Mailto Link Generator
Note: Some older Outlook builds truncate a mailto URL around 2,000 characters, and a long prefilled body reaches that faster than you would expect. If the length above is climbing, shorten the body rather than the addresses.
The body is where the value is. A support link that opens with the page URL, the browser version and a blank space for the description turns a vague message into a useful one, and costs the person writing it nothing. Multiple recipients go in comma-separated, and cc and bcc work the same way — though bcc is worth thinking about twice, because it appears in plain text in the link and anyone can read it in the page source.
The first address goes before the question mark, not in a to parameter. Both forms work in most clients, but the plain form is what the specification describes and it is what the outliers handle reliably.
One limitation to plan around: total URL length. Older Outlook builds truncate somewhere around 2,000 characters, and a long prefilled body plus several addresses reaches that faster than you would expect. The character count below tracks it, and if you are near the limit the body is the part to shorten.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my subject line get cut off?
Because it contains an ampersand, a hash or a question mark and was not encoded. Those characters have structural meaning in a URL, so an unencoded & starts a new parameter and everything after it disappears from the subject. The generated link encodes them.
Is bcc private in a mailto link?
No. The address is written in plain text in the href, so anyone who views the page source, or hovers the link, can read it. bcc in a mailto only hides the address from other recipients of the sent message, not from visitors to your page.
How do I add line breaks to the body?
Type them normally here and they are encoded as %0D%0A, the carriage return and line feed pair that email clients expect. A bare %0A works in most clients but not all, which is why the pair is used.
Will this open Gmail or the desktop mail app?
Whichever the visitor has registered as their mail handler — you cannot choose for them. Someone with no mail client configured gets nothing at all when they click, which is the argument for also showing the address as text next to the link.
Does a mailto link get my address scraped?
Yes, it is plainly readable in the markup. Obfuscation tricks mostly inconvenience real visitors and screen readers more than harvesters. A contact form is the answer if that matters; otherwise accept it and filter the spam.
