Why does \x1b]8;;https://...\x1b\\ show up as raw text in my terminal?

Your terminal doesn't implement OSC 8, or you're inside a multiplexer that's swallowing the OSC. Modern terminals (iTerm2, kitty, ghostty, wezterm, alacritty, recent Windows Terminal / gnome-terminal) render it as a clickable link; older ones print the bytes verbatim. tmux specifically drops OSC 8 unless set -g allow-passthrough on — see the tmux-passthrough-dcs pitfall.

Can I use BEL (\a) instead of ST (\x1b\\) as the terminator?

Yes — both terminators are spec-valid and every OSC 8-aware terminal accepts both. BEL is the original xterm form and is byte-shorter; ST is the ECMA-48 canonical form. Pick one for your codebase and stay consistent — mixing them inside a single OSC payload is undefined.

Why do two adjacent OSC 8 links collapse into one giant link?

You forgot the closing \x1b]8;;\x1b\\ (empty URL) between them, or you reused the same id=… value across two different URLs and the terminal merged them. Always close every link before opening the next, and either omit id= or generate a fresh one per URL — see the osc8-id-rebind pitfall.

OSC 8 — Inline hyperlink

Render clickable hyperlinks in terminal output (gnome-terminal 3.26+, iTerm2, Windows Terminal, kitty, ...).

Byte forms

Every common string-literal form so you can paste-and-search either direction.

\\x1b[\x1b]8;;URI\x07TEXT\x1b]8;;\x07

\\033[\033]8;;URI\007TEXT\033]8;;\007

\\e[\e]8;;URI\aTEXT\e]8;;\a

ESC [ESC ] 8 ; ; URI BEL TEXT ESC ] 8 ; ; BEL

hex1b 5d 38 3b 3b ... 07 ... 1b 5d 38 3b 3b 07

Live preview

Rendered in your browser via the same tokeniser the decoder uses — no terminal needed.

ansicode

Description

OSC 8 — Inline Hyperlink. Specified in 2017 by gnome-terminal author Egmont Koblinger and adopted by iTerm2 3.5+, Windows Terminal 1.21+, kitty, wezterm, ghostty, Konsole 18.08+, libvte 0.50+ (so every gnome-terminal / xfce4-terminal / tilix that came after) and VS Code's integrated terminal. Two-part sequence: \x1b]8;params;URI BEL (or terminated by ST \x1b\\) opens a link region; \x1b]8;;BEL (empty URI) closes it. The middle TEXT can include any printable byte and further SGR — so you can wrap the link in \x1b[4;34m…\x1b[0m to get the familiar blue-underlined look (iTerm2 / ghostty / wezterm / recent gnome-terminal then render it as a true clickable link). Optional params: id=anchor is a hint that adjacent or non-adjacent runs sharing the same id belong to one logical link (used to span line-wrapped URLs without each cell becoming an independent hyperlink). URI scope: HTTP / HTTPS work on every emulator that supports OSC 8; file:// works in iTerm2 / wezterm / kitty / vscode-terminal; editor URIs (vscode://, cursor://, etc.) are partially supported.

Two failure modes bite the OSC 8 user. (1) Terminator hygiene: OSC sequences require an explicit terminator (BEL \x07 or ST \x1b\\); a missing terminator makes the parser keep eating bytes as link payload until one of them shows up — swallowing all of your subsequent program output until the next BEL / ST somewhere in the byte stream (see osc-terminator). Prefer BEL for xterm compatibility, ST for ECMA-48 strictness — pick one and use it consistently. (2) The id= semantic split: Kitty enforces id + url as the dedup key (same id + different url → two distinct links, which is what you want); pre-21.04 Konsole and pre-3.36 gnome-terminal use id-only dedup (same id + second url silently inherits the FIRST url — data corruption); iTerm2 ignores id entirely (every block is its own link); Windows Terminal accepts id but doesn't visually group across line wraps. Never re-use the same id= for two different URLs in one session — generate ids from a content hash or uuid (see osc8-id-rebind for the full compatibility table). Coverage: Linux console / fbcon and Alacritty (deliberate omission) render the entire OSC 8 envelope as nothing — your link text disappears, not just the underline. cmd.exe and Apple Terminal.app render the link text but with no clickability. Always provide a fallback that prints the URL inline (or the link text + ' (URL)') for users on these stacks.

