GitHub Community
Anchor links copied from project READMEs now add a ?tab=readme-ov-file query parameter, making them harder to read
#70577
Replies: 15 comments 13 replies
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It adds Screen.Recording.2024-01-20.at.21.28.46.mov |
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@pirate, I don't see why its inclusion is problematic, because your explanation is rather vague — how is it confusing? |
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@pirate, I don't agree. For instance, when even the name of the ReadMe file itself has changed, Regardless, I've realized that usually, linking to https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/blob/22aae92e959c4758ea4fc57dcd62ee757de14682/README.md instead is better, because most references to a ReadMe refer to information best correlated to the version relevant to the reference. |
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Come on... This just adds unnecessary noise for 99% of uses (notes, people sharing links to projects). See my video above - it even adds this when you don't link to a heading. Even if, the default tab shouldn't have any parameters, Whether to use permalinks is a different topic and depends on the context. |
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it also breaks uniqueness of the repository URL. now there are two URLs that point to the same place, which can result in duplicate bookmarks, problems with internet archive captures, and so on. |
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Definitely get rid of that ugly param for the readme tab. It's just polluting the URL with unnecessary info. |
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I'm playing with a browser prototype that struggle with that (and probably a lot more things 😅) because github readme -> click link -> browser back button returns to a different URLs which my prototype can't differentiate from a entirely new page. Anecdotical on my case but might surface similar issues |
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Here's a quick fix using Tampermonkey: https://gist.github.com/vogler/74edff6de37c3a13eeff8c99c6bed910 const rewrite = () => location.search == '?tab=readme-ov-file' && (console.log('rewrite', location.href) || history.replaceState({}, null, location.href.replace(location.search, '')));
window.onpopstate = rewrite; // on navigation
rewrite(); // on initial load |
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Works in Violentmoney as well and I think if you add |
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The amount of Tampermonkey scripts needed to restore basic, prior UX to GitHub is getting silly... Have an issue with the new bigbrain UI/UX changes? For instance, markup rendering for the native file format of Python documentation (reStructuredText):
GH: Lol, not Copilot related 🤣 |
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There's also refined-github extension, it adds useful improvements to github UX, refined-github/refined-github#6904 |
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When sharing GitHub URLs on sites that abbrevi... links, it's really frustrating to not be able to read the url because there's an unnecessary ?tab=readme-ov-file before the URL fragment: github.com/org/repo?tab=readme-ov... This was an original GitHub feature; clean deeplink urls for README headings |
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I use a highlighter browser extension which heavily depends on URL and params, which is the problematic part at least for me. |
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I'm curious... what does |
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I'd guess "open view" |
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maybe "overview" |
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I think overview is likely it. Assuming the idea is that it's the first readme tab, and that you can add more files and they'll show up in the tabs. But have they documented what those filenames should even be anywhere? Is this a half-baked feature wip? |
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Found some more information here. https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/86658#discussioncomment-9116451 and here. https://gist.github.com/jakebrinkmann/c63eaedbe384516e4a7bc133c1e1066b I added The screenshot shows what appeared in the tabs of my repo. So README.md, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, LICENSE.md, and SECURITY.md are all options for the tab url param. |
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please remove this, this is messing up with bookmarks |
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Yet another "+1". It's so annoying when it pop ups into the url... it's just pointless noise in 99% of the cases… |
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Join the petition and vote to fix this. |
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What the fuck this is still a thing after 2 years? |
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I installed the userscript but this is still obnoxious... Even with the script, I can't copy clean links from README file headings, because GitHub inserts this stupid querystring param into the link URL every time you try to copy a heading link or click on it to update your address bar URL. I looked through the README in question-- the file didn't contain Edit: 3 weeks later and this once again caused me annoyance on a different device that doesn't have the userscript installed-- almost double-bookmarked a page because of this stupid bug. |
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Users might be able to work around this behavior with userscripts or manual cleanup, but that’s not really the issue now. The greater issue is that links with the It's a pattern here with github's UI/UX design team (the latest solution in search of a problem) to make product changes for issues that plainly does not exist. It adds arbitrary surface complexity to the user experience with no observed benefit. (It's also not clear what the actual "user pain point" was 🤔) |
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It's not surprising that since Microsoft bought GitHub, they'd continue their age-old policy of forcing unwanted top-down decisions on users. I expect that they'll continue "improving" GitHub until they elevate it to the same level they did with Skype. |
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Perhaps most frustrating about this issue is that most of these commenters
could've fixed this bug ourselves.
Are there trackbacks from PRs to Discussions, like the original GitHub had
between PRs and Issues and vice-versa?
…On Sun, Oct 26, 2025, 3:10 PM Casey Jones ***@***.***> wrote:
It's not surprising that since Microsoft bought GitHub, they'd continue
their age-old policy of forcing unwanted top-down decisions on users. I
expect that they'll continue "improving" GitHub until they elevate it to
the same level they did with Skype.
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https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/70577#discussioncomment-14783187
😎
why was was this "feature" added again? what was the "user story"? |
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When copying anchor link to a specific section in a project's README, the URLs now contain an extra query parameter indicating the tab:
?tab=readme-ov-file, e.g.:https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox?tab=readme-ov-file#quickstartI understand why this is needed for other tabs, but it adds unnecessary clutter and makes links harder to read for the most common default case of linking to a section of the README.
The parameter can be manually deleted from the URL and it still works the same, but this extra cleanup work is something most people wont do. With the current default, we'll end up with tons of links shared around the internet that look like this:
https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox?tab=readme-ov-file#quickstartinstead of this:
https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox#quickstartYou can already see them starting to spread: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22readme-ov-file%22
If the UI/web team would kindly consider removing this parameter in the default case I think it may improve the link sharing UX for everyone! Github is doing such an awesome job lately with all the new features, I really appreciate the new tabs feature aside from this nit, and thank you to whoever ends up taking a look at this change!
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