Clickable hyperlink in QTextEdit

To have clickable hyperlink in QTextEdit, you can use

1. QTextCharFormat::setAnchorHref to set the link for some text

2. QWidget::mousePressEvent to capture mouse press event

3. QTextEdit::anchorAt to obtain the link

Here's the minimal working PyQt example,

import sys
from PyQt5.Qt import QDesktopServices, QUrl, QApplication, QColor, Qt
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import QTextEdit


class MyWidget(QTextEdit):

    def mousePressEvent(self, e):
        self.anchor = self.anchorAt(e.pos())
        if self.anchor:
            QApplication.setOverrideCursor(Qt.PointingHandCursor)

    def mouseReleaseEvent(self, e):
        if self.anchor:
            QDesktopServices.openUrl(QUrl(self.anchor))
            QApplication.setOverrideCursor(Qt.ArrowCursor)
            self.anchor = None


app = QApplication(sys.argv)
editor = MyWidget()
cursor = editor.textCursor()
fmt = cursor.charFormat()
fmt.setForeground(QColor('blue'))
address = 'http://example.com'
fmt.setAnchor(True)
fmt.setAnchorHref(address)
fmt.setToolTip(address)
cursor.insertText("Hello world again", fmt)
editor.show()
app.exec_()

Using QTextBrowser is simpler (as suggested by another answer). However, if for some reason you want to use QTextEdit, try to change the text interaction flags using setTextInteractionFlags(). I think you have to enable the Qt::LinksAccessibleByMouse flag.

See Qt::TextInteractionFlag and QTextEdit::textInteractionFlags

As far as I've tried, when using QTextEdit + Qt::LinksAccessibleByMouse I'm able to click on links, but no action is taken (i.e., link is not open). The only action possible is to right-click on the link and select Copy Link Location.

As mentioned, one option is using QTextBrowser. In this case you have to set the QTextBrowser::openExternalLinks property too, in order to open the link using the default browser, otherwise it will be open in the text-browser widget.

Another option, given you have a read-only text, is to use a QLabel with rich format, and using the QLabel::linkActivated signal to open the URL

label->setTextFormat(Qt::RichText);
QObject::connect(label, &QLabel::linkActivated, [](const QString & link) {
  QDesktopServices::openUrl(link);
});

You can use QTextBrowser instead of QTextEdit if it read only text.

In order for setTextInteractionFlags() to work the openExternalLinks property needs to be set. Since this property is not available on QTextEdit, here is a little hack to enable it.

auto &clist = edit->children();
for each (QObject *pObj in clist)
{
  QString cname = pObj->metaObject()->className();
  if (cname == "QWidgetTextControl")
    pObj->setProperty("openExternalLinks", true);
}

This does not address the mouse cursor, so you will still need to override mouseMoveEvent.

If you only want to use it in read-only mode, QTextBrowser is more suitable (as mentioned already above). For editing AND following links the approach is to capture mouse events. To achieve this, you subclass QTextEdit in your own class and use it instead. Below is an example, depending on your use case you then could open a context menu to edit or follow the url or similar.

// Header my-textedit.h

#include <QTextEdit>

class MyTextEdit : public QTextEdit {
    Q_OBJECT
  public:
    MyTextEdit(QWidget *parent = nullptr);

  protected:
    void mousePressEvent(QMouseEvent *);
};

// Source
#include <QMouseEvent>
#include "my-textedit.h"

MyTextEdit::MyTextEdit(QWidget *parent){}

void MyTextEdit::mousePressEvent(QMouseEvent *e)
{
    qDebug() << "MyTextEdit" << __func__ << " anchor=" << anchorAt(e->pos());
}