How to turn Clean Links OFF?

Here is an example: If I am on a web page from this URL https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1617587, and I copy some text from that page and paste it into OneNote, the text looks like

 "Firefox has turned Clean Links ON by default. But, that"
 "From <https://support.mozilla.org>" .

You can see that the link given after the text takes you to Mozilla's Home page, and not to the URL where I copied that text from.

Normally, clean URLs only removes known tracking parameters (like ones starting with utm), not any parts of the path (folder and file names). Something weird is going on, but it probably has some other cause.

Do you normally get a "From" when you copy text in Firefox? I've only seen that on a few sites. If you have a OneNote add-on, it might be able to grab the full URL, but if OneNote is only receiving what's on the clipboard after an ordinary copy, I wonder how it even knows as much as it does. ??

Hi jscher2000 Thanks for your comments. Yes, the "from" is automatically added by OneNote. I'm not using any add-on. This is a Firefox issue, as the same text copied from either Chrome or Brave still shows the full individual page URL in OneNote. And Firefox did also until recently. What is important for me is how to turn the Clean Links function off. I'm surprised that Mozilla is forcing any function onto their users without allowing user control.

To clarify, are you using the clean links option in the context menu when you copy a link?

Hi Paul Good question. No, I can use regular 'copy' or Ctrl c. In fact since I've been using AI to find an answer, I've been in the config and set to false, anything related to 'privacy.query_stripping.enabled'. Now I notice I don't even see the option for clean links in the right click menu. It still isn't resolved though. It's possible there is something else causing the behavior, but it is still related to Firefox and not other browsers.

Is the "From" there if you paste into a different program? Like Notepad, MS Word, etc.?

The problem you have with text copying is similar to problems I have had when trying to paste links to YouTube videos. When I used AI to illuminate this, the general conclusion to be drawn is that Firefox is no longer a good browser to use if you are trying to develop your own knowledge management system. Basically, the developers broke something that never needed to be "improved". Firefox now appears to be handling different kinds of copies differently.

In my case, I would formerly copy some text (the title of the video, text from the summary, whatever) from a page in YouTube. Then paste the text into OneNote. The text would appear correctly and there would be a "from" link that would open the specific page. Now the only thing that appears is the root URL (youtube.com). If that page was opened with Chrome, the Full video URL (youtube.com/watch?v=...) is preserved and appears in OneNote perfectly.

AI concluded that A recent Firefox update changed clipboard metadata behavior. Firefox now supplies source metadata that identifies only the site's origin (youtube.com), while Chrome supplies the full document URL.

The crude table below summarizes the problem:

Action________________________________________URL Result Highlight text and press Ctrl+C _________________Only site URL (youtube.com) Use "Copy Link to Highlight"____________________ Full page/video URL Chrome normal copy__________________________ Full page/video URL

Other thoughts from AI: Use OneNote Web Clipper Investigate whether an extension such as Shortkeys (or a similar Firefox add-on) can assign a custom hotkey to the Copy Link to Highlight menu command. That could potentially make your Firefox-to-OneNote workflow nearly as fast as the old automatic citation behavior.

Hi jscher2000 I did some testing. Both Word and Notepad just paste the text that was selected, and then copied. In those programs, there is no 'From' or left and right angle brackets around the link as I can choose to get in OneNote. I get the feature to appear in OneNote by going to File/Options/Advanced, and check "include link to source when pasting from the web", which is the second option. Word has a very similar Options window to OneNote, however, it does not have the option to add links (that I can find). The Notepad options are comparatively basic, and also does not give the option to include links. Out of curiosity, I turned include links off, and checked it didn't paste a link, then turned it back on. Links from Firefox still show just the home page link, where links pasted from the same page open in Chrome show the full URL to the exact page I copied from. This behavior didn't happen before Firefox started cleaning my links for me without my permission. Mozilla, please give me the option to turn the "Feature" off.

This is a security change from 157.0, see support.mozilla.org/questions/1617949

Oh, I didn't realize applications could extract the source URL from the clipboard if they wanted it. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Setting that aside, one possible workaround to avoid having to paste the content, then go back and get the URL and paste that, would be to append the URL to the selection when copying. There are sites that add links and/or copyright claims automatically when copying, presumably using some JavaScript, but I don't know how convenient it would be to do that yourself (for example, with a userscript).

Hi jbr and jscher2000

Thanks for your replies. Let me know if I misunderstood the support answers to question 1617949, but it seems I shouldn't expect a resolution to this issue any time soon. Now it seems my easiest solution is to move over to a browser that causes me less grief. I thought I would never say it, but this issue makes Chrome look like the better solution for me.

I can't mark this problem as solved, because moving to another browser wasn't the "solution" I'm looking for.

Thanks to those who offered help. No thanks to whoever makes the decisions at Mozilla though.

The request came from Microsoft Defender team to help protect from attacks pasted into Windows terminals 🤷

The discussion how to follow up for legitimate cases is ongoing (driven by the original patch author).

jbr Thanks for the info.