What sources can Link Extractor extract links from?

Updated

Link Extractor can pull links and domains from five kinds of sources: any site you are viewing, text you select on a page, your clipboard or any pasted text, all of your selected tabs at once, and PDF documents. In each case you can choose whether the output is full links or just domains, and you can narrow the results with filters before copying, opening, or downloading them.

The five supported sources

Source What it means in practice
Any site Extract every link and domain found on the page you are currently viewing.
Selected text Highlight a portion of text on any site and extract only the links inside that selection.
Clipboard or any text Extract from whatever is currently on your clipboard, or from text you paste in directly.
All selected tabs Extract from every tab you have selected, rather than one page at a time.
PDF documents Extract links from PDF files, which normally are not clickable in the same way as web pages.

The distinction between extracting links and extracting domains matters when you decide what to do with the results. Links give you the full URLs; domains reduce them to just the host names, which is useful when you want to see which sites a page points to without the noise of individual paths and query strings.

What you can do with the results

Once the links are extracted, the extension supports several follow-up actions:

  • Open multiple links in tabs from text, so you can review a batch of destinations without clicking each one.
  • Download links and domains as a text file, which is handy when you want to keep or share the list outside the browser.
  • Copy to clipboard for pasting into a spreadsheet, document, or another tool.
  • Copy the text from a link via the context menu, so you can grab a single link's text without leaving the page.

Filtering before you extract

Extraction is not all-or-nothing. You can apply a quick filter using a regular expression, and you can store regular expressions you use often so they are available for quick filtering later. Saved expressions can also be imported and exported, which is useful if you want to move your filter set between browsers or machines.

How to reach the extension

You can activate Link Extractor from the toolbar icon, from the context menu, or with keyboard shortcuts. It also switches between dark and light mode automatically based on your browser setting, so there is no separate theme to configure.

Where to install it

  • Google Chrome Web Store — for Chrome and, per the site, all Chromium-based browsers.
  • Mozilla Firefox Add-ons — with mobile browser support available for Firefox.
  • Microsoft Edge Add-ons — for Edge.
  • Yandex — mobile browser support is listed alongside Firefox.

If you want usage instructions, the project points to its Documentation page; there is also a Frequently Asked Questions page, and bugs, feature requests, and general feedback each have their own channel.