Now this is a game-changer for Google Chrome. A new extension shared in the Chrome Web Store (that just got an update today, June 19) streamlines the process of sharing web pages.
We've all had someone send us a web page to read — heck, that's how a lot of work here at Tom's Guide starts — but that process often starts with scrolling and skimming and searching for the important nugget of information. Link to Text Fragment, which our friends at TechRadar blogged about, fixes that.
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Available in the Chrome Web Store now for free, Link to Text Fragment is a Chrome Extension that gives you a new option when you highlight a specific word. For example, if you were to find the blurb recommending Dear White People in our Best Netflix Series roundup, you'd normally have to scroll and scroll.
How to use Link to Text Fragment
To use Link to Text Fragments, just select a part of that blurb, right-click and select "Copy link to selected text." Then, you get a longer link than usual (in this case: https://www.tomsguide.com/best-picks/best-netflix-series-shows#dear-white-people:~:text=If%20you've%20wondered) in your clipboard, and sharing that with someone else will bring them to the exact point in the article you're trying to direct them to.
Google's also shared a video of how it works:
Of course, Link to Text Fragment isn't perfect yet. It doesn't work with all kinds of text, as I got an alert when I tried to select a title-header section of an article.
As explained in a Google Developer blog post, this tool was only made possible by 'fragment identifier' tools in the Chrome 80 release.
To recap (and to paraphrase Carly Rae Jepsen), it lets you cut to the important part of a story. I can't wait to start using this and shock folks who don't expect it to happen.
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