Tell HN: Google uses a Chrome-specific feature to highlight text on any website

4 points

6 years ago

I searched for something and clicked on a Quora search result that highlighted the search result text. I was surprised because Quora can’t know what the search result looked like and so doesn’t know which part of the text to highlight.

I looked in the URL bar and saw this: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-I-see-numbers-and-not-contacts-names-In-WhatsApp#:~:text=If%20your%20contacts'%20numbers%20are,Go%20to%20Account%20%3E%20WhatsApp.

Note the #:~:text= part. If you use it with Chrome on any other website you can highlight any text:

     https://www.ycombinator.com/#:~:text=Y%20Combinator
     http://paulgraham.com/useful.html#:~:text=useful

I can’t find any documentation on this feature. Google appears to append it to the anchor when you click on a search result in Chrome.

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