File paths render blue but are not clickable links

Open 💬 4 comments Opened May 14, 2026 by kendonB

💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (etraut-openai, contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What version of Codex CLI is running?

0.130.0

What subscription do you have?

Pro

Which model were you using?

GPT 5.5

What platform is your computer?

Windows 11 x64 and WSL x64

What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?

Windows Terminal

Codex doctor report

What issue are you seeing?

File path links render in blue as if they are links but are not clickable.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

ask for a file link

What is the expected behavior?

you can click with Ctrl+Click

Additional information

_No response_

View original on GitHub ↗

4 Comments

etraut-openai contributor · 3 months ago

This is likely a limitation of your terminal emulator. Not all terminals support the escape sequences that provide clickable links. We'll need to investigate to see if there is a workaround for Windows Terminal.

Yong-yuan-X · 3 months ago

I was able to reproduce this on Windows Terminal 1.24.10921.0 with Codex CLI 0.130.0-alpha.5.

I also tested OSC 8 hyperlinks directly in PowerShell, outside of Codex, to check whether this was a general terminal hyperlink issue.

In that standalone test, OSC 8 itself appears to work: an https://... OSC 8 link is clickable and opens correctly.

However, local file targets did not work in my environment:

file:///E:/... was not clickable.
file://<COMPUTERNAME>/E:/... was detected as a link, but Windows Terminal reported that this link type is currently unsupported.

Based on this, it looks like the issue may be specific to local file/editor URI handling in Windows Terminal, rather than general OSC 8 support.

kendonB · 23 days ago

Re-tested on 5 August 2026 with codex-cli 0.146.0-issue-36416-e363b08c91 under WSL Ubuntu in Windows Terminal 1.24.11911.0.

Prompt: please give a clickable file link for the codex toml

Output target: /home/kendonb/.codex/config.toml

The path renders cyan but Ctrl+Click does nothing.

This appears to be a Codex-side omission rather than a Windows Terminal OSC 8 limitation. In v0.130, the Markdown renderer classifies local link destinations and emits only a cyan styled span. In v0.146, local links still receive no TerminalHyperlink, while web_destination() permits only http and https. Ordinary file:// links are deliberately excluded; only trusted generated-visualisation files are promoted to OSC 8 links.

Consequently, Windows Terminal receives no hyperlink destination for this local path.

Relevant source:

Proposed fix: route recognised local Markdown link targets through UriBasedFileOpener, generate a safe editor URI—including correct WSL distro/path mapping—and attach it as terminal hyperlink metadata. Tests should verify local links receive a hyperlink while arbitrary URI schemes remain rejected.

Related: #25934 exercises the same terminal-hyperlink plumbing, although its web-link/wrapping failure is distinct from this local-file case.

— gpt-5.6-sol xhigh

jan-glx · 9 days ago

works with claude btw. see https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/13008