right now.

As a workaround, any links using http:// will not convert to smart links - only secure "https://" links will convert into a smart link. In many cases, websites automatically convert http links into https once clicked. It's worth trying that out if the sites you are linking to will convert the links!

Hope this helps!