[🚀 | Feature request]: Support clickable Parsec links in emails

[mmmarcos]

What you would like to accomplish

Parsec links to files or folders obtained via the GUI are copied as plain text (parsec://...). When pasting it in an email client, like Gmail, it is not rendered as a link.

I would like to be able to paste a link obtained via the GUI in an email and get it rendered as a link.

How the feature should work

Custom URL schemes are often considered unsafe (potential attack vector) and are stripped out by email clients even from href attributes.

A common strategy would be to obtain from the GUI a regular https:// link to Parsec server and then redirect that to parsec://. With this approach:

• the link will be rendered as a link, and it will be clickable
• after redirection, the browser will prompt to open (or directly open, depending on the settings) the Parsec client
  • the Parsec client must be registered to open parsec:// links, but this should only be done once by the user

It should be mention that this strategy is already used for the invitation links sent by email to join an organization.

The only downside is that links will no longer work "offline", but this may be acceptable.

Describe alternatives you have considered

The GUI could propose "offline" (parsec://) and "online" (https://) versions of the same link, but it does not seem right to put the burden on the user.

[FirelightFlagboy]

When pasting it in an email client, like Gmail, it is not rendered as a link.

I would also like to add that if you do the extra miles to add a link via the text editor's tool, It will still not work

[FirelightFlagboy]

Clipboard seems to have 2 "context":

• Rich text
• Plain text

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Clipboard https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/controls/use-rich-edit-clipboard-operations https://dev.to/stegriff/copy-rich-html-with-the-native-clipboard-api-5ah8

[vxgmichel]

The only downside is that links will no longer work "offline", but this may be acceptable

Just a side note: we could still make it work offline by allowing the user to copy and paste the link within the parsec app (I think that's also how it works for invitation at the moment, both http and parsec links are supported).