Search code examples
pythonhyperlinkpyqtpyqt5qtextbrowser

PyQt5 - How to display a clickable hyperlink in QTextBrowser


I have created a GUI with PyQt5. Now I would like to add hyperlinks to a QTextBrowser. Unfortunately, the texts are not clickable but instead displayed as normal text and I have a hard time finding out why.

import sys
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QApplication, QWidget, QVBoxLayout, QTextBrowser

class MainWindow(QWidget):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()

        self.text_browser = QTextBrowser()
        self.text_browser.setOpenExternalLinks(True)
        self.text_browser.setReadOnly(True)
        self.text_browser.append("<a href=https://google.com/>Google</a>")
        self.text_browser.append("<a href=https://github.com/>Github</a>")

        layout = QVBoxLayout()
        layout.addWidget(self.text_browser)
        self.setLayout(layout)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app = QApplication(sys.argv)
    window = MainWindow()
    window.show()
    app.exec_()

GUI without links


Solution

  • The HTML parser used by Qt is elementary compared to those of a standard web browser, so a more standard syntax is preferred.

    While it's open to debate whether this is a bug or not, it's always better to use quotes around HTML attributes.

        self.text_browser.append("<a href='https://google.com/'>Google</a>")
        self.text_browser.append("<a href='https://github.com/'>Github</a>")
    

    Note: QTextBrowser is already read only by default, there's no need to set that option.