Embed an image with a link in Mail

[F1Mac]

This should be a very basic and easy thing to do, and it used to be...up until Ventura! Insert an image in mail body, select it, cmd-K, paste the link, done!

But now, it seems it's not possible anymore. At my work this is crucial to be able to do that for various reasons, one of them being using dropbox links to share content via email. And YES, I do need the ability to use a custom image. And these days the "solution" for me is to use an old iMac sitting around with Catalina still running on it so I can do this otherwise simplistic task!! It's driving me nuts that the modern version of Mail from 3 OS generations has lost this "feature"! Even more surprising is that up until recently Outlook could still do that but not anymore with, I guess, the last update! I have tried other current Mail clients, such as Thunderbird, Spark and a few others, even tried directly in Google, nope, nothing!

So I wonder WHY we lost this convenient way to add links to images, but more importantly I'd like to know if there is actually a solution or some obscure hidden setting I'm not aware of...

 

[Bigwaff]

You can paste links to images all day long. Automatic loading of external content maybe what you are referring to. That setting is most likely email client specific. Are you positive recipients of your email messages don’t see images embedded when viewing?

 

[F1Mac]

You can paste links to images all day long. Automatic loading of external content maybe what you are referring to. That setting is most likely email client specific. Are you positive recipients of your email messages don’t see images embedded when viewing?

No I’m referring to a clickable image. It used to work very easily. And as I mentioned it still works like a charm composing the Mail on Catalina for example!
You can even now see on the draft email that once you insert a link to an image, either the image disappear or the link shows as text next to the image. Whereas I only want to image to be clickable with my damn link ☺️, like it used to be until (I think) Monterey.
What’s strange and what I don’t really understand is that now it seems to be the exact same on all email clients. I have a coworker on windows who also confirmed the same behavior.

 

[Bigwaff]

What’s strange and what I don’t really understand is that now it seems to be the exact same on all email clients. I have a coworker on windows who also confirmed the same behavior.

Do you mean add a hyperlink to an image in an email?

 

[BrianBaughn]

Do you mean add a hyperlink to an image in an email?

Awesome. Before you posted that…

• Could you figure out what version of macOS was being used in the video?
• Did you confirm, for yourself, that it works in Sonoma or Sequoia?

 

[Bigwaff]

Awesome. Before you posted that…

• Could you figure out what version of macOS was being used in the video?
• Did you confirm, for yourself, that it works in Sonoma or Sequoia?

Just looking for clarification from OP if video represents their issue/question.

Update: Confirmed works just like in the video on Sonoma 14.7.2 using Apple Mail 16.0.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I can't get it to work in Sequoia. The image disappears and I get a box with the name of the image I used. Clicking on the box sends me to the link I entered.

 

[p33t3r]

If no email clients can do this (you mention Outlook as well), might it not be a new security feature? An image that is also a link is a smart way of getting people to click on dubious links, believing that they'll just open the image.

 

[Ruggy]

Could it be possible that it's because you are trying cmd-K instead of cmd-C?
OK I didn't understand you want to add a link to an image. Excuse me.

 

[F1Mac]

Do you mean add a hyperlink to an image in an email?

Yes that is exactly what I've been doing up until it stopped working in Ventura. I just did another test (in Sequoia) and it's like I said before, the link stays but the image disappears as soon as I add the link. So frustrating! Ah well...

 

[F1Mac]

I can't get it to work in Sequoia. The image disappears and I get a box with the name of the image I used. Clicking on the box sends me to the link I entered.

That is indeed what I end up with every time, the box with the image name, or sometimes the link in text next to the image.

 

[F1Mac]

If no email clients can do this (you mention Outlook as well), might it not be a new security feature? An image that is also a link is a smart way of gettinge people to click on dubious links, believing that they'll just open the image.

That's my guess too, maybe for security reasons this "functionality" has been removed altogether since the last couple of years 🤔

 

[BrianBaughn]

I think it's an error on Apple's part that's never been addressed. I don't think there's a setting that will fix this.

I sent an email from a Gmail account (using the web interface) to myself consisting of an image with a link…like we're trying to accomplish here. macOS Mail gets the email and the image and link work perfectly.

In Mail (Sequoia), I then did a forward of the message and then stripped away all the forwarding info and indentation. I sent that to myself and received it in macOS Mail and the image came through and the link worked when I clicked on it.

So there's a convoluted workaround.

 

[gjnelsonandco]

The Apple Mail issue is officially "Expected Behavior". You may no longer apply an html link to an image. It has something to do with SPAM, misleading recipients into clicking to malware links, etc.

It's silly that you may go through motions of doing this, only to get a bad result. You may even select the image and type Command K. They should absolutely make it impossible to "do" so you know you can't do it.

BUMMER because this was essential to my correspondence with clients.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Make the email a HTML email, hosting the images on a website and it will work. You likely get email daily with images in them that are clickable to URL addresses. Just start flipping through your junk folder and you'll likely find many such examples.

My guess is that Mail not made that way is probably RTF (format) and while true RTF files made in apps like Word or exported from Pages can have images with links in them too, I'm guessing this is just excluded from continuing to work in Apple Mail. But HTML (formatted) email will definitely work with clickable images to webpages, triggering reformatted email, etc.