Turning Off Image Previews in Slack

Slack is an online chat program frequently used by companies and other professionals to keep in contact with each other. The Slack program has many different features. Some of them are that conversations can be organized by topic, or a group of people, or just between individuals.

Slack has also made it extremely easy to share links and files within the chat program. When a link is shared frequently, a preview of the shared link will appear below the link. This can help those in the chat see what they are looking at and find it again later.

However, not everyone wants to have the previews. The link previews can be turned off one at a time or can be turned off permanently for all current and future links that are shared.

Sharing a Link in Slack

Every once in awhile, you may need to share a link to a webpage, Tweet, or even a video in a Slack chat. It’s actually easy to share a link. All you need to do is copy the URL and then paste it into the message field of the chat and send it.

The link will be sent to everyone included in the chat. A preview should pop up under the link, but there are times that it may not happen.

No Preview Displayed

The link preview is not entirely perfect. There are times a preview will not appear. Most of the time, it is not a problem with Slack but with something in the link or on the webpage you are trying to share. Below is a list of reasons why a link may not have a preview come up.

1. The link may not have embedded data that would make a preview come up.
2. The link you shared might be for a private page or file. If you shared a password protected YouTube or Vimeo video, a preview will not show.
3. The link you shared was already shared by someone else in the chat.
4. If you share a Tweet and you do not have the Twitter app on your workspace, then the preview will not come up. Quickly fix this by adding the Twitter app to your workspace.
5. Slack has a whitelist of services for audio and video files. Slack is continually working on adding new services. The link you shared may not be a service that is whitelisted by Slack yet.
6. You may have forgotten to add http:// to your link. If you add that part, it may fix the issue.
7. If you have shared more than four links in your message, then none of them will have a preview.

Removing a Single Link Preview

Removing a link preview from your Slack chat is simple and very easy to do. Following the steps below will only remove the preview for the one you close. It will not remove future previews. Also, please note that these steps will not work for the mobile app.

1. Hover your cursor over the link preview you want to remove.
2. A small x will appear to the left side of the link.
3. Click on it to close the preview.

Turning off All Link Previews

If you would like to turn off previews for all links and any future links you may review, you can do that by following the steps below. However, even though you follow the steps below, there are some apps and Slack integrations that will still have previews. These can’t be turned off, no matter what you do.

1. Click on your workspace name in the top left of your screen.
2. Click on Preferences.
3. A new menu will come up. Click on Messages & Media.
4. Another menu will appear. Under the Inline Media & Links headline, there will be a couple of boxes that you need to uncheck.
5. Uncheck the boxes named Show images and files from linked websites and Show text previews of linked sites.

Sharing links within Slack is very easy and helps keep the conversation in one place. Each time you share a link, a preview will appear. If you do not like the previews, you can turn them off individually, or you can turn them all off and prevent future previews from coming up. The steps are easy to complete and take less than a minute to do.