Can I make "display as URL" my default option?

[Sofía Rodríguez]

I write copy pretty often as a part of my role. It seems the default for Confluence is to display URLs inline, instead of as URL. This poses many problems as I use Confluence to draft copy and share with stakeholders. If they copy the page, the inline text is copied instead of the URL.

So, is there a way to customize my setup so all the URLs on my pages display as URLs rather than inline?

[Daniel Eads · Accepted solution]

Hi @Sofía Rodríguez , welcome to the Community!

Currently in Confluence Cloud, the editor will try 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!

Cheers,
Daniel

[Sofía Rodríguez]

Thanks, Daniel! Just added my vote to the open suggestion.