Is there a way to disable links transformation in JIRA?

[Dmitry Beloglazov]

In the past if someone pasted an URL to a comment section (or the issue description field) it would be displayed as an URL linking to the corresponding page - http://example.com

But recently Atlassian rolled out a change that makes "pretty links" - instead of showing the original URLs it gets the page title and displays it as the link to the page. So instead of http://example.com it would show something like Example Website. It's great that this "feature" hasn't been applied to this forum otherwise I wouldn't be able to explain it :-)

Same thing started to happen in Trello recently.

While this seems to look cool, I often need to copy the comments or descriptions from JIRA and paste them elsewhere, and with this change all links become just page titles.

Even if I edit the comment, there's no way to view its original text with full URLs, so there's no way to get the original URLs other than copy-pasting each of them separately which is of course not very good.

I would really like to be able to easily copy the original comment/description text with full URLs or even better - have this automatic conversion completely disabled everywhere in JIRA and Trello. How can I do this?

[Konstantin]

> Unfortunately not at the moment, this is called "Smart Links" 

please, change this terrible functionality,

Smart Links is a HELL of jira user! I want to have possibility to disable Smart Links feature for my account in jira settings.

[Dmitry Beloglazov]

You're welcome to this thread: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-72429

It's frustrating how JIRA team ignores hundreds of disappointed users.

[Lauren Church]

Totally voted for that.... but it was first sent up in July 2019.

Faith this will be addressed = NULL

[John Wallner]

I don't agree. We use smart links for google map links. Works awesome !

John

[Brian Burki]

I cannot think of a single time where I thought, "Wow, I'm so glad that Jira changed the URL I just pasted."

Who thought this was an "enhancement" anyway?

[David Koch]

I dunno, people at the UX front that have to justify their wages ?

Anyway, it has became pretty annoying lately to have everyone trying to embed a "preview" into the documents.

Twitter, Teams, Slack, Gitlab, etc do that as well, adding an annoying preview of the URL, but at least doesn't change it into something that could be obscure.

I'd say the URL transformation shall remain limited to Jira/Confluence links, but not otherwise as it is irrelevant.

And that should be disabled in the user settings. Not at admin level.

[John Wallner]

I can. When you use a share link for google maps in a comment. This would create a slick hover to preview and display the address on the card. 

Also works with the "Paragraph" field type.

John

[Neil Monroe]

UPDATE: As of July 14, 2022, Atlassian has confirmed they have a solution coming with the ability to set the default state of links for a user.

See: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-72429

---

Unfortunately, at this point, there is no official way to do this. To get the effect you want, you would have to install a URL blocker (such as uBlock) into your browser and add the following URLs to the list:

https://YOURSUBDOMAIN.atlassian.net/gateway/api/object-resolver/check
https://YOURSUBDOMAIN.atlassian.net/gateway/api/object-resolver/providers
https://YOURSUBDOMAIN.atlassian.net/gateway/api/object-resolver/resolve/batch

Replace YOURSUBDOMAIN with the appropriate domain for your account.

This is an all-or-nothing approach, so all URLs in content will be rendered as linked URLs and no "Smart Links". Others have suggested this already, but it always gets lost in the comment stream.

Until Atlassian implements a settings option to control it, this is about the only way other than:

• Ctrl-Z/Cmd-Z after pasting (for each link)
• Ctrl-Shift-V to paste without formatting
• Use a code block

[Andrew McDonald]

Thank you for this work around.

[Neil Monroe]

@Andrew McDonald I wish there was a built-in option, but this is pretty universal behavior in Jira now. If you need the link reformatting, then you can disable the blocker temporarily. Note that with the blocker on, links that were previously reformatted will appear as normal links (but will retain the formatting attributes, should the page be viewed by someone else or with the blocker off.)

[Chris Carey]

Thanks, @Neil Monroe you're a life saver.

