54.2 Activating URLs

M-x goto-address

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

You can make URLs in the current buffer active with M-x goto-address. This finds all the URLs in the buffer, and establishes bindings for Mouse-2 and C-c <RET> on them. After activation, if you click on a URL with Mouse-2, or move to a URL and type C-c <RET>, that will display the web page that the URL specifies. For a ‘mailto’ URL, it sends mail instead, using your selected mail-composition method (see Mail Methods).

It can be useful to add goto-address to mode hooks and the hooks used to display an incoming message. rmail-show-message-hook is the appropriate 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.