How to change the appearance of links through .htaccess?

Question

Apache HTTP Server

Good afternoon! Google did not help solve the issue. There is a .htaccess file like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ / [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/index\.php$ /$1/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.php [L]
RewriteRule ^category/([0-9]+) category.php?id=$1 [L]

ErrorDocument 404 /404.php Change

links like https://mysite.rf/category.php?id=1 to https://mysite.rf/category/1. But with such rules in .htaccess, by default the link remains as in the first option. The second option can only be obtained by entering the link into the address bar manually. Tried different options from Google, but nothing helped. Please tell me how to solve

Answer 1

mod_rewrite (which newbies mistakenly call .htaccess) does not change links . it can only automatically redirect to another when requesting a certain link. but it cannot change anything in the site code.
to change the links on the site, they must be... changed on the site!