I use "adblock for Chrome". You can just add the fragments like so:

/gateway/api/object-resolver/check
/gateway/api/object-resolver/providers
/gateway/api/object-resolver/resolve/batch 

 options -> customize -> "manually edit your filters"

... then you don't have to deal with it on *anyone's* JIRA.

[Peter J Lennartsson]

Isn't it funny how every time a company put "smart" in front of the function or product it is actually something idiotic that basically no one wanted or asked for ?  :) 

Thankfully it seems like they are finally listening https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-72429

[Jon Beacher]

JIRA please implement a way to disable thank you

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi everyone,

There has been a recent update that affects this topic.  Users are now able to choose their own link display preference.  You can do this by going directly to https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/link-preferences

The options that appear on that page include:

• URL: Display the full URL www.example.com
• Inline: Display the title of the link as inline text
• Card: Display a summary of the link or a snippet of content
• Embed: Display an interactive preview of the link

If you do not want to see the card or inline options, you could choose the first option of URL to see the basic URL for that link.  You can also choose to display links from specific domains the same way each time.

More information on this can be found within the Link preference documentation.  These link preference settings affect how links are displayed to your account across Jira Cloud and Confluence Cloud.  These preferences are also in the process of being rolled out to other Atlassian Cloud products such as Trello and others.

Cheers,

Andy

[Matt Korostoff]

@Andy Heinzer thanks, that's great, but it doesn't seem to apply to internal links. Like if I type a ticket number in jira as `TICKET-123` it will expand into something like this:

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi @Matt Korostoff 

That functionality is a bit different than the original post here.  The original question was in regards to external hyperlinks.

When an issuekey is entered into a wiki rendered field such as a description or comment, Jira is automatically converting that issuekey text into a new hyperlink to that issue, provided that an issue exists on that Jira site with that issue key that this user has access to.  This behavior has been in Jira for a long time and even pre-dates the different link display option entirely.

But I can see how this link creation would be out-of-line with the personal link display options.  So I created a new bug to try to address this. You can follow that over in JRACLOUD-80609.

[Ryan Flores]

I just added a comment to JRACLOUD-80609 to demonstrate how including the Summary in the transformed internal link makes it extremely difficult to parse and read comments. Important details get lost often because of it. The old way was easier to work with. I understand the convenience of including the Issue Type Icon, the Issue Key, and the Status, but the Summary just adds unnecessary noise.

Can you honestly say this is easy to parse/read?

I don't know if people aren't complaining about this because they don't reference other issues as often as my team and I do, but this is a huge problem and a lot of miscommunication/misunderstandings happen because of that feature. It was something I was worried about before we had cut over to Jira Cloud, and my concerns came to fruition.

[Paul Williamson]

hi Andy,

Can you provide the link for updating this setting for the whole userbase?

None of our ~100 users want this feature, they want the text they type to remain as they typed it. Obviously it would be silly to expect every single user to have to do this, however when I look at the 'User Default Settings' page in the Admin Settings, I do not see this feature listed.

So if you can provide the link to set this for everyone at an account level, I'd appreciate it.

[John Doe]

Security Issue
It is not "smart" to allow for URL obfuscation. A malevolent actor could mask dangerous URLs to get users to go to the wrong place.

Usability Issue
I am working on a website that generates encoded URLs. I need to see the whole URL that I or others put in the comments.

[ivan]

Here's what worked for me -- as soon as Jira transforms your link into a smart link press Ctrl + Z (or Cmd + Z on a Mac; I'm not sure what the undo action would be in Android/iOS) to undo the transformation and get your original URL back.

