Damian Kula

Some time ago I have discovered that it's possible to create a URL that will point to any text, on any website. And it's super simple! Here is a link with a text fragment anchor:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/URI/Reference/Fragment/Text_fragments#:~:text=sequence,tells

This will link you to a word "Browsers" on the MDN page that describes Text Fragments. The magic of this link lays in this specific suffix:

#:~:text=sequence,tells

Quoting MDN, the syntax is:

https://example.com#:~:text=[prefix-,]textStart[,textEnd][,-suffix]

So my link will point to a text fragment that starts with sequence and ends with tells. You could also link to

#:~:text=sequence%20of%20characters%20tells

as you can just escape spaces but I find the start and end word syntax nicer.

This feature is a part of WICG specs and it is also supported by all browsers according to MDN. Also, you can use CSS to style the highlight via

 ::target-text {
  background-color: rebeccapurple;
  color: white;
}

Sweet.

Personally, I never remembered what is exact syntax hence I just installed an extension that allows me for copying a link to the page with attached text fragment anchor. Works well even if it just the "textStart" part of the syntax.