Clean Links: URL Cleaner

That link a friend just sent you probably has a dozen tracking parameters glued to the end of it. Clean Links strips them off. It also opens up QR codes so you can read where they actually go before you commit to tapping.

The app does a handful of things, and does them without an account, a subscription, or an ad:

QR reader that shows you the destination URL first. Quishing scams work because nobody can read a QR code with their eyes, so you scan and hope. This one puts the real address on screen and waits.

Link cleaner. Paste anything, get back the same link minus the utm tags, click IDs, and referral junk. Works on links from hundreds of shopping sites, social networks and search engines.

Send to Mac. Push a cleaned link from your iPhone straight into the browser on your Mac. If the Mac is asleep or offline the link waits for it.

Unshorten. Feed it a bit.ly or t.co address and it follows the chain to whatever sits at the end. Useful when a shortened link turns up from someone you don't know, which is how most phishing starts.

Tracker blocker covering 71+ services, running as a parameter remover across everything you paste.

QR generator for making your own codes out of links you trust.

Safari extension that cleans every link on a page in one tap.

Shortcuts, a Control Center widget, and a share sheet action, if you want the whole thing automated.

Nothing leaves your device. There's no analytics SDK in here, no crash reporter phoning home, no account to create. Privacy isn't a feature we bolted on; there was never any data to collect.


■ Send Links to Your Mac

Share a cleaned link from your iPhone or iPad and it lands in your Mac's browser. Links queue up if the Mac is offline. You can also fire Shortcuts on your Macs from an iOS device.

You'll need Clean Links on both machines, iCloud turned on, and the same Apple account.

■ Coming from Hyperduck? Clean Links does the same handoff, adds tracker stripping on the way out, handles more than one Mac, and costs nothing.

■ Link Sharing FAQ

‣ Why not AirDrop? AirDrop needs both devices awake and nearby. This doesn't, and it drops the link straight into a background tab.

‣ Why not iCloud Tabs? Because iCloud Tabs only works in Safari, and the tabs are easy to lose. These open in whatever browser you actually use.

‣ Why not Reading List? Reading List is where links go to be forgotten. Yours open immediately.

‣ Why not Handoff? Handoff wants the devices in the same room. Clean Links supports Handoff anyway, for when they are.

‣ More than one Mac? Send to all of them. Any Mac signed into the same Apple account with the app installed will get it.

‣ Want to skip a particular Mac? Turn off receiving in that Mac's settings.

■ Spotted a tracker we don't catch yet? There's a link in Settings to tell us. We'll add them.