Option to disable the link preview

[Akamaru]

Pls add an option to disable link previews.

[Brawl345]

Yeah, they're really big and I think that your PC connects to the services like youtube? Not really a good feature for a privacy messenger.

[OliverWillemse]

I would also very much like this feature!

[yuergen]

I concur. The link preview is annoying.

[Sanva]

+1 —I'm also really annoyed by this... it's really disturbing to be writing with someone talking about some web application we are developing and having that preview every time we mention the app by its domain name.

[auchri]

@Brawl345 your pc is not connecting to the services, instead the telegram servers are connecting to the different websites

[yuergen]

@auchri if the URI includes tracking information, information will leak to the site's operator.

[halcion]

please, i cannot stress enough how much i dislike the link preview, please remove it.

[Aokromes]

How about a dropdown with the following options:

"Preview on message" (current mode) "Preview on mouseover" "Preview on click" "Preview disabled"

[brantje]

+1, i expected an option to turn it off when they introduced link previews... Also, as @Brawl345 mentioned, it also gets youtube / facebook links, not good for your privacy

[Aokromes]

Maybe the setting can he also be done per group or contact overwriting general settings.

[ezdev128]

Please disable this [censored] preview feature!!! Today I had an issue when trying to send auth link (to recover password to one of my online services) and I was unable to do it because your built-in crawler already gets this link, therefore remote side consider you have already checked link and doesn't allows to change password. My account has been blocked for fraud attempts after 3rd unsuccessful try. This is awful.

@telegramdesktop how much signatures needs from unhappy persons to disable this [censored] feature? 10? 20? 100? 10000??? Don't you have an eyes or don't you read the conversation??? This question related to https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/807

[ralesk]

:+1: would love to have a setting to disable images sent/received and link previews

[ezdev128]

@ralesk that should be by default, I mean it should be optional. Also it would be good to have some document types list to preview, e.g., allow preview only for .html,.png|gif|jpeg|..., ..., youtype url type (like /watch?v=hash) and other, but NOT ALL THE LINKS!!!

[mbravorus]

+1 on both off by default and per chat option to turn on

[OscarL]

+1

I have a slow internet connection, and that seems to prevent the link preview and "X to cancel" to show up in due time, so I end up getting previews when I DO NOT want them. Please implement this!

[HooFoo]

+1 I suggest you solution to resolve this situation. 1) Application settings needs new toggle - NSFW mode 2) If this toggled all pictures in all chats is under monochrome overlay with opacity value ~80% 3) When you hover you pointer overlay changes their opacity to 0% and you see original file.

[ralesk]

@HooFoo I don't think a hover revealer with any kind of default visibility is sufficiently safe for work. Also, I suppose it's the client that looks up the contents of the remote URLs and what not — in this case it's doubly troubling that one ends up “browsing” websites that one does not have any control over.

The only right way to do SFW mode is to not do any lookups and not display any previews.

[HooFoo]

@ralesk I understand your position and I agree with it. But maybe this function (overlay) will be realised as "light SFW" mode? I am a supporter of this approach because you can control what content is safe, because you can see it. I attached example: opacity of overlay is 85%.

[Dimtar]

How is this still an issue over 6 months later?

[Aokromes]

Use http://i.imgur.com/oSglMLl.png

[Dimtar]

Thanks Aokromes https://github.com/Aokromes

It's a start but it's not really quite there yet as there is still a slightly blurred preview.

On Saturday, 16 January 2016, Aokromes notifications@github.com wrote:

Use http://i.imgur.com/oSglMLl.png

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/687#issuecomment-172170968 .

Thanks, Daniel

[ptramsey]

+1. I would use telegram 10x more if I felt that I got any say on what other people displayed on my device's screen. The lack of this feature is why I don't feel I can log into telegram in public.

Other random people on the internet should not be able to display images on my monitor without my consent.

[auchri]

Please use the new reactions of GitHub on the first entry of this issue instead of creating unnecessary +1 comments.

I deleted all +1's

[kode54]

I don't know about anyone else in this topic, but I am now seeing imgur links previewed as extremely low resolution, horribly blurred images, both on Telegram Desktop and on the Android app, which I know is something else entirely. It's probably Imgur's fault.

[lazynooblet]

What is the hold-up on this issue? Other less important issues are fixed quickly, but this one remains 1year+ later. Does this go against some philosophy from a higher-up at Telegram? What can we do to change their mind? If the answer is nothing, then why not close this ticket and say so.

