Named Links

Paste a URL into Obsidian and get a markdown link titled with the page's name: https://example.com becomes [Example Domain](https://example.com).

[!NOTE] Named Links is a maintained fork of Auto Link Title by @zolrath, who deserves the credit for the original plugin. That project has been inactive since December 2024. This fork picks up from 1.5.5, fixes the bugs reported against it, and borrows the Japanese translation, FxTwitter lookups and <URL> pasting from @yuu1111's fork.

What it does

• Paste a URL and a [Fetching title…](url) placeholder goes in at once, then becomes the titled link. Paste several URLs and each is titled.
• Drop a URL from another app and the same happens where you drop it.
• Copy a link with its text (Edge's Copy link, Firefox, or a link dragged out of a page) and that text is the title, with nothing fetched, so it works for pages behind a login.
• Paste a URL over selected text to link that text instead of fetching a title.
• Paste text over a selected URL to make the text its title (off until you turn it on).
• Title URLs already in a note with the Add a title to an existing URL command, at the cursor or across a selection.
• In vim mode, putting a URL with p or P titles it too.
• Undo gives back the URL as you pasted it; undo again to remove the paste.

A paste is only titled when it's nothing but URLs. It's left as pasted when you paste as plain text (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+V), paste with several cursors, paste into code, frontmatter or a link target ([text](, [1]: , href="), or paste an image or an excluded site's URL. If no title can be found, the URL stays and a notice says so.

Files such as PDFs are named after their path instead of downloaded, except arXiv papers, which get the paper's title from its abstract page.

Examples

Link formats

Set Link format to Custom and write a template. These are real results:

A value the page doesn't have is dropped along with the separator or parentheses next to it, so the same Wikipedia template on a URL without #History gives [Markdown](…). For more control, text in {?…} is written only when every value in it is there; see Optional parts. The Wikipedia example also has Remove the site name on.

Title clean-up

Remove the site name and find-and-replace rules trim titles before they're written:

Scripts

In a Templater template, this turns the selected URL into a titled link, using your settings:

<% await app.plugins.plugins['named-links'].api.getLink(tp.file.selection()) %>

Commands and settings

Every command, setting, placeholder and rule, and the scripting API, is described in Commands and settings. No command has a default hotkey; set one under Settings → Hotkeys.

Privacy

Named Links requests the pasted URL from your device, without loading its scripts, images or media, and checks the headers first so large files aren't downloaded. YouTube, Vimeo, Spotify and SoundCloud links go to that site's oEmbed API instead. Excluded sites are never requested, and neither is a link that came with its own title.

The one opt-in exception: Fetch X posts through FxTwitter sends twitter.com and x.com URLs to fxtwitter.com or fixupx.com, a third-party service. There's no telemetry.

Mobile

Works on Obsidian mobile with the long-press Paste action. Some keyboards' clipboard shortcuts (Gboard's, for one) don't fire a paste event; use the Paste URL and fetch its title command instead.

Moving over from Auto Link Title

Named Links has its own plugin id, so settings don't carry over by themselves. If Auto Link Title's are still in your vault, the settings tab offers to import them. Disable Auto Link Title once you've switched; while both are on, whichever runs first takes each paste.

What's different from Auto Link Title 1.5.5:

• Titles are read from the page's HTML. Auto Link Title loaded pages in a hidden browser window with Node.js access, running every site's scripts on your machine (#177, #164).
• No LinkPreview.net, and no default hotkeys (#170, #101).
• Legacy encodings such as GBK decode correctly (#133), and YouTube, Vimeo, Spotify and SoundCloud titles come from oEmbed.
• arXiv PDF links get the paper's title instead of a file name like 2206.08077.pdf (#111).
• .ai domains, hyphenated hosts, ports and IPs are recognized (#172, #154), and www. URLs get https:// (#12).
• Stuck requests time out instead of leaving Fetching Title#… behind (#167).
• URLs in code and frontmatter are left alone (#36, #21), and excluded sites match by domain and can paste as plain URLs (#159).
• Vim's p and P title URLs (#7), copied links keep their own title (#129), link formats can show the author, description and date (#15, #86, #136), and scripts can fetch titles (#52, #146).

How it compares

Going by what each plugin's README documents (October 2026); a dash means it isn't mentioned.

If you only need to turn selected text into a link, Paste URL into selection is lighter, and Links does far more for converting and editing links. Named Links is about getting a good title on a URL with as little effort as possible.

Development

See docs/DEVELOPMENT.md and docs/TESTING.md. Contributions are welcome; see CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT. If this plugin is useful to you, consider buying me a coffee.