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Hyperlinks (OSC 8)
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 |