this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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Firefox, Mozilla, Thunderbird

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If I save a page to a local HTML file, I do not see where the URL of the page itself is saved. There is no comment or anything at the top that contains the URL. So I have to either add a comment manually myself or make a note of it somewhere, or bookmark it.

Is there a smarter way of working? Can the URL be derived or fished out of the saved file, or is there any feature that saves the URL as well?

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[–] SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I use the SingleFile extension, ~~which seems to rely upon an external site (could be wrong about that - I've never bothered to check)~~ (EDIT: update below) to download the webpage and store all the contents within a single HTML file which you are then offered to download locally (there's also a variant that compresses the contents using ZIP, but it seems to have significant compatibility issues - at least in my experience). The source URL & download timestamp are inserted near the top of the resulting HTML file's source, but not displayed as the actual content. Would that do?

EDIT: I've finally just checked, and according to the FAQ it does not use an external server - even though it presents like it does, IMHO. It does warn that it may reach out for items which (for dynamic pages, or whatever reason) hadn't been downloaded previously when creating the saved version, however.

[–] rageAgainstCages@crazypeople.online 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I appreciate the tip. It was alienating at first but after some fiddling it seems like a good option. My findings--

Pros

  • It’s able to save a page as a single file which can be opened in both Firefox and Chromium browsers (rare!)
  • It’s able to faithfully save a Github issue page that correctly renders when re-opened. (All other tools fail on a GH issue)
  • The URL is embedded on the 3rd line of the file (rare.. no other tool does this)

Cons

  • No control over where it saves the file
  • Forced GUI, no commandline (though I’m not sure if it can be hacked to run automatically in a headless Firefox or something)
  • No icon appears in the plugin tray. And cannot be added using the Firefox custom toolbar tool.
  • Default keystroke is control-shift-y (which clashes with the stock keystroke for reaching about:downloads)
  • There is no menu item for it

I was only able to get it to work by re-assigning a custom keystroke which I will forget and have to visit the addon manager to recall.