How it works
The link the generator makes is an ordinary web address with a text fragment on the end: #:~:text= followed by your words, encoded so that spaces and punctuation travel safely. When someone opens it, their browser loads the page as usual, searches the visible text for your words, scrolls there and paints the match. The part after # is never sent to the website, so the site cannot see what you highlighted, and nothing about the link passes through this site either: the whole thing is assembled by a few lines of script running in your browser.
Copy the page address
From the address bar of the page you are reading. If the address has a
#somethingat the end, that is fine; the generator removes it.Paste the sentence
Exactly as it appears on the page, including punctuation. Whole sentences match best. Fewer than about forty words is ideal.
Make the link and test it
Press the button, then open the test link in a new tab. You should land on the highlighted passage. If not, see the fixes below.
Copy and send
Paste the link into a message, a document, a lesson or a footnote. Add a word about what the reader will see.
The extra options
- End of range. Highlight from your sentence through a later phrase. Enter the first few words as the text and the last few words as the end. Good for long passages; the link stays short and the browser marks everything in between.
- Prefix and suffix. If your words appear more than once on the page, add the words just before or just after the one you mean. They are used only to pick the right match; they are not highlighted.
When the link does not highlight anything
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Page opens at the top, no highlight | The words on the page differ from what you typed (a typo, curly quotes, an edited sentence) | Copy the text directly from the page and paste it; shorten to one clause |
| Wrong passage is highlighted | The phrase appears earlier on the page | Add a prefix or suffix, or use a longer phrase |
| Highlight appears on your computer but not on a friend's | Their browser is older than Chrome 80, Safari 16.1 or Firefox 131 | The link still opens the page; tell them the passage |
| Nothing on a page that loads content slowly | The text arrives after the browser stops searching | Use the bookmarklet on the loaded page, or link to a print or reader version |
| Nothing inside a PDF | Text fragments work on HTML pages only | Use #page=N for PDFs, or the viewer's own highlighter |
If you came here from an old Awesome Highlighter link
From 2008 to about 2014 this page was the entrance to a tool that saved a copy of any page with your highlights and gave you a short link to it. Those saved copies and short links (/page/display/...) no longer exist; the shared highlights archive page explains what happened and what we know about the most-linked ones. The generator above does the same job without saving anything, using a browser standard that did not exist then. Links from the old highlighter that carried a page address (?url=) arrive here with the address already filled in.
For teachers, editors and teams
A highlight link is the quickest way to point a class or a colleague at one sentence without screenshots or copying. Students can create them without accounts on school devices (Chrome and Edge also have a right-click command, Copy link to highlight, that does the same thing). Editors can put them in footnotes so a reader lands on the quoted line. Our highlighting for teachers page has a ready-made lesson built on them, and the guide to linking to highlighted text covers every browser.
Common questions
Is the highlight link generator free?
Yes, with no account and no limits. It runs in your browser; this site does not receive the addresses or the text you enter.
Does the person I send the link to need to install anything?
No. Current versions of every major browser open text fragment links natively. Older browsers open the page at the top.
Can I highlight several passages in one link?
This generator makes one highlight per link, or one range. To mark several passages, make several links, or join text= parts with an ampersand by hand as described in the text fragment reference.
Does the highlight stay on the page for other visitors?
No. It appears only for people who open your link, in their own browser. The page itself is not changed.
Why does the yellow disappear when I click on the page?
Some browsers clear the highlight on interaction. The reader has already been taken to the passage, which is the point.
What happened to my saved highlights from the old site?
The old service stored copies of pages on its servers, which closed around 2015. Nothing from that period survived to this relaunch. See the shared highlights archive page.
Sources
- WICG URL Fragment Text Directives specification
- MDN Web Docs: Text fragments (browser compatibility)