45.2 Activating URLs

M-x goto-address-mode

Activate URLs and e-mail addresses in the current buffer.

You can make Emacs mark out URLs specially in the current buffer, by typing M-x goto-address-mode. When this buffer-local minor mode is enabled, it finds all the URLs in the buffer, highlights them, and turns them into clickable buttons. You can follow the URL by typing C-c RET (goto-address-at-point) while point is on its text; or by clicking with Mouse-2, or by clicking Mouse-1 quickly (see Mouse References). Following a URL is done by calling browse-url as a subroutine (see Browse-URL).

It can be useful to add goto-address-mode to mode hooks and hooks for displaying an incoming message (e.g., rmail-show-message-hook for Rmail, and mh-show-mode-hook for MH-E). This is not needed for Gnus, which has a similar feature of its own.