Link Manager for Confluence Cloud

Go to documentation.

In edit mode hover over links to display all the link options that range from displaying the URL itself to a full embed for Jira issues or YouTube videos.

Display options allow you to organize links to control how links appear on a page.

Smart links options:

1. URL

This is where the hyperlink displays the link itself like https://example.com

2. inline

See the name of a webpage or even a Jira issue like in the example below.

3. card

The card option gives a synopsis of the content of the page to offer more advanced linking. This is a happy medium between little to know information with only the URL and enough for a user to judge if they want to click on the link as it displays more than the title.

4. embed

This is a popular option for YouTube videos. But depending on your workflow it  can be used to work on a Jira issue within Confluence (if the user has the proper permissions).

Most links (also known as hyperlinks and URLs) will automatically unfurl or convert into a smartlink when you paste them in a Confluence page.

You can cancel this by using keyboard shortcuts:

* For Mac: Cmd + Z 
* For Windows: Ctrl + Z


Any URL can become a smart link. Add a link that includes https:// (it does not work with http://) and Confluence will turn it into a smart link. Display inline (see the page title) is the default link type.

You can also add a Confluence hyperlink to section to create a smart link.

Hover over the end of any h1-h6 heading title while in publish mode. A link icon will appear. Click on it to copy this anchor link. This link takes the user directly to this section on the page.

Whenever you paste in a URL into Jira (cloud) or Confluence (cloud) it is automatically changed to appear as Display Inline.
You paste in the link https://www.wikipedia.org/ and it gives you:

Atlassian calls this a Smart Link.

You cannot:

* disable smart links in Jira cloud
* disable smart links in Confluence cloud
* change the individual default links to Display URL
* turn off Smart Links on an instance
* turn off Smart Links on a Jira project
* turn off Smart Links on a Jira issue
* turn off Smart Links on a Confluence space
* turn off Smart Links on a Confluence page
* bulk edit links in Jira
* bulk edit links in Confluence

Some of the reasons for a link management for Confluence app.

Two imperfect workarounds.
They only work to change individual links from this (Display Inline) to https://www.wikipedia.org/ (Display URL) or Display Card in Jira or Confluence.
1. Reverse each link after pasting
Paste the link (e.g. https://www.wikipedia.org/). Once it displays inline like this:

2. Use http:// not https://

A suggestion by Atlassian, but it does not seem to be useful:

“When inserting the link, be sure to use http:// instead of [https://|https:]. The Smart Card feature will not be activated, and upon visiting the URL, it will automatically redirect to https:// for these services.”

No. Atlassian has an open user request to add this features.

Option to Disable Smart Links For Non-Atlassian Products in ADF editor (created July 2019)

Highlights of what Confluence users are saying about the need to bulk convert smartlinks to URLs:

“We need to see the structure of a URL in a description, because that’s often the nature of what we’re working on for pathing and SEO work.”

“My Confluence page breaks whenever I have many links, just because they are all being updated to show the inline link first.”

“A few extra clicks of the mouse EVERY TIME you add a URL is costing our teams.”

“Developers link to specific URLs for a lot of reasons”

“Today I was viewing a Confluence document where about half of the links had become “Please Log in” because they were deep links into our application that require authentication.”