This guide will show you how to disable link previews in Slack by default. When someone sends me several links at a time it can take up the whole chat window. This makes it a lot harder to read and keep up with the other messages going on.
The image below has the link preview enabled. I sent myself a link to one of my videos that shows a large thumbnail for the video.
Disable Link Preview by Default
Start by navigating to your slack preferences to disable the preview by default. On Mac, you can access this when the slack application is active then using the top menu for Slack > Preferences.
You can also access this on both Mac and PC by clicking on your profile icon in the top right-hand corner of slack, then selecting the Preferences option.
With the preferences open, click on Messages & media sub-menu on the left-hand side.
Next, we will look at the Inline media & links section. There are four different options that we can enable and disable to have the link previews work to our expectations.
- Show images and files uploaded to slack – Show previews of images and files that are DIRECTLY uploaded to Slack.
- Show images and files from linked websites – This will show a preview of LINKED images and files from external websites.
- Even if they’re larger than 2MB – If checked, this will show the linked images and files previews, even if they are larger than 2MB. If you have a slow internet connection, or tethering off your mobile device, this would be a great option to de-select to save bandwidth.
- Show text previews of linked websites – If check, this will show text previews of linked websites. This can include a featured image, and default metadata gathered from the site.
In my case, I do not want the text previews of the linked websites as shown in the screenshot at the begging of the article. I will de-select Show text previews of linked websites.
Now we can see that the preview no longer includes the featured image and metadata for the link. Isn’t it nice how much less space this link takes up?
Disable Link Preview Manually
If you want to disable a single link preview, after sending the link, click on the x to the next of the preview. After you have clicked on the x the preview should not be shown for any users. As a result, this only applies to the links that you manually remove the preview from.
In summary, you can see it is easy to disable link previews in slack. I prefer having link previews turned off by default. In my opinion, this helps free up chat real estate and makes it easier to read the ongoing thread. What is your preference? Drop a comment below to get the conversation started.
Wrap up
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