Smart Links in Jira and Confluence: How to Control, Disable, or Fix Them When They Break

You paste a plain URL into a Jira comment. A few seconds later, it's a card, with a title, a thumbnail, metadata you didn't ask for. Someone on your team pastes the same kind of link and gets a totally different result. A third teammate can't see the preview at all, just a broken "you don't have access to this link" message on a page they can definitely open.

None of that is random. Smart Links behave differently depending on settings you probably haven't touched, permissions you didn't know were involved, and at least one real platform-wide outage that had nothing to do with your configuration at all.

Here's exactly how Smart Links actually work, how to control your own display preferences, and the specific fixes for the failure modes people hit most.

If you're new to Smart Links, start with our complete guide to how Smart Links work in Confluence and Jira before troubleshooting. Smart Links are Atlassian's system for turning a pasted URL into a rich preview, a card with a title and metadata, or an embed, instead of a plain link. They work across Jira, Confluence, and connected third-party tools like Google Drive and Figma, and they're cloud-only, there's no equivalent in Data Center.

You can control your own default display behavior, smart card, inline, or plain URL, including per-domain exceptions, from your Atlassian account's link preferences page. What you can't do is force a link someone else already inserted to display differently for you. Atlassian built it this way deliberately: the display is set by whoever created the link, not by whoever's viewing it.

Most "broken" Smart Links trace back to one of four things: a permission issue on the linked content, an anonymous or logged-out viewer, a site rename that breaks the cosmetic preview without breaking the actual link, or a temporary platform-wide incident. Each has a specific fix below.

How do I turn off Smart Links in Jira and Confluence?

You can't disable them universally as something every viewer will see turned off, Atlassian has confirmed this is by design: whoever created the link chose its display, and that choice persists for everyone who views it. What you can control is your own default going forward.

Go to your account's link preferences page and set your default to plain URL instead of smart card. You can also set exceptions per domain, keep Smart Links on for Jira, Confluence, and Google Drive links specifically, while defaulting every other domain to a plain URL. This changes how links display when you insert them, not retroactively for links already on a page.

If you're working inside a Jira issue specifically and a link just converted to a card moments ago, pressing Ctrl+Z (or Cmd+Z on a Mac) immediately after it renders will revert it back to a plain link for that single insertion, a workaround several admins rely on rather than digging through settings every time.

If Smart Links are creating real friction for your whole organization, not just your personal preference, that's worth raising as part of a broader rollout plan rather than fighting individually. We've walked teams through structuring Jira and Confluence integration so link behavior is a deliberate decision, not an accident no one configured.

For a deeper explanation of how Smart Links resolve content across platforms, see our full Smart Links overview.

Why isn't my Smart Link showing a preview?

The most common cause is permissions, not a bug. If the underlying content, a Confluence page, a Google Sheet, a Figma file, requires access the viewer doesn't have, the preview won't resolve, and Atlassian's own support team confirms this directly: connect or gain access to the content, and the preview typically starts working.

A second, less obvious cause: anonymous or logged-out viewers. There's a known limitation where the link resolver that powers Smart Link previews doesn't work correctly for users who aren't logged in, meaning a link that renders perfectly for your logged-in team can show as broken for anyone viewing without an active session.

A third cause, confirmed through an actual Atlassian bug report: renaming your Atlassian site can break the cosmetic rendering of existing Smart Links, showing "you don't have access to this link" even though clicking through still correctly redirects to the right page. The link isn't actually broken, only its preview is, and it typically resolves once the link is refreshed or re-pasted.

If you're troubleshooting broken previews across a large Confluence database or knowledge base, check permission inheritance first. It's the most common root cause by a wide margin.

Why did my Smart Links suddenly stop working across the board?

Sometimes it isn't your configuration at all. In July 2025, a documented platform-wide incident briefly broke Smart Link creation for Jira and Confluence links pasted into Confluence Cloud, pasted links stopped converting to smart cards entirely, some reverting to plain URLs and others showing a delayed generic card instead of the expected rich preview. Existing links created before the incident were affected too, some silently reverted to plain URLs on pages that previously showed rich previews.

