Using Links With Highlights On Mac and iPhone

A new feature in macOS 15.2 and iOS 18.2 is the ability to create links with highlights in Safari. These links take the recipient directly to text on a web page and highlight it.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you a new feature of macOS 15.2 that lets you link directly to text on a webpage. 
So there's a new feature in macOS 15.2 that Apple really doesn't mention anywhere but it is something I'm particularly excited about. Previously, of course, you can send a link to a webpage just by copying the URL and then sending it in an email, a text message, however you like. You can even use the Share button here and you can share it in a variety of different ways. But this new feature allows you to not only link to a webpage but it will highlight a particular piece of text on that page. The person receiving the link will see that highlight. 
So, for instance, let's take this page here and select this text. Let's say I want to send somebody a link to this page but I want them to see this text and I don't want to have to tell them, look in the first paragraph for these words, and all of that. I just want them to be able to see a highlight that shows them this text. So with this selected I can Control click on it, two-finger click on a trackpad, or right click on a mouse, and then I can get the Context Menu. I have Copy right there which will copy the text itself. But there is also now Copy Link with Highlight. When I do that what I'm going to get is a very different thing. 
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Here's what I copy if I paste it into a text document. You can see there, there is the link to the website and then the particular page. But after that you can see these symbols right here and then text equals. Then there's the text that I selected. These little characters here represent a space in a way that you can use it in an URL. If I put a space there then the URL would end right here. But using this kind of represents a space without actually having a space in the text. 
So if I were to send somebody this text and they were to click on the link then it would go to that page, just like I'm pasting it in here, and this is what they would see. It would load that page up and you can see how the text that was selected flashes there and it remains highlighted even after the flash is gone. I can send somebody a link and they would have a way to see exactly the part of the text that I want them to see. 
Now let's say I want to send this kind of link. I'm going to select some text, like this, and I'm going to Copy Link With Highlight. Now in the Messages app I'm going to paste this in. Notice how the Messages app is smart enough not only to send the link as kind of a little preview there, but it even puts in quotes the text there. So, they will see the quoted text in the message and I'll send it to them. This is what they'll see and when they click on it then you can see it goes to the webpage like this and highlights the text just like before. 
Now when it comes to the internet this isn't a new thing and it's not an Apple thing. This has actually been around for a while and other browsers have supported it. So, for instance, here I am in Goggle Chrome and it has had the functionality for a long time to do this in the same way. You get a link that not only works here in Chrome, like that, but also works as if you were to use it in Safari. So the way that these URL's are formed isn't something new and has been around for a while. As a matter of fact it has worked in Safari to use one of these links for a while as well. So for the last few years it is actually one of the things I've used Goggle Chrome for on my Mac was to make these links very easily and then when I send it to somebody I know that they can see it even if they are using Safari that doesn't allow them to make these links. But now you can make the links in Safari as well as Chrome and other browsers. 
Note that when you have a particularly long piece of text, like this, and you go to use it, it will still work. But if you take a look at the code it's going to have the beginning and the end of that not all of the text there in the middle. So it is smart enough to make these URL's in a way that they will never get too long. So now if I were to paste that link into, say, Mail you could see it appears there. It even will do the little summary here including all that text. I can convert it to a plain link and you can see that the link is still pretty short. If I were to open that link, like the recipient were to just click on it, you can see it highlights all that text even though it just includes the beginning and the end to identify the text range. 
This works in iOS 18.2 as well. So I can select text here on a webpage in Safari, like this, and if I look through the menu that appears there I can see that one of the options there, now, is Copy Link with Highlight. I can copy that and no matter where I would look at that link, whether it is on the iPhone or a Mac, or a windows machine, whatever it was, as long as the browser supports these highlight links then I would see the highlight. So it is not platform specific. Like with older versions of macOS you can see these highlight links in older versions of iOS. It is just that now in iOS 18.2 you can create them in Safari as well. 
So the next time you need to send a link to somebody and there is a particular part of the page that you want to point out to them, use this feature to send them right to that text. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 8 Responses to “Using Links With Highlights On Mac and iPhone”

Greg Turnbull

3 months ago

I’m not seeing that context option on Mac using latest OS 15.2

Just “copy link"

Gary Rosenzweig

Greg: If you see "copy link" that means you have a link selected. Select some regular text instead.

belay that. I see I have to select the text to be highlighted (Doh).

Daniel

Gary, do websites have to be set up for this to work? On sites like Wikipedia, it works as you explained (though on my Oct. 2021 14" MacBook Pro running macOS 15.2, I only get the "Copy Link with Highlight” option on the contextual menu, not as an item in the menu bar Edit menu). On some other websites, I don’t get the option at all, hence my question whether a website has to be set up to allow this.

Daniel: No, it doesn't depend on the site. But I suppose some sites could have things that interfere with text selection, and then that would make it hard for the feature to work. Hard to say without an example.

Well, for instance it doesn't work on my own site, (https://www.kiechle.com), and I'm not doing thing to prevent selections—I wound't know how.

Daniel: Not sure why it doesn't work there, but I'm guessing it may have to do with the use of frames or something on those pages. I didn't see a single div tag in the code there.

Sheldon

Thanks bunches