There's no surgical 'close hyperlink' SGR — the canonical close is the empty-URI form \x1b]8;;\x07 (or \x1b]8;;\x1b\\). Combine with sgr-underline + sgr-fg-basic to style the visible text inside the hyperlink envelope without changing link semantics: \x1b]8;;https://example.com\x07\x1b[4;34mlink text\x1b[0m\x1b]8;;\x07. For window-title or working-directory updates that travel through the same OSC family and share the same terminator rules, see osc-title and osc-cwd. For clipboard interop via OSC 52, see osc-clipboard. Always pair OSC 8 emission with the audience check above — assume the conservative behaviour (text disappears on alacritty / Linux console) and ship a textual URL fallback in your CLI's --help or -l long-format mode for those users.

Spec citation: Hyperlinks in terminal emulators (gnome-terminal proposal, 2017)

Examples

bash

printf '\033]8;;https://example.com\033\\link text\033]8;;\033\\\n'

python

print('\x1b]8;;https://example.com\x07link text\x1b]8;;\x07')

fmt.Print("\x1b]8;;https://example.com\x07link text\x1b]8;;\x07\n")

javascript

console.log('\x1b]8;;https://example.com\x07link text\x1b]8;;\x07')

printf("\x1b]8;;https://example.com\x07link text\x1b]8;;\x07\n");

Used in

Real-world tools that emit this sequence — anchors the bytes to commands you've already used.

gh (GitHub CLI)issue / PR / diff output links to the github.com URL
git 2.40+file paths in some subcommands hyperlink with config `color.hyperlink`
ezafile names hyperlink to file:// URIs when run in a supporting terminal
pytest — traceback file paths
cargo build output — diagnostic URLs
deltagit pager — file path headers link to the file on disk

Frequently asked

Short answers to the questions developers actually search for this sequence.

Why does \x1b]8;;https://...\x1b\\ show up as raw text in my terminal?: Your terminal doesn't implement OSC 8, or you're inside a multiplexer that's swallowing the OSC. Modern terminals (iTerm2, kitty, ghostty, wezterm, alacritty, recent Windows Terminal / gnome-terminal) render it as a clickable link; older ones print the bytes verbatim. tmux specifically drops OSC 8 unless set -g allow-passthrough on — see the tmux-passthrough-dcs pitfall.
Can I use BEL (\a) instead of ST (\x1b\\) as the terminator?: Yes — both terminators are spec-valid and every OSC 8-aware terminal accepts both. BEL is the original xterm form and is byte-shorter; ST is the ECMA-48 canonical form. Pick one for your codebase and stay consistent — mixing them inside a single OSC payload is undefined.
Why do two adjacent OSC 8 links collapse into one giant link?: You forgot the closing \x1b]8;;\x1b\\ (empty URL) between them, or you reused the same id=… value across two different URLs and the terminal merged them. Always close every link before opening the next, and either omit id= or generate a fresh one per URL — see the osc8-id-rebind pitfall.

Common typos / look-alikes

Wrong forms developers commonly paste from Stack Overflow that look right but aren't — with the canonical correction inline.

\x1b]8;;https://example.com\x1b\\link text\x1b]8;;https://example.com\x1b\\link text\x1b]8;;\x1b\\
OSC 8 hyperlinks need an explicit *closing* OSC 8 with empty URL — \x1b]8;;\x1b\\ — or the link extends through every byte you write until end of program. Forgetting the close means subsequent unrelated output becomes part of the underlined / clickable region.
\x1b]8;;link text;https://example.com\x07\x1b]8;;https://example.com\x07link text\x1b]8;;\x07
OSC 8 wire shape is OSC 8 ; params ; URL ST text OSC 8 ; ; ST — the URL comes *before* the terminator, then the visible text follows, then the close. Putting the text inside the OSC payload makes the terminal treat your text as a URL parameter and emit nothing visible.
\x1b]8;id=42=https://example.com\x07text\x1b]8;;\x07\x1b]8;id=42;https://example.com\x07text\x1b]8;;\x07
The id= clause lives in the *params* field (between the two semicolons after 8) and uses = to bind the key, but separates from the URL with ;, not =. Writing id=42=URL makes the params field a literal id=42=URL with no URL field — terminals render the text without a link.

Terminal support

xterm: partial
Linux console (fbcon): no
macOS Terminal.app: no
iTerm2: yes
Windows Terminal: yes
cmd.exe / ConPTY: no
kitty: yes
alacritty: no
WezTerm: yes
Ghostty: yes
GNOME Terminal: yes
Konsole: yes
tmux: partial
GNU screen: no

xterm	Linux console (fbcon)	macOS Terminal.app	iTerm2	Windows Terminal	cmd.exe / ConPTY	kitty	alacritty	WezTerm	Ghostty	GNOME Terminal	Konsole	tmux	GNU screen
partial	no	no	yes	yes	no	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	partial	no

Related sequences

In the family cookbook

OSC cookbook · 3. OSC 8 hyperlinks — `\x1b]8;;URI\x07TEXT\x1b]8;;\x07`