How can I prevent a www.example.com URL from becoming a hyperlink, without (ab)using another formatting feature such as inline code formatting?
I notice I can quote: “www.example.com”, but I’d like to avoid that. Is it possible to somehow escape the auto-link change as I create/edit a post?
I noticed this solution does not work any longer. It was the first thing I tried before googling and finding this post. I’ll keep looking for a solution. Surprisingly, even www.example.com is converted into a hyperlink if on the same line as a regular link.
Looks like I’ll be using www<span>.</span>example<span>.</span>com
www.example.com
Why in the world would you do any of that when you can simply use a proper code span with the ` key?
www.example.com
Because it’s not code?
Preformatted text has other meanings. I reject the premise in the first post, it reads like “how can I avoid hitting myself if I really like hitting myself?”
I just want to be able to type out a domain name as text (without formatting/styling) and have enough OCD not only go to length of using <span>.</span>, but also to spend time finding out why \. doesn’t work as expected and post about it.
Fortunately, not everyone is cursed with my level of OCD. 
Zero width Unicode spacers would also work but anyone who copies and pastes that URL is in for a surprise… and not the good kind! Dunno if @sam has any other ideas but the request is really odd.
Yeah bypassing linkify is not easy:
https://github.com/markdown-it/markdown-it/blob/master/lib/rules_core/linkify.js
and
https://github.com/markdown-it/linkify-it
We had a similar request with complaints about m.sc being autolinked.
I do wonder if we should side with @Vitaly here and disable linkify fuzzy out of the box. Cause https://cnn.com will continue to work even if linkify fuzzy is disabled. So all you do is lose out on www.cnn.com
I think we should probably amend the test here to have a simpler bypass for fuzzy, just not sure what it would be
Well, using ` does turn the text into a <code></code> section instead of <pre></pre> which is preformatted text.
@notriddle Technically speaking there is a difference, but there really is no reason why <code></code> can’t be acceptable – URL’s are a form of “code” afterall.
Well said. The few cases where it has come up for me are when I’m trying to point someone to one url instead of another – i.e., when I’m trying to de-emphasize a URL. For example:
A: Just use smile.amazon.com instead of amazon.com and select OpenMRS, Inc. as your charity.
B: Just use smile.amazon.com instead of
amazon.comand select OpenMRS, Inc. as your charity.
B is certainly a reasonable workaround; personally I prefer A. But, this is such an embarrassingly small issue, I can’t justify anyone (including myself) spending time on it. I’ve got amazon<span>.</span>com as a workaround for the 1-2 times I’ll ever need this again, so I’m happy… clearly afflicted with too much focus on meaningless details… but happy.
The awesome folks working on Discourse have more important things to do. I recommend focusing on other ways to continue making Discourse the most awesome forum software in the world and let this thread fade away. I’m sure I’ll re-discover this thread in a few years when this comes up again, so won’t need to post about it ever again. 
(and I promise to not suggest a Discourse GSoC project to add support for www\.example\.com)
The main purpose of our forum is talking about a company called Alarm.com so people write Alarm.com in posts all the time, probably in 50% or so of topics. We’re going to end up unintentionally linking to Alarm.com an awful lot.
I tried disabling linkify all together but that causes a bigger problem because then people can’t put a URL on a line by itself to get a onebox.
We would love a way to disable linkify fuzzy to avoid this problem but still be able to linkify full URLs. Is it possible?
Following up… It looks like if you change the defaultOptions in vendor/assets/javascripts/markdown-it.js so that fuzzyLink is false, as Sam suggested, it solves my problem. But doing so creates a big headache because we don’t want to manually redo that change every time we update.
Then I stumbled on a simpler solution. The markdown linkify tlds setting is a list of top level domains that are assumed to be URLs by fuzzy linking. If you remove all those TLDs and add just one fake TLD that would never actually show up in a post then it effectively disables fuzzyLink. You need at least one TLD in the list or apparently anything that ends with a . will be treated as a link.
So no need for a code change, we can disable fuzzyLink my removing the real TLDs from the setting and adding a fake one.
Another workaround to suppress Auto linkify words.
Add <span></span> in the middle of the text.
Details
Our site has SWI-Prolog added to Auto linkify words component theme.
To keep SWI-Prolog from being converted into a link, e.g. SWI-Prolog, and also not displaying as a code section, e.g. SWI-Prolog, adding <span></span> in the middle of the text, e.g. SWI<span></span>-Prolog, causes the text to not be recognized by Auto linkify words and since <span></span> renders into something that will not appear in a browser, it works as needed for the specific case, e.g. SWI-Prolog.
You can use <span></span> to surround the linkified domain, rather than inserting it in the middle. This is useful when talking about companies and other proper names with dots in their names, like itch.io.
For example, if you just type itch.io in the Markdown editor, it will be linkified: itch.io
But you can instead type <span>itch.io</span>, and then it won’t be linkified: itch.io
You don’t have to insert <span></span> in the middle of the link, like this, itch<span></span>.io but that also works: itch.io
(It would be nice if @precessor or a moderator could change the “
Solution” check to this answer instead of the currently selected solution; the old solution worked in 2016, but no longer works today.)
This is the only thing that worked for me today.
Itch.io
Itch`.`io
Preformatting is on toolbar and faster to use 
Except that changes the format, so why would you want that over an option that doesn’t change the format?
Because format is not important. Only what you get is. And the purpose here is to prevent hyperlinking, and my solution is still the easiest. And fastest