- A link can open a page scrolled to one sentence, already highlighted.
- Chrome and Firefox both let you copy one of these links with a right click.
- It works even if the page's author never added a way to link there.
- If the page's text changes later, the highlight can stop working.
- The link only works when you click it yourself, not on automatic page loads.
A text fragment link opens a web page already scrolled to one exact sentence, with that sentence highlighted in color. It works even if the page's own author never set up a link to that spot. MDN's documentation says a search engine could use this to send someone straight to the line that answers their search.
In Chrome on a computer, you can select a sentence, right-click it, and choose Copy link to highlight. Pasting that link into an email or a chat message takes the other person straight to the same sentence, already lit up. Google's help page says that if that option doesn't show up, the link may not work for what you picked.
Firefox added its own version of this button, called Copy Link to Highlight, as part of its Firefox 145 update. That update went out to regular users starting November 11, 2025.
The link itself contains the words to find, after a special marker that tells the browser to highlight them. Spaces become %20, and matching ignores capital letters. If the same words show up more than once, the link can add a nearby word so the browser finds the right spot. It can also mark the start and end of a longer passage instead of typing out the whole thing.
https://example.com/long-page#:~:text=the%20exact%20words
https://example.com/long-page#:~:text=first%20few%20words,last%20few%20words
https://example.com/long-page#:~:text=right%20before-,the%20words%20you%20wantIf the page's text later changes, the browser can't find the words anymore and just opens the page at the top instead. A link can also carry an old style link to a heading as backup, so it still lands close by even if the exact words are gone. That kind of backup can outlast the text match, as long as the page keeps that heading in place.
The feature only kicks in when someone actually clicks a link themselves, not when a page loads on its own. It also skips over content inside embedded frames, so one site can't secretly check what text sits on another page you're logged into. A site that wants none of this can send browsers a special instruction that makes links open at the top of the page instead.
