urlview

Interactive URL selector from text files

TLDR

Extract URLs from a file and display interactive menu

$ urlview [path/to/file]

Extract URLs from multiple files

$ urlview [file1] [file2] [file3]

Extract URLs from stdin (e.g., piped from mutt)

$ cat [path/to/email.txt] | urlview

Read from stdin explicitly using dash

$ command | urlview -

Jump to a specific line number in the URL list

$ urlview -[5] [path/to/file]

urlview is a screen-oriented utility that extracts URLs from text files and displays an interactive menu for launching them in a browser. It scans input using a regular expression to identify URLs and presents a navigable list.The tool is commonly used with terminal email clients like mutt, allowing users to quickly access links embedded in messages. When a URL is selected from the menu, urlview launches the configured browser or URL handler.Configuration is read from ~/.urlview or /etc/urlview/system.urlview. The configuration file supports the following directives: REGEXP (custom URL matching pattern), COMMAND (URL launch command with %s placeholder), WRAP (yes/no for long URL wrapping), QUITONLAUNCH (exit after launching a URL).The default handler is url_handler.sh, but the BROWSER environment variable can override this with a browser command or colon-delimited list of browsers to try.

PARAMETERS

filename

One or more text files to scan for URLs. If no files specified, reads from stdin. Use `-` to explicitly read from stdin.

-number

Jump to the specified line number in the URL list.

INSTALL

sudo apt install urlview

sudo dnf install urlview

sudo apk add urlview

sudo zypper install urlview

brew install urlview

CAVEATS

The default URL regular expression may not match all valid URL formats. Complex URLs with special characters may require configuration adjustments. urlview works best with plain text; for emails with MIME encoding, consider urlscan which handles quoted-printable and base64 encodings.

HISTORY

urlview was originally written by Michael Elkins, the creator of the mutt email client, in the late 1990s. It was designed to complement mutt by providing easy URL handling in a terminal environment. The tool has been maintained by various contributors and remains a standard utility for terminal-based email workflows.