Clickable Links in Terminal Output

Sep 13, 2025 2 min read

I was recently looking at a CLI I wrote that prints file paths directly to the terminal. As those paths got longer and more numerous, I realized this creates cluttered output and forces users to copy-paste manually.

Turns out there’s a simple solution: you can make terminal output clickable like HTML links using a special ANSI escape sequence called OSC 8.

Why This Matters

There’s a few drawbacks to printing raw URLs or file paths like this:

View logs at: https://example.com/logs/123456
View file at: file:///Users/jimmy/logs/app.log

They do the job, but:

Long URLs clutter your output.
Some terminals don’t automatically make them clickable.
Users need to copy and paste manually.

Luckily, there’s a better way.

The Solution: OSC 8 Hyperlinks

Here’s a minimal helper function:

export const link = (text: string, target: string) => {
  return `\u001B]8;;${target}\u001B\\${text}\u001B]8;;\u001B\\`;
};

console.log(link("View Logs", "https://example.com/logs/123"));
console.log(link("Open File", "file:///Users/jimmy/logs/app.log"));