Mailto Link Generator

A mailto link is simple on the surface and surprisingly fiddly in practice. You start with mailto:hello@example.com, then want to add a subject, then a body, then maybe CC and BCC. Each piece has to be URL-encoded, spaces become %20 (or + in some interpretations), line breaks become %0D%0A, and suddenly your clean email link looks like alphabet soup. This generator handles all of it, producing clean, standards-compliant mailto URLs you can drop straight into an href or a command-line script.

The generator follows RFC 6068 — the actual standard for mailto. It properly percent-encodes every field, handles multiple recipients separated by commas, and supports the to, cc, bcc, subject, and body parameters. Modern email clients (Apple Mail, Outlook, Gmail webmail, Thunderbird, and most mobile apps) parse these correctly and pre-populate every field when the user clicks the link.

Beyond the raw URL, the tool outputs a ready-to-paste HTML anchor tag. You can customize the visible link text (default is the email address), add attributes like rel="noopener" or a class, and copy as HTML for websites, markdown link syntax for documentation, or plain text URL for emails and scripts. A preview shows what the user sees on click, and a test button opens the mailto directly to verify it works in your default email client before you ship it.

Mailto is defined by RFC 6068 and supersedes the older RFC 2368. It allows a URL scheme that email clients recognize as an instruction to compose a new message. The format is mailto:to-addresses?key1=value1&key2=value2, where the query string uses standard URL-encoding.

Accepted keys include:
- to: comma-separated list of primary recipients; can also be embedded in the path
- cc: comma-separated copy recipients
- bcc: blind-copy recipients
- subject: the message subject
- body: the message body (text only; HTML is not supported via mailto)

Every value must be percent-encoded. Newlines in the body use %0D%0A (CRLF) per RFC 6068. Special URL characters (&, ?, #, =, +, spaces) must be encoded, otherwise the parser may cut the value short or misinterpret it. This generator performs proper encoding so you never have to remember the exact rules.

Practical limits: most email clients truncate mailto URLs around 2000 characters, some as short as 1000. If you have a lot of pre-filled body content, test on Gmail and Outlook which are the least forgiving. Mobile clients also vary — iOS Mail handles most cases gracefully, Android clients differ by vendor. Attachments are not supported by the mailto spec (and security reasons prevent browsers from even trying), so for workflows involving attachments you need a form-based solution. For everything else — contact buttons, support links, pre-filled feedback forms — mailto is the fastest path from a click to a composed email.

Writing mailto URLs by hand is error-prone because of URL encoding. Typo the subject or skip encoding a space and the resulting link breaks in random ways across email clients. Embedding long bodies with line breaks is especially tedious. This generator encodes every field correctly, outputs ready-to-paste HTML or markdown, supports all mailto parameters, and includes a test button so you verify in your actual email client before shipping. It is the fastest way to add pre-filled email links to a site or doc without risking encoding bugs.