# Automatically turn plain URL into link/anchor in Markdown

**URL:** <https://zola.discourse.group/t/automatically-turn-plain-url-into-link-anchor-in-markdown/2599>\
**Category:** Feature requests\
**Created:** [May 7, 2025, 5:21pm UTC](https://zola.discourse.group/t/automatically-turn-plain-url-into-link-anchor-in-markdown/2599 "2025-05-07T17:21:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![edgarogh](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/zola.discourse.group/edgarogh/32/1364_2.png) [@edgarogh](https://zola.discourse.group/u/edgarogh)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2025, 5:21pm UTC](https://zola.discourse.group/t/automatically-turn-plain-url-into-link-anchor-in-markdown/2599/1 "2025-05-07T17:21:27Z")

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I would like to turn plain URLs appearing in markdown source code into a `<a>` elements, like most Markdown implementations do. I particularily like doing this for footnotes, where a plain clickable link is usually expected rather than obscuring the link target with a custom name. Currently I have to repeat myself by giving the same name and target to the link. This is very slightly annoying since there’s hardly any reason to _not_ auto-link plaintext URLs.

In case I didn’t miss an obvious way to do this, is this a feature you’d be interested in implementing, as an opt-in or opt-out `[markdown]` config option?

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**Author:** ![Shy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Shy](https://zola.discourse.group/u/Shy)\
**Post date:** [December 26, 2025, 8:01pm UTC](https://zola.discourse.group/t/automatically-turn-plain-url-into-link-anchor-in-markdown/2599/2 "2025-12-26T20:01:37Z")

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While it would still be nice to have auto links, in Markdown you can mark a URL as a link by wrapping it in pointy brackets: `<https://example.com/>`.