URL cleaner

Turn a messy URL into the link you meant to share.

Paste the whole URL. The cleaner removes known tracking and share information while keeping the parts the page needs to load.

The parts of a URL

Cleaning is mostly a question of which of these parts are doing real work.

The part that finds the page

https://site.com/path

The scheme, domain, and path are what actually locate the page. The cleaner never touches these.

The part after the question mark

?key=value

Query parameters. Some are functional, some are tracking. Telling them apart is the entire job.

The part after the hash

#section

Usually a jump to a heading or a timestamp. Occasionally used for tracking, so known tracking fragments are checked.

Wrapped destinations

?q=https://...

Some links carry the real destination inside a parameter. The cleaner unwraps up to three of these hops.

Three messy URLs, cleaned

Real output from the cleaner on this page. The destination is unchanged in every case.

A Facebook post link

Before: https://www.facebook.com/somepage/posts/12345?fbclid=IwAR2xLongTokenHere&mibextid=abc123
After: https://www.facebook.com/somepage/posts/12345

Removed fbclid and mibextid. The fbclid value is a per-click identifier, so the same post copied twice produces two different links.

A newsletter link

Before: https://newsletter.substack.com/p/the-post-title?r=4kd9x&token=abc123&utm_source=post-email-title&utm_campaign=email-post-title
After: https://newsletter.substack.com/p/the-post-title

Removed r, token, utm_source, and utm_campaign. The token field can tie the link back to the individual email it was sent to.

A blog post from a search

Before: https://example.com/blog/article?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring&ref=twitter
After: https://example.com/blog/article

Removed four campaign and referral fields. The page renders identically without them.

What actually makes a URL long

A link that runs to three lines is usually not a complicated page address. It is a short address followed by a long list of labels that were attached at the moment you copied it.

Those labels accumulate from different places. An advertising platform adds a click identifier. An email tool adds a campaign name and sometimes a subscriber identifier. The app you copied from adds a share code that records which account performed the share. None of that is part of finding the page.

The result is that two people can copy the same article and end up with two different URLs, each carrying a record of how they arrived there.

Why deleting everything after the question mark is risky

The obvious shortcut is to cut the URL at the first question mark. It works often enough to feel safe, and then it quietly breaks things.

A YouTube link stores the video identifier in a query parameter, so cutting at the question mark leaves you with a link to the YouTube homepage. A search results page stores the search terms there. A product page stores the selected size or colour there. A timestamped video link stores the start time there.

This cleaner works from a list of parameters known to be tracking, plus specific rules for platforms where the distinction matters. Anything it does not recognise as tracking stays, which is the conservative direction to be wrong in: an uncleaned parameter is a smaller problem than a broken link.

What the cleaner cannot do

Cleaning a URL removes information from the link itself. It does not make the visit anonymous. The destination site still sees an IP address, still reads any cookies already in the browser, and still knows if there is a logged-in account.

Shortened links are a partial case. A shortener hides the destination behind a redirect that only the shortener's server can resolve, so a link like one from a.co or vm.tiktok.com cannot be expanded in the browser. The cleaner flags these and suggests cleaning the expanded link once it opens.

Common questions

What does cleaning a link change?

It removes known tracking, campaign, referral, and share information while keeping the parts the destination needs.

Can I delete everything after the question mark?

Not safely. Some links use that information for a video timestamp, product option, search, or page state. The cleaner keeps known useful parts.

Is the link I paste submitted anywhere?

No. The pasted URL is cleaned by code running in this browser tab. It is not submitted to a CleanupMy.link server or saved to an account.

Which tracking parameters are removed?

The cleaner recognizes common campaign tags, ad click IDs, affiliate codes, and share information. It also has careful rules for apps such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Amazon, and Reddit.