 <p>According to a similar <a href="http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/newsreader/view_thread/164962" rel="nofollow noreferrer">discussion</a>, you can create a <a href="http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/ref/uicontrol.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">UICONTROL</a> <code>pushbutton</code> which has the advantage that it accepts HTML input string. Then using <a href="http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/14317-findjobj-find-java-handles-of-matlab-graphic-objects" rel="nofollow noreferrer">FINDJOBJ</a>, we can fake the look of a clickable hyperlink:</p> <pre><code>fName = 'C:\path\to\file.pdf'; str = '&lt;html&gt;&lt;a href=""&gt;Click here for plot documentation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/html&gt;'; figure('Resize','off', 'MenuBar','none') imshow('coins.png') hButton = uicontrol('Style','pushbutton', 'Position',[320 50 170 20], ... 'String',str, 'Callback',@(o,e)open(fName)); jButton = findjobj(hButton); jButton.setCursor( java.awt.Cursor(java.awt.Cursor.HAND_CURSOR) ); jButton.setContentAreaFilled(0); </code></pre> <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/qidGH.png" alt="screenshot"></p>