How can I make internal links both colored and underlined?

Question

I would like the internal hyperlinks generated by hyperref to be colored and underlined.

Reading some of the package documentation, I know that these \hypersetup keys exist:

colorlinks: when true, color the link; when false, draw a border around the link and color that.
linkcolor: the color of the link (requires colorlinks=true to have any effect)
linkbordercolor: the color of the link border color (requires colorlinks=false to have any effect)
pdfborderstyle: keys for the pdf borderstyle dictionary. I don't know what keys and values exist for this dictionary, but I do know that pdfborderstyle={/S/U} or pdfborderstyle={/S/U/W 1} can change the link border from a box to an underline.

But it seems impossible with this key structure to have colored links (requiring colorlinks=true) and colored borders (requiring colorlinks=false).

Here is a minimal (non-)working example (via):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\hypersetup{colorlinks=false,%
            linkbordercolor=red,linkcolor=green,pdfborderstyle={/S/U/W 1}}
\begin{document}
\section{To See}\label{tosee}
\vskip2cm
\hyperref[tosee]{just to see}
\end{document}

With colorlinks=false (the default) the text is black and the border is red.

With colorlinks=true the text is green and there is no border.

Related Question: Switch between box and color links with hyperref. — Peter Grill, Jun 23 '13 at 21:37

score 90 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

I assume this was done by design, seeing as the introduction of hyperlinks may clutter the user's view of the actual text. Moreover, not all hyperlink typesetting is printable - as you've mentioned, the PDF hyperlink is merely "a rectangular area of the page that is mouse-aware". However, if you want to do this, there are two options available

Manual

You deactivate the colorlinks option so that hyperref sets the link border:

\hypersetup{%
  colorlinks=false,% hyperlinks will be black
  linkbordercolor=red,% hyperlink borders will be red
  pdfborderstyle={/S/U/W 1}% border style will be underline of width 1pt
}

and typeset the text manually using \color{<color>}. For example:

...
\begin{document}
  \section{To See}\label{tosee}
  \hyperref[tosee]{\color{green}just to see}
\end{document}

Colorlinks=false with manual colour setting of link

Note that this is virtually the same as what hyperref does internally, since the text colour is modified and will typeset this way even if the hyperlink is removed via printing to PDF (or flattening).

The advantage behind this approach (motivating to include it here) is that you can specify different colours for each hyperlink, if you so wish.

Automatic

You activate the colorlinks option so that hyperref sets the link colour in the text

\hypersetup{%
  colorlinks=true,% hyperlinks will be coloured
  linkcolor=green,% hyperlink text will be green
  linkbordercolor=red,% hyperlink border will be red
}

and then add the following after the above \hypersetup{...}:

\makeatletter
\Hy@AtBeginDocument{%
  \def\@pdfborder{0 0 1}% Overrides border definition set with colorlinks=true
  \def\@pdfborderstyle{/S/U/W 1}% Overrides border style set with colorlinks=true
                                % Hyperlink border style will be underline of width 1pt
}
\makeatother

Colorlinks=true with linkborder active

Here is the pdfborderstyle specification from Adobe:

PDF border specification

I wonder if there is a way to patch hyperref so that the links use soul's \ul and no border-underlining? — doncherry, Aug 19 '11 at 15:53
Curiously, the pdfborderstyle specifications have effect only if the file is opened by Adobe Reader. They do not work e.g. with Apple's Preview. — Jairo Bochi, Sep 11 '13 at 15:27
@Werner As Jairo Bochi said, this does not work for macOS preview, is there a way for it to work in preview? Thanks! — zyy, Aug 08 '18 at 16:03
Is it possible to raise the underline up a bit higher? It's so low that it bumps against the next line of text — BallpointBen, Sep 28 '21 at 00:15
@Conjecture: Care to share a minimal document that replicates your issue? — Werner, Jan 04 '24 at 18:55

score 20 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 16 '19 at 10:39

20

I know you're probably looking for a solution that uses hyperref's own underlining just for the heck of it, but I'm adding this answer just in case anybody ever actually wants to use colored and underlined links (against which I advise). hyperref's underlining isn't particularly pretty, in fact, it's just the bottom line of a box. soul's underlining is prettier and much more customizable (see its documentation).

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xcolor,soul,lipsum}
\usepackage[hidelinks]{hyperref}
\newcommand{\myhy}[2]{\hyperref[#1]{\color{green}\setulcolor{red}\ul{#2}}}

\begin{document}
\section{To See}\label{tosee}
\vskip2cm
This is \myhy{tosee}{just to see} what it looks like. \lipsum[1]
\end{document}

underlining with soul

Here's the hyperref underlining, as a comparison:

underlining with hyperref

edited Mar 16 '19 at 10:39

Jonas Stein

8,909

answered Aug 19 '11 at 09:11

doncherry

54,637

1

@Matthew: Aah, I hadn't even thought of the automatically generated links. In this case, we'd probably need to patch some of hyperref.sty. I had taken a quick peek into it, but I didn't understand a word. – doncherry Aug 19 '11 at 11:39
1

This worked for me to get underlined clickable links: \newcommand{\myhy}[2]{\href{#1}{\color{blue}\setulcolor{blue}\ul{#2}}} ` – Matthias Braun Nov 19 '19 at 15:23

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 12 '22 at 19:27

2

If you only need it a couple times you don't need a new command or any extra packages. Just add underline and color to the link label:

\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\href{https://www.example.com}{[{\underline{\textcolor{blue}{link}}}]}

answered Jul 12 '22 at 19:27

Ben Wex

31

1

This, like the other answer by k-dubs prevents longer links from wrapping. But still, thanks for your answer. – Jasper Habicht Jul 12 '22 at 20:25
-1 The question is about styling the internal hyperlinks generated by hyperref automatically. This answer shows how to style external hyperlinks manually. – Matthew Leingang Aug 02 '22 at 12:55
@MatthewLeingang well then by all means downvote it so that it won't even be visible to the people who would've found it helpful because if it wasn't exactly what YOU needed – Ben Wex Aug 06 '22 at 20:53
Nothing personal, just pointing out that the answer is orthogonal to the question. This is a Q&A site, not a wiki. If you want to write an answer about something else (perhaps for the benefit of googlers who landed here in search of something else), go ahead, but the answer should say that it's addressing a related-but-different question. Then I'll retract the downvote. – Matthew Leingang Aug 06 '22 at 21:20

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 29 '18 at 05:26

1

Another solution that does not require a new package, nor overriding hyperref parameters is to define a new command, e.g., slink:

\documentclass{article}

%minimum packages
\usepackage[colorlinks=true, linkcolor=blue]{hyperref} 

%custom link command
\newcommand{\slink}[2]{\hyperref[#1]{\underline{\smash{#2}}}} 

\begin{document}
    \section{Section Title\label{sect}}
    \slink{sect}{Here} is an \texttt{slink} to this very section 
\end{document}

answered Jan 29 '18 at 05:26

k-dubs

119

2

Unfortunately, this will prevent longer links from wrapping around line ends. – AlexG Jan 29 '18 at 11:55
This is very similar to doncherry's answer, and my comments on that answer apply here. I wanted to style automatically generated hyperlinks. They all use \hyperref alone. A new user command wrapping around \hyperref doesn't address this use case. – Matthew Leingang Jan 29 '18 at 14:26
@MatthewLeingang: Ah, I didn't understand those comments, my mistake. Although, this addressed my use case and perhaps those of others who find this thread. Trying to figure out how to color and underline links with hyperref was how I found this thread: "How can I have colored and underlined links with hyperref?". This is a (possibly inelegant) way to do that. – k-dubs Jan 30 '18 at 06:36
@AlexG: I noticed that. Do you know how to avoid it? – k-dubs Jan 30 '18 at 06:37
1

Well, @Werner 's solution (under the heading "Automatic") does exactly what was requested: \hypersetup{...} configures the link text to be coloured while keeping it line-breakable and the code between \makeatletter and \makeatother patches hyperref to implement the PDF specification for setting the link border style to "Underline". That's all what is needed to fulfill the requirements. – AlexG Jan 30 '18 at 10:02

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 01 '23 at 22:18

None of the solutions up to this point have worked in my case. What I tried to resolve? Display all external links (URLs) colored black and underlined with 1px line (resume). There's a single requirement, no custom styles for href needed.

The original answer (https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/26085/125035) has almost everything what I need except one small thing. It does not work with actual URLs leading to external web resources, e.g. link on a twitter account.

Be careful and double check what exactly you want to color & underline. The official hyperref documentation helps me a lot to figure out. In example, check out section '5.6 Extension options' and read more about the difference between linkcolor, urlcolor and other *color parameters.

I also found the solution in another question. You can use the code from the answer, it works just okay. IMO the \AtBeginDocument{\hypersetup{pdfborderstyle={/S/S/W 1}}} thing is kind of workaround in my simple case. My solution is:

\usepackage{hyperref}
\hypersetup{
    urlbordercolor = black,
    pdfborderstyle={/S/U/W 1},
}

As a result, \href{mailto:email@gmail.com}{email@gmail.com} external URL displays the right way.

How can I make internal links both colored and underlined?

5 Answers5

Manual

Automatic

Linked

Related