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Hyperlinks in Terminal Emulators

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Why This Matters

The introduction of hyperlink support in terminal emulators marks a significant advancement, enabling users to interact more seamlessly with URLs and other references directly within the terminal environment. This development enhances productivity and user experience, bridging the gap between command-line tools and web-based content, and encouraging wider adoption across various terminal applications.

Key Takeaways

Hyperlinks (a.k.a. HTML-like anchors) in terminal emulators

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Most of the terminal emulators auto-detect when a URL appears onscreen and allow to conveniently open them (e.g. via Ctrl+click or Cmd+click, or the right click menu).

It was, however, not possible until now for arbitrary text to point to URLs, just as on webpages.

In spring 2017, GNOME Terminal and iTerm2 have changed this.

GNOME Terminal is based on the VTE widget, and almost all of this work went to VTE . As such, we expect other VTE -based terminal emulators to catch up and add support really soon. Other terminal emulators are also welcome and encouraged to join!

Quick example

Here's a simple command to try out the feature. The result is equivalent to this HTML link: This is a link

printf '\e]8;;http://example.com\e\\This is a link\e]8;;\e\\

'

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