Ventura Mail - pasting of links is sort of annoying

In Ventura Mail when you paste a URL it becomes a preview of the link instead of the link instead. You can select it and turn it into a plain link, but is there a way of making that the default? It’s sort of annoying.

1 Like

In Ventura Mail when you paste a URL it becomes a preview of the link instead of the link instead.

With my setup (Ventura 13.0.1) that only happens if I choose Rich Text instead of Plain Text in Mail > Settings > Composing > Message format.

I never use Rich Text, so I don’t know if it’s new in Ventura.

David

But but… I do want to keep formatting and not make it all plain text of course.

1 Like

Sorry – I don’t know how to make it the default.

David

This is what it says in the Apple Support Forums:

As a workaround pressing ⌘K, pasting the URL into the the text field and clicking OK will insert the URL as a link without converting it into a ‘preview’. Without leaving the keyboard it’s ⌘K, ⌘V, return – faster than clicking the arrow and converting it back that way. There definitely needs to be an option to disable it globally though.

2 Likes

@douglerner,

Sounds like an easy enough solution.

Just curious, what advantage do you find in rich vs plain text?

David

Formatted text, including images.

3 Likes

Please don’t send me formatted messages, I’ll assume it’s from some company and probably delete it immediately. “Just the facts, mamma.” :+1: Fortunately, I won’t see any of your images, those (third-party, anyway) are blocked. Just wish I could block them in iOS. :roll_eyes:

The email I just got from this site with your message was formatted and included your thumbs emoji. :slight_smile:

Any formatting came from this forum, I have no idea what that might be. I am simply using the default editor here. What was the formatting you saw?

An emoji is a collection on uni codes that are accepted in most systems nowadays, they are built into the OS, I think. They are not images sent from anyone.

Since I am using iPadOS, I can see the ‘self’s’ image you sent in Mail. That is not a “third-party” image, however, even if it was, I cannot block them in iPadOS or any other Apple mobile OS. That’s the main reason I try not to ever read an email on my iPhone or my iPad. Nor does SpamSieve work in that hardware.

Hope that explains why you saw what you did. :blush: ← another emoji. BTW, you can find the Unicode for all emojis via a web search. I recommend using DuckDuckGo. :+1:

I very often need to send emails with multiple copy/paste images to describe work I’m doing or classes I’m participating in. And I often mark them up. I also often will use some sort of font formatting, like italics or bold. I would think that most people do. Emails aren’t telegrams. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

You can. Go to Settings → Mail Privacy Protection. Then disable “Protect Mail Activity” and enable “Block all remote content”.

Now, Mail will stop loading remote content (like images) instead of routing the image-load requests through an Apple privacy server.

I run my phone this way, because I don’t believe Apple’s server can possibly block tracking images. If a spammer is sending mail with images that have custom filenames, and you load the image, whether directly or through Apple’s server, then he will know you opened the mail. Hiding your IP address isn’t going to do much to hide the fact that you opened the message. Blocking the image altogether is the only meaningful solution.

Done. Thanks! :clap: That does seem rather UN-intuitive to me. Since I had “Protect Mail Activity” ENABLED, I never (remember) saw the additional settings. :roll_eyes:

Third-party images was a vector for malware in the past and the main reason for blocking in the first place. I wonder if that is even still used but I still lock our doors when we aren’t home! :rofl: I do wonder about ‘regular’ embedded images; those from the senders own servers. I’ll see if the iOS version of Mail will now eliminate all images similar to the Desktop version.

I don’t think it blocks all images. Only remote images.

That is, it will block an image, if your mail message contains an image-link to an Internet-hosted image.

But it will not block an image that is sent as a part of the e-mail (as an attachment). But that should be OK, since displaying attached images doesn’t involve any network activity (beyond downloading the mail message itself, of course). So there’s no risk of tracking, assuming you trust your e-mail provider.

“Emails aren’t telegrams.” [sarcasm]I didn’t know that![/sarcasm] :crazy_face:

So, you have a need for images and usually from know sources. But that doesn’t prevent others from sending you a file. And Mail has a “Load remote content” button. However, if you are adding ‘markup’ to those images, I would assume (dangerous as that is!) that you are loading those images into an image editing app, even if it is just the built-in screen capture of the OS. Mail is still able to download an image sent as a file or show it for screen capturing.

What I am trying to avoid is allowing a malware embedded in an image from getting installed on my computer/phone/device. Even if it comes from a known sender, that does not mean they have malware that can be sent in a viewable image. The malware can even be included in a single pixel, clear (invisible) .GIF. I doubt you will see that with your eyes.

If you want or need formatting, by all means use it. I’m just not writing/reading many things that need it. Plain text works on any usable/known system and it is faster down/upload with fewer bytes which can help when paying for those. Not all have high speed, unlimited interweb access. I’m an old fart that remembers that horrible “styles” fostered by the original Mac’s WYSIWYG! That’s when the following rule was created: “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” :face_with_monocle: