[FEATURE] Feature toggle for disabling auto-rendering as inline images instead of plain text in prompt area

[aleksadvaisly]

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

When pasting or dragging a full image file path into Claude Code, the path is automatically converted to an inline image preview instead of being treated as plain text. This makes it impossible to enter or reference file paths without triggering image rendering. Hand-typing the path works, but is impractical for longer paths.

Proposed Solution

Add a setting in settings.json to disable automatic image/pdf (and other media) rendering from pasted paths, as some users may not use this feature and want plain text paths instead.

Alternative Solutions

Add action under some shortcut, which turns paths in prompt into embeddings and vice versa.

Priority

Critical - Blocking my work

Feature Category

CLI commands and flags

Use Case Example

No response

Additional Context

No response

[morefreefg]

same issue here, still figuring out

[raine]

This is a big issue.

Example use case, I have in Downloads folder an image I want Claude to move into my project.

Pasting the path to Claude Code will change the path to inline rendered image.

This makes Claude fail miserably - with the inline rendered image, Claude is not able to add it to my project.

It should keep the path as is, allowing Claude to cp or mv the image.

[anthonyjj89]

Confirming this is super annoying. Currently using a workaround by adding a # symbol at the start or end of the path to prevent auto-rendering, but it's clunky. We definitely need a way to explicitly paste as text or as image—either a toggle setting or keyboard modifier to choose the behavior. Would make workflows so much smoother.

[MaxPleaner]

I would appreciate this feature. But I want to add one thing. Currently, when you upload an image into the renderer, Claude doesn't actually know the path. Which is itself a limitation. Say for example you want to upload an image, ask some question about it (using the renderer), and then perform some action on the file. It would help if Claude could remember the image path.

[github-actions[bot]]

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