Send Web Links That Jump to the Exact Text You Mean

[MacRumors]

Sometimes when you share a webpage link with someone, you just want to bring their attention to a specific passage or sentence to make your point, rather than have them read through the entire article.

In 2020, Google added a function to its Chrome browser called Scroll to Text Fragment (STTF) that helps you achieve this. It allows URLs to link directly to any visible text on a page. You may have seen it work in Google Search, where clicking on a link in your returned results takes you to a highlighted passage of text further down the page.

Since then, Google has built the feature into the open source Chromium code, so most other popular Chromium browsers like Edge, Opera, and Vivaldi also have it these days. (Brave is an exception, citing some privacy risks of STTF.)

Copy Link With Highlight in Safari

Late last year, Apple joined the club, and brought full support to Safari 18.2. To use the feature, visit a web page and simply highlight the text you want to create a link to, then right-click and choose Copy Link with Highlight from the dropdown menu.

The "Copy Link to Highlight" option​

This will generate a special URL that includes a hash (#) symbol and "text" element, followed by a few words that bookend the selected text. All you need to do is share the link with someone, and when they click it they'll be sent directly to that part of the webpage with the specific passage highlighted, as shown below.

The shared link as the recipient sees it​

That's all there is to it. The Copy Link to Highlight option is also available in Safari on the iPhone and iPad, and indeed in any browser that uses WebKit on iOS and iPadOS. Hopefully that makes it easier for you to direct the recipient of the link to the content you actually want them to focus on.

Bear in mind that the look of highlighted text can differ depending on whether the page author has styled it to look a certain way. Also, text fragment linking does not work in PDFs. Firefox users: You'll need to install Thomas Steiner's Link to Text Fragment extension, which will add a Copy Link to Selected Text option to the contextual menu.

Article Link: Send Web Links That Jump to the Exact Text You Mean

 

[orbital~debris]

Or, you can highlight the text and choose "Messages" from the 'Share' menu, for example, and the selected text will be incorporated into the link preview with a ❝ glyph, but take you to the top of the page.

 

[klasma]

Since then, Google has built the feature into the open source Chromium code, so most other popular Chromium browsers like Edge, Opera, and Vivaldi also have it these days

Firefox also supports it, as a non-Chromium browser: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US...Fragment/Text_fragments#browser_compatibility

 

[q64ceo]

Pretty cool to share a website. Just wish that Google results wouldn't do that. I hate it when Google defaults to it.

 

[Jack Burton]

This will be perfect for linking to stats in political arguments that absolutely prove my point but don't convince the other person of anything

 

[iModFrenzy]

Huh didn’t know that was possible, cool feature

 

[PsykX]

Didn't know this was possible either, I'm glad there's always something to learn

 

[ThomasBbm]

Support for Scroll to Text Fragments was added in Safari 16.1; [src] iOS versions before 18.2 lacked the easy UI for creating links formatted this way... The W3C standard is quite interesting to read; https://wicg.github.io/scroll-to-text-fragment/

 

[IAmStumped]

Pretty cool to share a website. Just wish that Google results wouldn't do that. I hate it when Google defaults to it.

The STTF is just an extra variable added to the website URL. You can remove it from the URL and reload the page if you don't want the text highlighted.

 

[JosephAW]

Another useful tip this week, we’re on a roll

 

[macbookj0e]

Nice but my issue is with Google search itself.

Gone are the days it gives you a variety of relevant results and instead it just gives a mix of ads and results it thinks you want, often unrelated.

 

[orbital~debris]

The STTF is just an extra variable added to the website URL. You can remove it from the URL and reload the page if you don't want the text highlighted.

You can, but it's a hassle nonetheless.

 

[Nickerbocker]

I hate this highlighted text crap. When the background is black the text is next to impossible to read. Thank you Google and my Web Browser for making the content I searched for impossible to read.... How do I permanently turn the feature off?

 

[MacRumorUser78]

Hasn't this URL format been possible for at least more than a decade? Isn't it the basis of a link to somewhere else on the page?

 

[brunerd]

Bonus Tip: If you create a link highlight from a sentence that ends in a period and attempt to hyperlink a word or phrase in Mail.app with ⌘K, the OK button will be greyed out. Remove the period from the end of the URL and OK will become active and clickable again.

 

[klasma]

You can, but it's a hassle nonetheless.

Browsers really should have a simple button or similar to remove the highlight.

 

[klasma]

Hasn't this URL format been possible for at least more than a decade? Isn't it the basis of a link to somewhere else on the page?

No, it’s a relatively new feature. It’s based on the syntax of anchor links, but it works differently. Chrome introduced it in 2020.

 

[KaliYoni]

(Mac website writers' Minds Think Alike?)

Here is an in-depth article about STTF that was published yesterday by TidBITS:

Text Fragments Enable Deep Linking on Web Pages - TidBITS

After decades of only being able to link to the top of Web pages or specially prepared named anchors, modern browsers now support text fragment links that can scroll to and highlight any text on any page. This long-awaited feature brings us closer to Ted Nelson’s original vision for hypertext...

tidbits.com

 

[Plutonius]

Thank you. A very useful tip.

 

[subjonas]

Also useful for marking a long article where you left off to resume later.

 

[sos47]

it tried it on exact this page and i only get quote or reply?

 

[It’s always something]

it tried it on exact this page and i only get quote or reply?

I tried this on my iPad; does this help?

 

[DataChris]

I love the rare and random app & OS tips like this!!

Macrumors should add a weekly tip post/section to share these less known but highly useful OS tips!

 

[CarlJ]

Nice but my issue is with Google search itself.

Gone are the days it gives you a variety of relevant results and instead it just gives a mix of ads and results it thinks you want, often unrelated.

So don't use Google search? I switched to DuckDuckGo for searches years ago. There are other viable choices as well.

 

[MacBH928]

Didn't they have this since the 90s with anchors?

Nice but my issue is with Google search itself.

Gone are the days it gives you a variety of relevant results and instead it just gives a mix of ads and results it thinks you want, often unrelated.

check out Brave Search and if you are willing to pay , Kagi.com is paid. No ads with many features.