I work in hosting, and a lot of messages have a domain in the text. This is getting old: http://i.imgur.com/K3JTHkk.png

[RudeySH]

Every damn time I type ASP.NET I want this feature more and more.

[auchri]

@rlenders

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

[Zenexer]

@auchri, that's extremely inconvenient when you're talking about a domain/technology frequently, especially since it takes time for the preview of the preview to show up. Sometimes it never appears at all.

As for privacy, the Telegram client never makes requests to any of these URLs, so there's no privacy issue. It doesn't matter whether there's tracking or anything else in the URL. Telegram's servers make the request and then forward the preview to all the clients. The website has no way of knowing who saw it (or any other information, for that matter). I've tested this quite thoroughly.

[ralesk]

As for privacy, the Telegram client never makes requests to any of these URLs, so there's no privacy issue. It doesn't matter whether there's tracking or anything else in the URL. Telegram's servers make the request and then forward the preview to all the clients. The website has no way of knowing who saw it (or any other information, for that matter). I've tested this quite thoroughly.

Thanks for checking, that's good to know.

[johonaton]

This really should be a high priority...not allowing the disabling of chat media makes Telegram basically useless in a SFW setting as there's no opt-out for displaying media. Privacy aside with respect to the server requests, this is still a major problem.

[mrsofia]

Please create this feature. Telegram auto-clicks each sent link in order to gather some data and render the preview. I want to use Telegram to automatically send work alerts to my phone, but each alert has a link that, when clicked, tells the alert system that I've acknowledged the alert. When Telegram auto-scans the link to create a preview, it clicks the link thereby telling the alert system that I've acknowledged the alert. You can see the problem with this - I'm automatically acknowledging alerts before I've even looked at them. Enabling this feature in a given chat will solve this problem and enable more mass market adoption of Telegram for use cases like this. Thank you.

[auchri]

@mrsofia Bots are able to disable the preview: sendMessage - disable_web_page_preview. So you should create a bot to send the messages.

[mrsofia]

@auchri Good to know that works, but hopefully this is a feature the team is planning on implementing. Creating a bot would require an email event-listener as the work alerts are sent through a carrier-specific email address that sends the email to my phone as an SMS. Right now I'm using a 3rd-party bot that provides an email address that sends the email to a Telegram group, which would provide the solution I need if I could turn off the link preview. Building my own bot would require a back-end email listener which I don't really have the time for. I'll probably implement this in Slack for now since they have those features. Thanks for the response.

[ThinkPadNL]

This is really annoying me. I use Telegram (webclient) frequently, and the auto preview of URL's is making it harder for my chat partner to read the conversation in the layout as i meant it. Please create an option to disable the link preview!

[stek29]

@ThinkPadNL please report the issue to webclient repo too then.

[ThinkPadNL]

@stek29 Thanks, i did that: https://github.com/zhukov/webogram/issues/1216

[foysalit]

Hey all, just submitted a PR on the web client in case anyone's interested in taking a look. https://github.com/zhukov/webogram/pull/1228

[dhowe]

Would be great to land this... it is by far the most annoying 'feature' of telegram's otherwise-excellent UI

[6r0m]

It's so annoying - close this preview every time!!! because text become not good readable((

[dhowe]

why is no one responding here?

[stek29]

@dhowe why should someone?

[lazynooblet]

Scroll up to the first post and click the thumbs up. It'll then rate higher in the list of other enhancements

[stek29]

@stalks label:enhancement :)

[joy4eg]

+1

[brianleejackson]

I can't tell you how many clicks I waste on this per day... The thing is, this needs to be on a per channel basis. My entire team wants this, so I know there are others out there.

[m-legrand]

The Telegram's system of bot is so convenient for team of programmers who:

• use a lot a hyperlinks;
• really don't want to bother clicking on a cross for each and every message they write;
• would love to avoid scrolling for nothing when watching what has been said since their last passage.

How can an absence of option be so difficult to patch in? At the very least put a cross even once the message has been sent so one can clean up the mess afterwards.

[vnabatov]

I've removed it with adblock in web version, may be this simple solution will help someone

[stek29]

@vicnbt it may help people -- can you share it at zhukov/webogram?

[auchri]

See #3330

[vdmit]

Collapse feature is not what personally I expected. I just wanted to have links just as simple blue links, nothing more, and, moreover, don't do any http requests for these links. So I don't think this issue could be closed.