Is it possible to link to a youtube video without embedding it?
 

When I post a link to a youtube video, the forum seems to automatically convert it into an embedded video.

Is there any way to avoid this? Sometimes one just wishes to place a textual link...

No reliable way that I can determine. I managed to get a YouTube link to display as a URL, but when I did the exact same thing, I couldn't replicate it.
youtube.com/watch?v=il235kluZag

I got the above by pasting the URL into the "Source" editor and removing the https://

Appears as an embedded video for me.

Can you post a screenshot, please? Seems odd that it wouldn't be the plain text that the editor says it is.

No, it's okay now.

Your first attempt (before you edited the post) appeared as an embedded video to me.

But now it's just plain text - not meeting the request of someone who "wishes to place a textual link..."

Was this functionality disabled - I certainly seem to recall being able to do this in the past.

I was able to do it once when I was testing, too. But even replicating the exact steps, I was unable to do it again

I find this feature incredibly annoying and am disappointed there's no way to turn it off. I understand making it the default, but I don't think it's uncommon to want to post a link to a YouTube video, Twittier post, etc, without wanting to embed the whole thing in the middle of a sentence, such as this post.

One workaround is to use something like tinyurl to obscure the URL, like this

but then of course the "hover-over" URL will show tinyurl and not YouTube.

Edit - Didn't work.

I understand your point and you give a good example, but unfortunately we can't make it a switchable setting and from my experience, most people find auto-embed far more useful.