Slack Markdown for Links Are Not Resolving

markdown slack-api slack

91,522

Solution 1

Slack uses their own flavor of markdown:
Slack Markdown Links work in the following way: <http://someurl|like this>

Note: You can only do this via the Slack API and NOT just as a simple message you send via the Slack client.

Message Builder Example
More Info in the Docs

Solution 2

~~Slack currently does not support hyperlinks; see this link which says:~~

Note: It’s not possible to hyperlink words in a Slack message.

UPDATE:

Slack has finally added this functionality to their chat interface (source):

Select text, then click the link icon in the formatting toolbar

Select text, then press Cmd+Shift+U on Mac or Ctrl+Shift+U on Windows/Linux.

Copy the link you'd like to share and paste it in the empty field under Link, then click Save.

Solution 3

This is not yet supported by Slack for direct messages, you can only do this using Slack API. But you can upvote the feature request I have submitted here.

Solution 4

As of today, 2020.02.14, in one of the Slack instances I'm a member in, I can create/paste hyperlinks! 🎉

Example pasting hyperlink from copy Teams meeting info into Slack:

Slack has updated their documentation. Still no markdown way of doing it though 😢, i.e. [blah](https://stackoverflow.com) doesn't work.

Neat feature, select some text and CTRL + V when a URL is on the clipboard and it creates a hyperlink 🥳

Through some reverse engineering I was able to put text on the Windows Clipboard via C# and get it to paste into Slack:

var textToDisplay = "Test";
var url = "https://stackoverflow.com";
var arbitraryText = "Mike D.";
var dataObject = new DataObject();
//to my surprise, the Fragment comments ARE required
dataObject.SetData(DataFormats.Html, @$"<html><body>
    <!--StartFragment-->
    <a href=""{url}"">{textToDisplay}</a>
    <!--EndFragment-->
    </body></html>");
//have to set the Text format too otherwise it won't work
dataObject.SetData(DataFormats.Text, arbitraryText);
Clipboard.SetDataObject(dataObject);

Solution 5

As of August 2021 this feature is finally enabled for markup mode in slack app. https://slack.com/intl/en-nl/help/articles/202288908-Format-your-messages#markup

Surround text with brackets, then surround the link with parentheses:
[your text](the link)

View more solutions

91,522

PositiveGuy

I'm so nice, sometimes people slap me and tell me to start being mean :).

Updated on March 17, 2022

Comments

PositiveGuy about 2 years
What am I doing wrong? None of the example Markdown links work so far in my Slack app.

I pasted in the example below in a chat in my Slack app. I got this example from slack markdown syntax and it still treats it as literal text in the Slack App:
```
[like this](http://someurl)
```
so I end up seeing that instead of just "like this" as a link in Slack chat.

Or maybe the above is wrong, in which case my question would then be how do you do explicitly create links in Slack? I want some text that I specify to be clickable to a specific URL (hyperlink).
- Petr Gazarov about 8 years
  
  Seems to be unresolved bug (doesn't work for me either) github.com/slackhq/hubot-slack/issues/114
- pkaramol over 6 years
  
  not only the are not implementing this functionality, they also do not include a dark theme! this is outrageous for such a popular tool..on the other hand this is how popular tools become unpopular all of the sudden ...
- eemz about 3 years
  
  Slack markdown link syntax is <http://someurl|like this> not the same as github. I think you are right that some of the Slack examples used to have that mistake in them, but github syntax does not work.
Chris Miller almost 8 years

is there a way to do this via the Slack client?
Wilhelm Klopp almost 8 years

I don't think so. Slack explicitly does not want to overcomplicate input. More at the bottom of this help article: get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/…
Raja over 7 years

One way they could have avoided overcomplication would have been to stick with a popular and well-established format ... like Markdown. ;-)
Peter R about 7 years

+joeytwiddle That would mean Slack intentionally doing something that is user friendly and intuitive, which I'm pretty sure is against their company policy.
spencer.sm almost 7 years

The question is specifically about the slack-api which does support hyperlinked text.
Bruce Sun over 6 years

@PeterR It's pretty disappointing that slack doesn't FULLY support markdown in messages like gitter.im.
Jules Sam. Randolph over 6 years

Please upvote this feature request here : slack.canny.io/feature-requests/p/…
Jasper about 6 years

Calling this a flavor of markdown is misleading. It's really more "their own formatting that sometimes looks a bit like markdown".
superarts.org about 5 years

This is unfortunate. Hyperlink has been around for more than 20 years, it's hard to assume this is a security issue. Pasting super long links is really annoying, at least slack should add an automatic URL shortening service (which would be optional of course).
TJ Zimmerman almost 5 years

It seems this is now possible. But I'm unable to get it to work. No matter what I do Slack just receives Array as the message in the channel. See the examples here: api.slack.com/messaging/composing/formatting#linking-urls
ocramot over 4 years

Sorry, broken link :(
Jules Sam. Randolph over 4 years

They seem to have disabled their canny channel to gather feature requests. Hope that is only temporary.
Shreyan Mehta over 4 years

you could also use this for email like <mailto:[email protected]|Alice>
Pedro77 over 4 years

@JulesRandolph link is broken
Rahul Chopra over 4 years

Today was the nth (where n>10) time that I wrote a [title](url) link in the Slack client, spent a minute trying to figure out if I had a typo somewhere, reversed the order of () and [], and then googled the syntax just to find this answer. How is this less complicated?
Tyler James Young about 4 years

Upvoted because this is essentially the answer. Love the paste-to-linkify, love the hotkey... unfortunately I have disabled their WYSIWYG so that it stops messing with other things I'm trying to write, and there doesn't seem to be any alternative for those of us happy using markdown(-ish) formatting in plain text.
rmharrison almost 4 years

The link isn't broken. They intentionally disabled the board. Grr.
frakman1 almost 4 years

@Tyler. I'm glad I'm not the only one that does this too!
tennabey almost 4 years

I managed to make it work without the fragment comments
Mike T over 3 years

The original question asks about achieving this using markdown. This answer seems unrelated.
Roberto about 3 years

Worth mentioned that none of these work if you select Format messages with markup in the settings, to get rid of the text formatting toolbar.
msw1520 almost 3 years

This is useful information but it does not answer the question, which is specifically about using Markdown. Much confusion here, since there's the slack WSIWYG editor, there's slack markdown in the client, and then there's markdown in the slack API. I think the original question is about markdown in the client (at least that's what I'm wanting to do). Apparently it is not possible, and Slack has disabled feature requests.
törzsmókus over 2 years

I rather hate the hotkey, Ctrl+Shift+U has been used for unicode character input on Linux (ibus input method) for decades
timblaktu over 2 years

My slack has the link tool, but I'd really love to just do it with the markdown [text](url) like [their docs say should work[(slack.com/help/articles/202288908-Format-your-messages‌).
JackLeEmmerdeur over 2 years

This is the only solution for now. Markdown for some stuff works in slack, but links don't. Thx Kev.
GokcenG over 2 years

It's not great in terms of usability that those are "exclusive".
demiurg over 2 years

Is there a JavaScript equivalent using navigator.clipboard.write ?
Araxia almost 2 years

Confirmed that [label](link) does now work in the Slack app, but FYI this is no longer documented on the page referenced in this answer.
9-Pin almost 2 years

Thank you! You have made my day, month, year, and century.
Ben M almost 2 years

but, at least on the mac app, this only works if you disable the WYSIWYG editor. unclear why they force seemingly unnecessary tradeoffs across either editor.
SineSwiper almost 2 years

FYI, this still doesn't work in the API. Links still have to be in the older <L|T> format.