[Jordan Hauser]

Just found this thread while trying to figure out why some of our part numbers in an issue description had a hyperlink automatically added, glad its not adding the full summary of the ticket its not supposed to be linking to in the middle of a string, but still really obnoxious that I cant remove the link and have to break up a part number with a space so it doesn't look stupid

Imagine a part number in a description:
0289376G24-02-B

And we have a project G24, so it links G24-2 which is a closed issue and completely unrelated to the part number

[Jordan Hauser]

solutions -

>put in code block
>use a lowercase g in this case
>add in {html}{html} tags, dont need to put anything in it, it breaks up the string and wont link

[Dieter Rausch]

I can disable Smart Links for Links that I type, but if anybody else uses them accidentally or just ignors them, they still appear as smartlinks. I can convert them manually one by one, but this is not a solution.
Plus: Smart Links are not compatible with the Jira Cloud plugin for MS Teams, which makes this plugin totally useless as all you see in teams is an "unsupported inlineCard" notice with no way to access the underlying URL.

This is BS....

[Jon Ragnarsson]

Just came here through google search after this started happening. This has to be the dumbest shit I've ever seen.  We put links in tickets so people can see/verify bugs and features. And they put a fancy hover pop up, which also is useless!

[Steve]

This is still an issue, if your users don't care, no helping it.  

This abhorrent behaviour should be disabled by default. 

It can be rather detrimental reading & hiding URLs.

Also, I'd note that this bloody jira just wants to make links out of everything.  If you just type something like "i.es" by mistke, then delete back to have i.e. - it's already a link. 

Why not let the user put links on text if they want to? 

Farken nanny programs screwing with normal users left and right, horrible.

[Matt Korostoff]

I've created a browser plugin to disable smart links as a work around for this issue https://github.com/MKorostoff/jira-dumb-links

[Dmitry Beloglazov]

Great! And I like the name of the project 😁

Would be nice to have a version for Firefox.

[Steve]

Yeah, thanks, but this is sadly useless unless everyone uses chrome and installs this thingo.  That's two tripping points for us.

[Justin Coombs]

Apparently I can't delete answers.

[David Koch]

You found out a solution for that link transformation thing ?

[Andy]

Not exactly a solution, but I tend to mark the link as code (ctrl-shift-M). That means, of course that it's then not clickable, but the advantage is that you can copy/paste the result into (e.g.) another ticket without it getting messed with.

[Olga Videc]

Hello @Dmitry Beloglazov 

Unfortunately not at the moment, this is called "Smart Links" 

Here is a suggestion for the option to disable it

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-72429 

Similar question lot of people share your problem

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/Is-there-a-way-to-disable-inline-links-Bug-report-SmartLinks/qaq-p/1673119

What you can do is when adding a comment, add URL as code block 

BR, Olga

[Dmitry Beloglazov]

Thanks.

> https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-72429 

Can't comment there for some reason, it shows a "Communications Breakdown" error.

> What you can do is when adding a comment, add URL as code block 

This doesn't work because I'm not the only one who posts the comment and I wouldn't prefer not to instruct everyone to add URLs in some awkward way.

[Olga Videc]

Hello, 

Can't comment there for some reason, it shows a "Communications Breakdown" error.

You just need to refresh the page, it happens if the comment box is open for too long.

BR, Olga

[Dmitry Beloglazov]

I reopened this page multiple times, same error.

[Olga Videc]

Have you added any URL or code in your comment?

[Dmitry Beloglazov]

No. But probably it doesn't matter much. I see a hundred of angry comments and I hope it's enough for Atlassian to do something about it :-)

[Dmitry Beloglazov]

Looks like I found a bug.

When I opened that URL, I was redirected to this URL: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-72429%C2%A0?error=login_required&error_description=Login+required&state=65e12ff6-ebec-41dd-b428-528f3b81148b

And there I couldn't comment.

When I removed everything starting from %C2 and reopened the page I could submit the comment.

[David Koch]

"Smart Links", you can call it all the names you want, it doesn't do what WE want.

Linking to Gitlab from Jira I get a "SAML SSO for EVBox" for every link I post.

Yeah, because it's behind an ID wall and Jira couldn't get past through it.

Just display the damn URL and voilà.

"Smart ass"

[Dmitry Beloglazov]

@David KochUnfortunately they don't seem to care.

You can check this epic thread: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-72429

Also you can vote for it.