Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Google’s new Chrome add-on lets you create links to specific text on a webpage

By

Google has released a new Chrome extension that lets you link to a specific block of text inside a webpage. Similar to how you’d create YouTube links to a video’s timestamp, these customized web addresses directly skip to and highlight the section you’ve selected as soon as the webpage renders.

Simply called Link to Text Fragment, the add-on is available on the Chrome Web Store for free. To use it, first make sure you have the latest version of either Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge. Next, once you’ve installed the extension on your computer, right-click a piece of text on a webpage and select the Copy Link to Selected Text option. You can then paste the link wherever you’d like to share it.

Link to Text Fragment extension demo.

Link to Text Fragment is based on a new technology Google recently rolled out for its Chrome browser called Text Fragments. It’s the same module Google is now employing to highlight the snippet that appears at the top of a web search when you click the linked source.

Recommended Videos

While it was already possible to compose these fragmented links by appending the text in question at the end of a normal URL, Link to Text Fragment saves you from manual labor and lets you generate them with a click of a button.

This capability is limited to Google Chrome and Chromium-based Microsoft Edge. Therefore, the addresses Link to Text Fragment produces won’t work on other browsers like Firefox or Safari. In a technical blog post, Google says that as of June 17, “Safari and Firefox have not publicly signaled an intent to implement the feature.” On incompatible browsers, the link will open the webpage as it normally would.

Link to Text Fragment is a handy extension that can especially prove useful when you want to guide someone to a section inside a lengthy webpage. However, due to the nascent technology it is based on, it’s far from perfect yet. In my testing, I found it largely inconsistent as it would often refuse to highlight the text or throw an error that said I needed to select a longer sequence of text.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Shubham Agarwal
Shubham Agarwal
Journalist
Shubham Agarwal is a freelance technology journalist from Ahmedabad, India. His work has previously appeared in Firstpost…
Chrome is making a key change to protect you from phishing
Google Chrome with pinned tabs on a MacBook on a table.

Phishing campaigns -- where a fraudulent website or email is made to look like it comes from a legitimate source -- have caused a huge amount of destruction, leading to untold numbers of virus infections and money lost through scams. Google has just rolled out a powerful way to fight phishing in its Chrome browser, however, and it could help you avoid falling victim.

As part of Chrome’s 15th-anniversary update, Google will be pushing its Enhanced Safe Browsing feature to all users in the coming weeks. This checks website URLs against a list of malicious sites stored on Google’s cloud servers, all in real time. If a match is found, the website is blocked and a warning is displayed to users.

Read more
Google Chrome is getting a complete overhaul for its birthday
Screenshot of Google Chrome with updated Material You design language.

To mark the 15th anniversary of its popular web browser, Google is releasing a brand new update for Chrome. The biggest change will be a redesign for the browser that will now adhere to Google’s Material You design language. There is also an update for the Chrome Web Store, alongside enhanced search features and some tweaks to Safe Browsing.

Material You is Google's unified design language, which was first introduced with Android 12. According to a blog post shared by Chrome Vice President Parisa Tabriz, Chrome will be the latest product from the company that will be getting a design overhaul featuring new icons that place a strong emphasis on legibility. On top of that, there will be fresh color palettes that will expand to the tabs and toolbar.

Read more
Google now lets you know the best time to book a cheap flight
facial recognition

The latest version of Google Flights provides you with new information designed to help you make a more informed choice about when to book a ticket for a flight.

“Most of the time, it’s better to book on the early side, especially when your plans aren’t very flexible,” Google Flights’ James Byers says in a blog post introducing the new features. “But flight prices do change frequently, and there are often low fares to be found with the right tools (and some perseverance).”

Read more