Turn off iMessage link previews in iOS 10+

There is currently no way to turn off link previews in iOS 10. This “feature” is a half-baked attempt to add slack-like features, where GIFs, YouTube links, pictures, etc show up in-line in your iMessage conversation thread. I really wish Apple would have added a way to turn this off because it slows down the interface on my older iPhone 6, and also presents a security/privacy risk. If I don’t accept the privacy policy of a website, I used to have the choice to not click on the link go to that website. Further, by going to that site, I reveal all sorts of information including my IP (and possibly even my location). With iOS 10, the messages app does this automatically, whether you wanted to load an image (on cell data) or not.

There is a way that you can turn off this “feature” when you’re sending links to people: Don’t put the link as the first thing in the message… I use the “.” character to disable this on links that I send. You can (and should) also send a feedback report to Apple asking them to add in a user setting to disable the “feature.”

I did: