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How do I stop Confluence from automatically changing URLs into link previews

Peter Willis April 23, 2021

When I type in https://www.example.com/ in confluence, in a few seconds the text changes to "Example" with a link.

I don't want it to convert URLs to text automatically. I don't want Confluence to grab the title of the page and change how the link looks. I want it to show the entire URL that I typed. If I want to change how it looks, I will click the Link button and add text to it.

Please someone tell me how to turn off this new functionality??? I have to keep clicking these links and selecting "Show URL" every time, it's such a pain!

10 answers

3 votes
Steve Pate April 11, 2022

On a Mac, let it expand and then hit CMD+z and it will just display the URL

Kalin U
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April 26, 2022

Same on Windows: Ctrl+Z should undo the automatic URL conversion.

2 votes
Rob Hartwig April 17, 2023

It's now available to disable from this settings page!!!   

 

https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/link-preferences

wsmith August 10, 2023

Thanks Yoda...worked like a charm.  Productivity restored.  Quite possibly the smallest BIG problem introduced to a product primarily targeted toward developers;). Party on everyone.

Like Rob Hartwig likes this
1 vote
Ben L October 6, 2022

This is now fixed! Hallelujah ;-)

 

ref. https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-67922, but tl'dr: set your user preference at https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/link-preferences

1 vote
Mark Eklund September 16, 2021

One workaround I've found is to use the markdown backticks.  It isn't perfect because it formats `https://www.example.com` differently and doesn't hyperlink it at all. 

1 vote
Aron Gombas _Midori_
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April 24, 2021

As far as I know this feature is called smart links

Disabling it is not possible yet, but here is the corresponding issue with a couple of workaround ideas. You may want to vote and watch that issue.

EP September 24, 2021

This is such a frustrating feature. We encounter it in Service Desk mostly, and it serves no purpose but to confuse communication to customers. Thanks for the link!

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Daniel Wal August 12, 2022

Agreed. Just another "feature" of Confluence that makes my life more difficult. I have to click Ctrl+Z every time I paste a URL into a page. Drives me bonkers.

Like James Host likes this
0 votes
Youssri March 19, 2024

It's not ideal but can do a clean up and bulk convert smartlinks to regular URLs using this link editor app.

0 votes
Dieter Rausch October 2, 2023

Smart Links are not compatible with the MS Teams pluign "Jira Cloud" - all you get is a "Unsupported inlineCard" notice. Like that, the plugin is totally useless!!

It MUST be possible for the READER to disable the display of Smart Links by all means - not only for plugin compatibility. An Author (or however you call it) should NEVER be able to force masked URLs in messages or issues!

0 votes
Liz Lomax February 28, 2023

I have a similar issue, where Confluence is resolving text that isn't a URL, into links to external websites. 

Example: I have a tracking ID that is "BUD.TC" and Confluence insists on resolving this to be the Budweiser Turks & Caicos website! Which is funny but entirely inappropriate.

 

I have changed my link preferences, so it now shows the text as typed, but it is still inserting a link to the website. 

 

Is there a way to tell Confluence not to automatically link things at all?

0 votes
edelwater June 1, 2022

This is hyper annoying

I paste in spreadsheet as tables , then have to wait for how long "server lost connection" and then all the urls are icons with "home" which does not say that much.

Matthew Allen July 7, 2022

Trying to work around this myself.  Software is trying to be too smart for itself.  Make it an option, please.  Confluence is prefixing my data with "http://".  Totally inappropriate when trying to document DNS records. 

And c'mon, it's not even https...

Like Ryan Dasso likes this
0 votes
Adam Mlodzinski April 20, 2022

I found that I can paste a block of text that includes one or more words (sequence of characters excluding whitespace) that Confluence sees as URLs using "Command+Shift+D".

The full keyboard-only sequence becomes "Command+Shitf+D, Command+V, Tab, Enter", which is a lot more than simply "Command+V", but it's better than having to use the mouse to Unlink potentially dozens or hundreds of words that look like links. Thankfully the dialog that pops up is keyboard friendly.

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