Copy a Bookmark: One Line to Paste Anywhere, or the Whole Record as JSON

Electerm has always been able to turn a string into a session. Paste ssh://user@host into Quick Connect, click an electerm:// link, let the AI build a bookmark from a sentence — all of it ends up in the same parser, and a session opens.

The other direction was missing. There was no way to get a bookmark out as text. You could look at a host in the sidebar, and you could not hand it to anyone.

Now there is a copy button in the bookmark form header.

Where it is

Settings → bookmarks, then open a bookmark — or start a new one. In the form header, on the right, past the title and the AI button, there is a small copy icon. Click it and a menu drops down with two rows.

Each row shows a one-line preview, with the full value on hover. Click a row and it goes to your clipboard, with the usual copied confirmation.

Two things about what gets copied:

• It copies the form as it stands right now, including edits you have not saved yet. You do not have to save first, and the copy is not the last-saved version — it is what is on screen.
• It works on a brand-new bookmark too. An empty form copies an empty record.

Format one: the one-line connection string

This is the format the Quick Connect box accepts, the format electerm:// deep links use, and the format the command line takes. It is the same string you would have typed by hand.

Real examples, straight out of the button:

Bookmark	Copied string
ssh, root@10.0.0.1, default port	ssh://root@10.0.0.1
ssh, root@10.0.0.1, port 2222	ssh://root@10.0.0.1:2222
ssh with a saved password	ssh://root:simple@10.0.0.1
ssh titled "core switch"	ssh://admin@10.0.0.1?opts={"title":"core switch"}
ssh with SFTP turned off	ssh://root@10.0.0.1?opts={"enableSftp":false}
ssh with charset gbk	ssh://root@10.0.0.1?opts={"encode":"gbk"}
telnet, admin@sw-01	telnet://admin:x@sw-01
vnc, u@desk-01	vnc://u@desk-01
rdp, desk-01	rdp://desk-01
ftp, u@nas-01	ftp://u@nas-01
spice, vm-01	spice://vm-01
serial, /dev/tty.usbserial, 115200	serial:///dev/tty.usbserial:115200
web, https://10.0.0.1:8443	https://10.0.0.1:8443
local terminal	(nothing — this type has no string form)

What the string leaves out, on purpose

• The default port. 22 for ssh, 23 for telnet, 5900 for vnc and spice, 3389 for rdp, 21 for ftp. It is not lost — the correct default is put back when the string is read.
• Empty fields, and the per-type defaults. An ssh bookmark already carries xterm-256color, utf-8, SFTP on, ssh-agent on. None of that is written out, because reading the string restores it. A bookmark that is all defaults comes out as just the address.
• Everything that can run something on your machine. Proxy command, run scripts, environment variables, interactive auto-answers, triggers — none of those go into the string, and a string that tries to carry them has them stripped on the way back in.

That last one is a deliberate property of the format, not an oversight. A clicked link, a pasted string and a shortcut file all travel the same road, so the format refuses to carry anything that could reach a shell. The cost is that a one-liner is a connection recipe, not a full backup: if your bookmark leans on a trigger or a run script, the string will not reproduce it.

What rides along in opts

Everything else rides along as JSON — title, tunnels, connection hopping, keep-alive, charset, terminal type, per-session settings. Those round-trip cleanly.

Tunnels are the case where the line gets visibly long, because a tunnel is a record of its own rather than a single value:

ssh://root@10.0.0.1?opts={"sshTunnels":[{"sshTunnel":"forwardLocalToRemote","sshTunnelLocalPort":8080,"sshTunnelRemoteHost":"localhost","sshTunnelRemotePort":80}]}

One forward-local-to-remote tunnel: connect to port 8080 on your own machine to reach localhost:80 on the remote host. Paste that into Quick Connect and the tunnel comes with it. A bookmark with several tunnels makes the line unwieldy — which is the case for the JSON row.

The complete grammar is in the Quick Connect wiki page.

Format two: the whole record as JSON

The second row gives you the bookmark as it is stored — pretty-printed JSON, every field the form holds, including the ones the one-liner refuses to carry:

{
  "type": "ssh",
  "title": "core switch",
  "host": "10.0.0.1",
  "port": 2222,
  "username": "admin",
  "authType": "password",
  "password": "simple",
  "proxyCommand": "netbird ssh proxy %h %p",
  "encode": "gbk",
  "enableSftp": false,
  "term": "xterm-256color"
}

Trimmed — the real record has every field the form holds. Note proxyCommand in there: it is stored with the bookmark, and it is exactly the kind of field the one-liner refuses to carry.

Reach for this one when you want a copy, not a connection: moving a bookmark to another machine, keeping a record of exactly how an awkward host was configured, diffing two hosts that "should be the same", or attaching the real config to a bug report.

What it is actually good for

• Hand a host to someone. Copy the one-liner, paste it into chat or a ticket. They drop it into Quick Connect — the bolt input in the new-tab menu, the empty-state box, or the sidebar bolt icon — and they are in. No screenshot of a settings dialog, no "what was the port again".
• Make it clickable. The same protocols are registered as deep links, so ssh://root@10.0.0.1 becomes something a colleague can click and land in a session.
• Move a host between machines. The one-liner for the connection; JSON as well if you want the extras.
• Feed the other tools. Both formats are exactly what Quick Connect, the deep-link handler, the command line and the AI bookmark builder already read.

One asymmetry worth knowing: the deep-link handler is registered for ssh, telnet, vnc, rdp, spice, serial and ftp — the same list the string form covers. A web bookmark's string is just its URL, so it works in the Quick Connect box but it is not a deep link; in a chat client it is an ordinary link, and clicking it opens a browser rather than an electerm tab.

Two things to be careful about

The password rides along, in plain text

If the bookmark has a saved password, the string carries it: ssh://root:simple@10.0.0.1. The JSON carries it too. A copied string is a credential — treat it like one, and do not paste it into a group chat, a public issue or a pastebin.

If you want to hand over the connection without the secret, clear the password field before you copy. The copy reads the form as it stands, so an emptied field is an emptied string.

A password containing @ will not survive

This is the one real sharp edge. The string puts the password between a : and an @, and the parser splits on the first @ it finds. So a password of p@ss comes back as password p with the host turned into ss@10.0.0.1 — the string silently points somewhere that does not exist.

A colon in a password is fine. An at-sign is not.

The menu previews the string before you copy it, and that preview is the check: if the host part looks wrong, do not send it. For an account whose password contains @, use the JSON row instead — JSON is never parsed back, so nothing is ambiguous.

Cheat-sheet

• The copy button lives in the bookmark form header (Settings → bookmarks), on the right. It reads the form as it stands, saved or not.
• quick connect row → the one-line string, exactly what the Quick Connect box and electerm:// links accept.
• JSON row → the complete record, for backups, diffs and bug reports.
• The string drops the default port, empty fields, per-type defaults, and every exec-capable field (proxy command, run scripts, env vars, triggers). Anything you rely on from that last group needs JSON.
• local terminals have no string form, so the quick connect row is greyed out for them.
• The password goes with it in plain text, in both formats. Clear the field first if you are sharing.
• A password containing @ breaks the string. Check the preview, or use JSON.

Next: Bookmarks first in electerm explains why every connection in electerm is a bookmark to begin with, or Data sync covers moving the whole set between machines.