If Smart Links that were working yesterday suddenly aren't today, across multiple users and multiple link types, check Atlassian's status page before assuming a configuration problem on your end. This class of issue resolves on Atlassian's side, not through any setting you can change, the same "check the platform before you check your own setup" instinct worth applying whenever something that worked yesterday breaks today, covered in a different context in our guide on efficient bug tracking with Jira.

Can I disable Smart Links for specific websites only?

Yes, and this is actually the most useful setting most teams never find. In your link preferences, you can keep Smart Links as your default while adding specific domain exceptions, for example, always show plain URLs for your internal dev or staging environments, while keeping rich previews for Jira, Confluence, Google Drive, and Figma links.

This solves a common complaint directly: teams whose Jira tickets are full of links to third-party tools they don't want auto-expanding into cards, GitHub links being a frequent example, while still wanting the convenience of rich previews for their core Atlassian content. Set the exception once, and it applies to every link you personally insert going forward.

How do I reference a Confluence link inside a Jira automation rule?

This is a genuine, confirmed gap, not a configuration mistake. There's currently no direct smart value that lets a Jira automation rule pull in a Confluence content link the way it can pull in standard issue fields. Teams needing this have to work around it: call Jira's REST API directly using a Send Web Request action, then parse the response to extract the relevant link data, typically filtering by the "wiki" relationship type in the returned remote links.

It's more setup than most automation rules require, and worth knowing upfront if you're planning a rule that depends on referencing Confluence content automatically. If you're building out your automation library more broadly, this is exactly the kind of edge case worth mapping before you commit to a rule design, covered in more depth in our guide on Jira automation in 2026.

Why does one teammate see a card and another sees a plain link for the same paste?

Because Smart Link display is a personal, per-user setting for links you insert yourself, two people can paste the exact same URL and get different results based on their own link preferences, one might have Smart Links on by default, the other might have set an exception for that specific domain.

This is worth explaining to a team before it gets mistaken for a bug: it's expected behavior, not inconsistency. If your team wants uniform display across everyone's pastes, that has to be a shared convention, agree on a default and each person sets their own preferences to match, since there's currently no site-wide admin control that forces one display mode for every user.

If you're documenting workflow conventions like this for a growing team, this is a natural fit alongside other Confluence content standards worth setting once and referencing going forward, rather than re-explaining every time it comes up.

FAQ

Can an admin force Smart Links off for an entire Confluence or Jira site? 

No, not currently. Display preference is set per user, based on who inserted the link, not enforced site-wide by an administrator. Each person controls their own default and domain exceptions.

Will turning off my Smart Links preference change how existing links look to me? 

No. Your preference setting controls how links display when you insert them going forward. Links other people already created keep the display the original creator chose, regardless of your own settings.

Why does a Smart Link say "you don't have access" when I can definitely open the page? 

This is usually a permission-resolution issue separate from your actual access, often triggered by a site rename or a temporary indexing delay. The underlying link still works when clicked, only the cosmetic preview is affected, and it typically resolves after the link is refreshed or re-pasted.

Is there a way to bulk-fix Smart Links that reverted to plain URLs after an outage? 

Not natively. Some teams use a dedicated link-management app built for bulk-editing links across many pages, since re-pasting each one individually isn't practical at scale.

Do Smart Links work the same way in Confluence Data Center as in Cloud? 

No. Smart Links are a cloud-only feature. Data Center uses different mechanisms, resolving Jira links through the Jira issue macro, and other content through the Widget Connector macro, neither of which behaves identically to Cloud's Smart Links.

Where this fits with the rest of your Atlassian setup

Smart Links are a small piece of a bigger question: how deliberately your team has structured the way Jira and Confluence talk to each other. If link behavior feels inconsistent, it's often a sign the broader integration between the two tools was never fully mapped out, worth revisiting alongside how your team handles Jira and Confluence integration more generally.

Still Broken? Get Expert Help

If Smart Links are blocking your team's workflow and you've tried the fixes above, the issue may be deeper — site-wide permission inheritance, a broken integration, or a configuration conflict between Jira and Confluence.

Book a free 20-minute Smart Links diagnostic →

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