Compact⸱URL

Compact URL is a link shortener, where shortening (and un-shortening) happens right in your browser, not on the server. Your original link destination is encoded & stored in the shortened link itself, so un-shortening happens without requiring any database lookups. This makes your links more customizable, and doesn't depend on a service staying online forever (or at all).

(Warning: developer speak...)

Your original link is encoded into a longer sequence of invisible characters (specifically, these four zero-width characters). This sequence is included in the shortened link itself, just after the "#". For getting back your original link again, this process is reversed, and the sequence is decoded back into the original URL.

• It's customizeable - the end part of shortened links can be customized to anything you want. These characters are not used in the redirect process, and it doesn't have to be unique. (So be creative/descriptive!)
• It's faster - Since redirect lookup happens in the browser, it can work without having to wait for the server to lookup a URL.
• Shortened links are forever - Since your original link is stored within the shortened link itself and not in a database, they can be un-shortened easily, even without Compact URL. A portable de-shortener utility is published here on GitHub. The utility is completely offline, and can be easily run from anywhere. (Don't trust GitHub? Save a backup copy for yourself!)

• Universal clickability: not all contexts properly detect the complete shortened URLs, to make proper clickable links. You may need to select the whole link manually (including the visible/customizable characters at the end!), and copy/paste the link manually.
• In terms of bytes, the shortened link is actaully larger than the original. (Shortened links use approximately 10-times the number of bytes as the original link.) But in terms of computers, this is still very small.