How can I disable links being replaced with "preview titles"?
Asked by Vadim Galimov:

In the past week, all links to titled webpages in Trello are shown as titles along with an icon of their host domain -- e.g. google docs links show up as \*Google logo\* *Name of Google Document*.

I find this feature extremely infuriating since for the purpose of my work, seeing the raw link at a glance is a lot more important than knowing what its meta-name is. Is there any way to disable this feature?

UPD Nov 21, 2021: welp, just logged in to find that URLs are now once again shown as, well, URLs! Good on Trello for actually listening to feedback.

UPD2 Nov 24, 2021: aaand the awful previews are back. Just what in the world is going on there, Atlassian?


Answers:
author: Michael Barry
body: Yep agreed, very annoying ++default++ feature. Would prefer the ability to manage and allow me to control it how it best works for my needs.


author: Sascha
body: This feature is driving me nuts, too. Especially when you have page titles that are much longer than the actual URL.

When you have a list of URLs you cannot copy them anymore as a whole and paste them somewhere else. Instead, you have to hover over each link and select "Copy Link" from the context menu.

Who considered this to be a useful feature?


author: MirceaBurdusa
body: I second the users who commented before me in stating that the feature doesn't have any utility at all. Moreover, because it cannot be disabled, is actually counter-productive to a lot of workflows that are based on checking and comparing URLs.   

This feature should either be disabled by default or at least should be made editable from the board settings (or even workspace settings). It is really hard to use Trello right now due to this feature and, if nothing changes in the following weeks, most probably I will move to another tool in order to be productive again.

comments: author: G
body: Yep - it's still making my job way more difficult than it should be.

Add 3 short URLs to a card and suddenly you've just got a huge mess of underline text you can't read.


author: Tommy Hodgins
body: This has just happened on our Trello board as well. For our work, seeing the URLs is very important and many URLs with crucially important differences in the URL end up having the same preview title, so you can't tell them apart by their appearance easily once they've been replaced.

If this feature is not removed, or cannot be disabled, Trello may have outlived its usefulness for serious web-related work.


author: afk03
body: Has this issue been resolved? Please no one wants it. At least make it optional.


author: Michael Barry
body: I seem to have found a workaround (that's working for me)

If you remove the "https://" from the URL it doesn't render the preview.


author: Michael Pryor
body: There isn't a way to disable this unfortunately. I'm very sorry.

comments: author: Sophie
body: Hi!

Are there plans to add a functionality to disable link previews? The feature was newly added, so it should be fresh in your developpers' minds, right? Because wrapping links in backticks, as suggested by Felix, is very time-consuming... :(

Thanks!

Sophie


author: Dave
body: The link previewing functionality is very annoying. Many links seem to not have \*any\* useful information about what's on the other side from the page title alone. Especially annoying for pages requiring a login that Trello obviously can't log into. I see a bunch of "Log In \| \[Site Name\]" previews that do absolutely nothing to tell me what's on the other side of the link.


author: vostapenko
body: I hope this will be reconsidered. Pretty annoying feature.


author: G
body: I agree with these guys - as a dev I need to see full URLs rather than META data and find this very unhelpful


author: Micha? Zagdan
body: I cannot copy serveral links from task description because they were converted to useless titles :\[ Now have to go one-by-one.


author: david.bailey
body: Super annoying feature and definitely a backward step.

I need my designers/devs to see the exact URLs in the card descriptions/comments...

It's confusing and dangerous when the URL is automatically replaced by a page title (which are not necessarily unique).


author: jschaart
body: Please add an option to disable this option!


author: ustp_cz
body: Is there a fix now?


author: ustp_cz
body: BUMP.

Is this fixed now?


author: Vedmant
body: This is so annoying feature, currently even the plugin doesn't work anymore (<https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/link-preserver-for-trello/kakifckibanjlglpkbnfdichejplgdap>)


author: lalene05
body: Any updates on this please? Makes my life harder as a developer. Seeing the URLs are crucial in my work.


author: Martinho Riebeiro
body: When I started using Trello the preview was there.  
I was in charge of creating a system for our company and we rely on the opposite issue.  
We don't care for the links. We care for the Card Name that showed instead of the link.  
Now when I look inside a client's card all I see are a bunch of links to I don't know what anymore.  

Before it would show each of the work done for them, butu I can't tell them apart without having to click on them. Annoying.


author: Ron S
body: Such a simple issue that they should resolve, but....I think I found a workaround.  

Instead of copy/paste. Use Copy and use CTRL+Shift to paste, which will paste it as text. For some reason, this makes it so that it won't be pasted as a preview and it doesn't look to switch.

comments: author: vostapenko
body: Works only with the new editor.


author: Felix
body: There's a workaround to auto-convert cards from "Link cards" to "Regular cards": add a Butler rule to your board that adds, then removes a label (or a member) to/from the card.

This works, because Link cards can't have labels, members or descriptions.

No promises this will continue to work, but should work for now (we're looking at adding support for Link cards more formally to Butler).

Out of curiosity: why do you want/need to see the URL?

comments: author: Vadim Galimov
body: Oh well, that sucks -- since I'm not in charge of my board, I was hoping for a user-end solution.

I need to see the URL because I work with a CMS system for a news website and the URLs include info on which section of the website each article is in. When I need to edit an article, I'll have a quick glance at the link in the card to find out which section to open in CMS. I don't need to know the link title since it's already in the card title (and whenever people post links they describe what the link is, anyway). And in some cases I can just glance the ID in the URL to bypass all steps altogether and quickly open up an edit page.

Sure, I can hover over the link to see that info, but that's just an unnecessary extra step.

Besides, I just have a general distaste for all QoL "features" that seek to hide what is seen as "technical" info from users and instead complicate the process further. That, and when cosmetic changes are rolled out without adding a toggle to user preferences \>:-(

Very much hoping to see this become a toggleable feature in the near future!


author: Felix
body: Oh, so I'd assumed that the links were "Link cards" - is that not the case? Are the links in the card description/comments? If so, you can wrap them in backticks (\`) to have them render as "code", which prevents Trello from unfurling (showing the preview).


author: Vadim Galimov
body: I'll be quite honest -- I've no idea what "link cards" are and how they differ from "regular" ones :))

Yep, the links are in description/comments.

The code idea is great, though I imagine it'll be an issue getting everyone on the board to adopt that technique =)


author: Felix
body: Cool, thanks!

There's a bunch of info on Link cards here, if you're interested: <https://help.trello.com/article/1256-link-cards>

Note that you _can_ also automate wrapping links in descriptions in backticks with Butler, if you're dedicated enough :wink:


author: Vadim Galimov
body: I've dabbled with Butler a bit, but wasn't able to figure out how to do that. Would you mind giving me some pointers?


author: Dave
body: Many links seem to not have \*any\* useful information about what's on the other side from the page title alone. Especially annoying for pages requiring a login that Trello obviously can't log into.

I end up seeing a bunch of "Log In \| \[Site Name\]" previews that do absolutely nothing to tell me what's on the other side of the link--whereas the actual URL told me all I needed to know.


author: Nadia P?rez
body: How about make this automate wrapping links in backticks in a checklist? I work with a CMS too, and I need check the URLs updates, for example, one by one.

Is possible to do that?


author: G
body: We've moved to Asana and I must say I'm loving that we can now see URLs again instead of META - such a huge huge improvement on usability.


author: Saijo
body: you can use this bookmarklet <https://saijogeorge.com/replace-trello-links-urls/>


author: ustp_cz
body: Workaround is to install this extension: <https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/link-preserver-for-trello/kakifckibanjlglpkbnfdichejplgdap> and than turn Disable Atlassian Smart Links on.

I would add very strong quotes around smart...

comments: author: lalene05
body: Works like a charm! Thank you.


Tags: link

preview

title