Learn how to disable automatic phone number detection in Microsoft Edge with a simple meta tag. Follow our step-by-step guide to ensure a professional and controlled user experience.
Drop a plain string of digits on a page (an order number, a SKU, a tracking code) and some browsers helpfully turn it into a tappable phone link. Internet Explorer was the worst offender. It guessed at what counted as a phone number, and it guessed wrong a lot, linking things nobody ever meant to dial.
If you want to shut that off across a whole page, one meta tag in the head does it:
<?php
<meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no">That’s the whole fix. telephone=no tells the browser to stop auto-detecting numbers and leave your text alone.
One honest caveat
This is a legacy fix. Internet Explorer reached end of life on June 15, 2022, so if IE was your only reason for adding it, you can skip it now. It also isn’t Edge-only, despite what a lot of copied snippets claim. Apple introduced format-detection for iOS Safari and most mobile browsers respect it, so the place it still earns its keep is stopping Safari on iPhone from linking numbers you didn’t intend. Want more control instead? Leave the tag off and wrap only the real numbers yourself with a tel: link.