Hyperlinks (OSC 8) — Terminal Support | Terminfo.dev

Skip to content<br>Appearance

MenuReturn to top

Hyperlinks (OSC 8) ​<br>Category: extensions · Baseline: rich · Tags: Operating System Commands (OSC), Xterm Extensions · Specification ↗<br>ESC ] 8 ; params ; uri BEL<br>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.<br>How this is tested automated<br>Write an OSC 8 hyperlink (ESC ] 8 ; ; url BEL text ESC ] 8 ; ; BEL) and verify the link is rendered.The same probe runs against headless backends (via Termless) and real terminal apps (via a daemon launched in each terminal). This lets us distinguish parser correctness from rendering correctness.

Analysis2026-05-17<br>Supported by 11 of 12 terminals (92%). Not supported by: vt100.js. Part of the Rich TUI baseline. Notes: vt100.js: Not implemented — pure TypeScript emulator.

Supported by 12 of 14 backends (86%)<br>Terminal Applications ​<br>TerminalVersionSupportNotesiTerm23.6.9✓ yes Ghostty1.3.1✓ yes VS Code✓ yes Warp✓ yes Kitty0.46.2✓ yes Cursor✓ yes Terminal.app✓ yes Headless Backends ​<br>Parser correctness only — a ✓ means the parser accepts the sequence.<br>BackendVersionSupportNotesAlacritty0.26.0✓ yes vterm.js0.2.0✓ yes WezTerm0.1.0-fork.5✓ yes xterm.js5.5.0✓ yes vt100.js0.2.1✗ noNot implemented — pure TypeScript emulator<br>← Back to matrix · extensions features