Managing tabs, address bar, and search settings in Edge on Windows 10
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When copying and pasting URLs from Microsoft Edge, the URL will now be pasted in a friendly, readable link format by default. The link uses the page title as the link text and uses the full URL you copied as the link’s destination. We believe this makes the URLs you share easier to read, understand, and find again later.
If on occasion you would like to paste the full, plain text URL, that is still available. Right-click where you would like to paste and in the new Paste as menu, select Plain text. Alternatively you can use the shortcut key Ctrl+Shift+V.
If you would rather change the default URL copy and paste format back to plain text, you can do that as well. Visit the Share, copy & paste page in Microsoft Edge settings (you can get there easily by typing edge://Settings/ShareCopyPaste in the address bar) and select the Plain text option.
Finally, we’d love to hear from you! Here are some questions about this feature we’d love for you to answer:
Thank you!
The Microsoft Edge team
Managing tabs, address bar, and search settings in Edge on Windows 10
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Personally I find this feature very challenging and not helpful.
I'm in Communications and manage our company's internal newsletter. We have a branded template we use to send the newsletter and this new Link Format makes formatting the newsletter quite challenging.
When I try to hyperlink to a PDF, for example, a little graphic icon of a PDF is automatically inserted, and the link shows a light grey highlight. I can manually delete the icon and change the color of the hyperlinked text, but it's next to impossible to remove the grey highlight. And even when I do manage to change it, once the email is sent, the text usually reverts back to bright blue with the grey format.
I can see how these changes would benefit some people, but I know it's causing headaches for many business professionals and I do not see a 'paste as' option in Outlook.
HTML's ability to hide links under arbitrary text is a regularly-exploited risk, especially when the covering text looks like a URL. This feature encourages hi-risk URLs to use spoofy titles, so Edge would automatically create misleading links when Pasted. So; (1) Yes, and...
(2) Yes; a lot depends on the behavior of the Paste target. Ideally, there should be hover-over actual-URL pop-up text, and/or warning where the nature of URL vs. text suggests attempts to exploit the user. This could be API'd out for Defender and other security suites to hook for risk assessment and user alert.
But as it is, current behavior is too undefined - e.g. when pasting links back into Edge, testing shows the result may be not the original link, but a search result based on the visible text. This may break the links in the paste target, if the breakage is "on the way in" rather than "on the way out"; either way, just adds an extra layer of flakiness... for now, feature seems "alpha" in real-world usability.
This feature widens the safety gap, i.e. skills needed to operate the system, and the additional skills needed to operate the system safely. As such, I'd disable it as an extra unwanted risk.
- Do you prefer the full, plain text URL format when you copy and paste all the time?
- Do you have any other feedback about this feature you’d like to share with us?
Also, the "page title" for many pages is not really all that helpful, especially as many sites use the same title for all their pages (e.g. Citrix sites) so there's no differentiation between links if you copy multiple links from a single site.