Discussion about reloading issue when clicking on mixed reference links in Sanity Studio

I understand the behavior you're seeing in Studio v2.8.1, but I need to be honest: I can't find documentation confirming this is a known bug or explaining why mixed reference arrays would cause full studio reloads versus graceful navigation with single-type references.

That said, Studio v2.8.1 is quite outdated—Studio v2 reached end of life on April 1st, 2024, meaning it no longer receives bug fixes or security patches. The version you're on was released years before v2 support ended, so there are likely many unresolved issues.

What I'd recommend:

The most reliable path forward is upgrading to the current version of Sanity Studio. Studio v3 (and now v4) brought fundamental architectural changes including:

• Completely rewritten navigation and intent system
• Modern build tooling with Vite
• Full TypeScript support with better type inference
• A new plugin API that replaced the old Parts System

These architectural improvements likely address navigation issues like what you're experiencing, though I can't point to a specific bug fix for this exact scenario.

Regarding your mixed reference array:

The syntax for arrays with multiple reference types should look like:

{
  name: 'myArray',
  type: 'array',
  of: [
    { type: 'reference', to: [{ type: 'youTube' }] },
    { type: 'reference', to: [{ type: 'blogPost' }] }
  ]
}

This is valid in both v2 and v3+, so the schema itself shouldn't be causing issues—it's more likely a navigation bug in that older Studio version.

If you can't upgrade immediately:

Try opening your browser's developer console when clicking those links to see if there are any JavaScript errors that might give more insight into what's failing. But given that v2 is no longer supported, any workarounds would be temporary at best.

The different link icon sizes you're seeing might be a visual indicator of how the Studio is resolving those references, but without access to v2 source code or documentation about that specific behavior, I can't say definitively what causes it. This discrepancy between how single-type and mixed-type reference arrays handle navigation suggests the Studio's intent resolution system in v2 had different code paths for these scenarios, and the mixed-type path appears to trigger a full reload rather than using the internal router.