With 3D Touch & Haptic Touch popularizing on iPhones and iPads, Apple is developing features to make the overall user experience great. One such feature is ‘link preview’ or ‘rich preview’. This feature showcases the context of any link you send via Notes or Messages app or long-press on Safari or any other built-in app and it is annoying. The reason is that it eats up a good chunk of the screen during the preview.
What is Link Preview & Why Do You Need To Disable It?
Both iPadOS 13 and iOS 13 possess the ability to preview links in native apps including Mail, Messages, Safari, Notes, etc. Although the link does prove instrumental in saving the time it would otherwise take to open the webpage and check it out. On the other hand, it is quite annoying as the link preview chugs a lot of screen real estate. It can occur during Haptic Touch or 3D Touch gesture and could appear if you are copying any URL or long-pressing on any link on a website, etc.
The thing is, link previews hide the full URL which could turn pretty fishy as the link you get via any app or website showing a legitimate site or context might be fishy. A dropbox link someone sends you via Messages app could be a whole different thing if not legitimate. Moreover, link previews are also associated with data usage which means you are using up the valuable mobile data to peek into the links even if you don’t wish to open it.
Thus, a simple solution is to disable it. Here’s how you can disable the link previews on both iPadOS and iOS including a method to actually send links without disclosing the context even when the link preview is enabled.
How to Disable Link Previews in iOS 13 and iPadOS?
The method that you’ll need to use is the same for both iOS and iPadOS so you don’t have to worry about it. Simply follow the steps to do it.
Step 01: First of all, open Safari on your iPhone or iPad.
Step 02: Visit any website like www.getdroidtips.com and long-press on a link that must give you a giant link preview with the options that you can perform with the selected link.
Step 02: On the link preview to the extreme upper-left corner, you’ll see an option ‘Hide Preview’ or it could be either in the menu alongside ‘Open in a new tab’.
Step 03: You need to click on it and it is done
Step 04: To turn it back on, go through Step 01 and you’ll see an option ‘Show Preview’. This will restore functionality.
Once you tap on hiding preview, both iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 will automatically mark it as default for all the native apps that support this functionality. Note that it is possible that some third-party app might support this feature, they will still show you the link preview in most cases. Largely, all the native apps will hide previews unless you turn it on manually changing the default settings. Henceforth, you’ll see only the URL hovering on the screen when you click on any link.
Reduce 3D Touch/Haptic Touch Sensitivity
If your iPhone or iPad depending upon the generation supports either Haptic Touch or 3D Touch and Haptic Touch (both), you can reduce the sensitivity to lower the chances of actually launching link previews accidentally when you mistakenly click on a link for a longer duration.
Step 01: On your iPhone or iPad Settings, go to Accessibility >> Touch >> 3D & Haptic Touch.
Step 02: You need to alter the sensitivity by using a scroller to either ‘Medium’ or ‘Firm’ and that should do the magic.
