Link previews are a pretty cool feature that shows a user what website they’ll see even before they click on it. For informative links, educational resources, and research materials, this feature can be invaluable. On the other hand, if you’re trying to Rickroll your colleague, it’s not so helpful.
Don’t worry, though – link previews in Slack can be turned off quickly, either for just one link or for all links from a domain. In other words, your Rickrolling shenanigans can continue.
Blocking Link previews
Removing a link preview is pretty simple; to do so, move your mouse over the link preview and then click the small “x” icon to the top left of the preview.
In the remove preview confirmation popup, you can either choose to just block that one link or choose to secure more than that. To do so, tick the checkbox labeled “Also block previews from this website in the future,” then select the type of blocking you want. You can either choose to block all previews of the specific link in the future or choose to block all link previews for any links to the domain. Once you’ve decided to stop previews for the entire domain, click “Remove and block” to delete the preview and prevent future previews from that domain.
Reviewing Blocked Domains
If you want to review and manage the list of currently blocked domains, you can do so by going into the workspace attachment settings. To get there, you first need to click on the workspace name in the top-right corner. Next, in the dropdown menu, select “Settings & administration,” then “Workspace settings” to open the workspace settings in a new tab.
Once in the workspace settings, switch to the “Attachments” tab. Here you can review the list of currently blocked previews. You can see if each entry is a specific URL or domain, who blocked it, and when they blocked it. If you want to unblock a domain or link, click on the respective red “x” icon, then click “OK” in the popup to unblock the domain.
Note: Unblocking a domain or link will allow new links to have previews. However, links that have already had the preview removed will not get a preview back automatically, even after you refresh the page.
Link previews can be useful, but there may be links or websites that you don’t want previews to appear for. By following the steps in this guide, you can block and unblock domains from displaying link previews.
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