Hyperlinks (OSC 8)

Category: extensions · Tags: Operating System Commands (OSC), Xterm Extensions · Specification ↗

OSC 8 adds clickable hyperlinks to terminal output, similar to HTML anchor tags. The format is ESC ] 8 ; params ; uri ST to start a link and ESC ] 8 ; ; ST to end it. Text between these markers becomes a clickable hyperlink. The params field supports an id=value parameter that groups non-contiguous text into a single link — essential for links that span multiple lines or are broken by line wrapping. When the user hovers over any part of a multi-segment link with the same id, all segments highlight together. Terminals typically render hyperlinks with an underline and open them in the default browser on click or Ctrl+click. Tools like ls --hyperlink=auto, gcc, and grep can emit OSC 8 links to file paths and URLs. Widely adopted across modern terminals including Ghostty, iTerm2, WezTerm, GNOME Terminal, and Windows Terminal.

Supported by 5 of 6 backends (83%)

Support Matrix

Backend	Version	Support	Notes
Alacritty	0.26.0	✓ yes
Ghostty	1.3.1	✓ yes
Kitty	0.40.0	✓ yes
WezTerm	0.1.0-fork.5	✓ yes
xterm.js	5.5.0	✓ yes
vt100	0.1.0	✗ no	Not implemented — pure TypeScript emulator

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