Bookmarklet to Clean Cruft From URL

Bookmarking articles with long, ugly URLs filled with analytics cruft is a nuisance. I also find myself bookmarking the same article multiple times without realizing it. My bookmarking manager of choice (Linkman) will tell me if a link is already saved, but if the links are different, Linkman doesn’t know it’s the same article.

And sharing long links is annoying too. Instead of turning to a URL shortener, give this method a try.

I’ve created a URL cleaning bookmarklet that removes everything but the domain and path without having to reload the page, leaving a shorter, cleaner link.

Note: It works best on articles, and it can break some links. If the cleaned link no longer works, hit F12 to see the original URL printed in the Console.

To install the bookmarklet, drag the link below to your bookmarks toolbar:

Clean URL

To use it, click the bookmarklet on a site with a long URL and the URL will be cleaned up right before your very eyes.

Here’s an example.

Exhibit A: The original link

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/07/how-to-recover-from-an-all-nighter.html?om_rid=AAENcg&om_mid=_BTtFa0B869PyJp&utm_content=buffer8fdd1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Exhibit B: The clean link

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/07/how-to-recover-from-an-all-nighter.html

Both links lead to the exact same article.

Which would you rather use?

Comments

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  1. Thanks for the hint and nice clean cruft from URL solution :)

    Comment by anton on December 15, 2015 @ 4:37 am
  2. Check out the extension “Redirector” for Firefox or Chrome. It lets you create automatic URL manipulation rules by yourself.

    Comment by no name on June 8, 2016 @ 8:45 pm

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