Turn off link preview in Mail

Question

In MacOS 13.0 (and 13.0.1) when I paste a link into an email using Mail, it converts the URL into a preview of the web site. How do I turn that off and just have plain links by default? I just want to see the URL I pasted.

Previous version of MacOS did not have this behaviour.

Threads

• https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254398852
• https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254346245
• https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254361654
• https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/link-preview-mail.2370469/

Answer 1

Save this plist as /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/Mail.plist and reboot:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>RichLinks</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Enabled</key>
        <false/>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

How did I find this? I used Hopper on Mail to find likely strings, then worked backwards to find where they were referenced by the code, and then found out that Mail calls _os_feature_enabled_impl("Mail", "RichLinks") to control the feature.

Answer 2

It's worth noting that this has changed in 14.0 (yes, I know the OP is asking about 13). The defaults write trick no longer works, but! There's now a setting. Uncheck:

Mail -> Settings… -> Composing -> Add link previews

Answer 3

The fastest way to paste a link without it being converted to a preview is via Edit -> Add Link (CmdK). This opens a small dialog box, you paste your link, then hit the OK button.

With the keyboard you use the sequence CmdK CmdV, Return. It’s much faster than pasting (CmdV) into Mail, waiting for it to convert the link to a preview, grabbing the mouse, search the small popup handle, clicking once to open the popup, etc.

Just type CmdK CmdV Return.

Answer 4

I also discovered that if you type a space and then paste the URL, it seems to not trigger the Link Preview creation. Then you can delete the space (or leave it). Still annoying, but slightly quicker (maybe?) than ⌘K.

Answer 5

Simply pass your mouse over preview, and a little arrow appear.
Click this arrow to display dropdown menu.
Select Convert to simple link (I'm not sure exact translate match)

The only other way I found to directly past as link is to set Message format to Plain Text in Composing preferences… but inevitably you lose mail formatting

Answer 6

The plist answer does not seem to correspond to 13.3: I have this:

<key>RichLinks</key>
<dict>
    <key>DevelopmentPhase</key>
    <string>FeatureComplete</string>
</dict>

and have no permission to change it. Nor is it clear to what it should be changed.

I know all the other workarounds, but like Steve, I just want it OFF. So:

1. what to substitute for the 13.3 setting
2. how to get permission to save the change.

R.

Answer 7

The terminal prompt totally worked for me! In Terminal.app copy paste the below:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/Mail.plist RichLinks -dict-add Enabled -bool NO ; sudo chmod -R o+rX /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags

Answer 8

This works as of MacOS Sonoma 14.2.1:

defaults write ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist AddLinkPreviews -bool false

To find other preferences, try:

defaults read ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist