How to Link to Highlighted Text on Any Page

For most of the web's history a link could only point at a whole page, or at a spot the author had marked in advance. Text fragments changed that in 2020. Any link can now say "open this page and show me these words", and the browser does the finding and the highlighting. This guide shows the fastest way to make such a link in each browser, how to make one by hand, and what to do when a link stops matching.

In Chrome and Edge: right-click and copy

1. 1

   Select the passage

   Drag across the words. Whole sentences work best.

2. 2

   Right-click the selection

   Choose Copy link to highlight (Edge may call it Copy link to highlight too; it sits near Copy).

3. 3

   Paste it

   The clipboard now holds the page address plus #:~:text= and your words, percent-encoded. Paste anywhere.

If the command is missing, the selection may be inside an element the browser cannot link to (a form field, an image caption rendered as a picture, or text inside a frame from another site). Select a nearby sentence in the main text instead.

In Safari and Firefox: use the generator

Safari opens text fragment links but has no built-in command to create one, and Firefox added the ability to open them in version 131 while its create command is still arriving. On either browser, paste the page address and the sentence into the highlight link generator. It builds the link, shows a live test link, and copies the result. The bookmarklet does the same from inside the page you are reading.

Writing the link by hand

The format is simple enough to type when you need to. Take the page address, add #:~:text=, then add the words you want highlighted with spaces written as %20. Commas, ampersands and percent signs in the passage must also be encoded (%2C, %26, %25); the generator does this for you.

Two optional parts make links more precise. A range uses a comma between a start phrase and an end phrase, so text=In%20conclusion,recommend highlights everything from "In conclusion" to the first "recommend" after it. A prefix or suffix uses a hyphen: text=prefix-,target,-suffix tells the browser to match "target" only when it is preceded by "prefix" and followed by "suffix", which pins a common phrase to one exact place. Prefix and suffix are context only; they are not highlighted.

Link to highlighted text in a footnote: a worked example

A student is writing about a public health report and wants a footnote that lands the reader on the exact sentence quoted. The report is a normal web page, read in Chrome. This is the whole sequence, with the keys.

1. Press Ctrl + F, type no effect on admissions, press Escape. The phrase is now selected on the page.
2. Hold Shift and press End so the selection runs to the end of the line, then Shift + Right arrow once or twice until the full stop is inside it.
3. Right-click the selection. Choose Copy link to highlight.
4. Paste into the footnote after the citation: https://example.org/report#:~:text=The%20programme%20had%20no,on%20admissions. The comma inside the fragment marks a range from the first words to the last words.
5. Open the link in a private window to test it. If the browser lands on the passage, keep it; if it opens at the top, the page probably changed the wording, so select again.

Keep a copy of the quoted words next to the link in your notes. If the report is edited next year the link will open the page without a highlight, but your note still shows what you quoted and when. That pairing, a highlight link plus the quoted words, is the unit of a per-claim verification log that a journalist or a marker can check in seconds.

Making and opening highlight links, browser by browser

Two details matter when you read the table. The version that opens a link is what your reader needs; the command that makes one is what you need, and the two are independent. A link made in Chrome opens perfectly in Safari, and a link built by hand or by the generator is identical to one made by the right-click command.

Expert tips for links that keep matching

• Select from the first capital letter to the full stop. A selection that starts mid-word makes the browser search for a fragment that never appears as a word boundary, and the match fails.
• For a passage longer than a line, use the range form (first words, comma, last words). It survives small edits in the middle of the passage, which an exact long phrase does not.
• If a phrase appears in a heading and again in the text, add a prefix. Headings are matched first because they come first.
• Before you send a link to a page behind a login, test it in a private window. If the page redirects to a sign-in screen the fragment is discarded on the way.

Why a highlight link stops working, and the fix

• The text changed. Even a fixed typo breaks the match. Re-select and make a new link; keep highlights short so small edits elsewhere do not matter.
• The words appear earlier on the page. The browser highlights the first match. Add a prefix or use a longer phrase.
• The text loads late. Some pages fetch their content after the first paint. The browser gives up waiting after a moment. Use the bookmarklet inside the loaded page, or link to a print or reader version of the page.
• The page blocks it on purpose. A site can send a header that turns off text fragments. Rare, but it happens on some banking and account pages.
• The recipient's browser is old. Anything before Chrome 80, Safari 16.1 or Firefox 131 ignores the fragment and opens the page at the top. The link still works as a normal link.

Sharing highlights well

A good highlight link is a courtesy to the reader. Say in your message what they will see ("the second paragraph is the number I mentioned"), because a page that opens scrolled halfway down is disorienting without a hint. Quote the passage in your own words if the link might age. And highlight one thing per link; if you need three passages, send three links or use the multiple-text form and tell the reader there are three.

Highlight links are also the backbone of checking what you read. Recording evidence this way is central to annotating a source claim by claim and to finding where a quotation really comes from. For the precise selections that make these links reliable, the keyboard selection shortcuts help; the rest of the guides section covers every other way to highlight.