TinyURL for Chrome turns the sprawling URL in your address bar into a tidy tinyurl.com link and drops it straight onto your clipboard — in a single click.
Because "hey, check out this article" should not require pasting 4,000 characters of tracking parameters and a session token.
Add to ChromeFree on the Chrome Web Store.
Modern URLs are a mess — campaign tags, tracking IDs, and paths so long they wrap three times in a text message. TinyURL fixes that, but the website version means: open a new tab, go to tinyurl.com, paste, click, copy the result, come back. That's a lot of steps to make something shorter.
This extension collapses all of that into one click on the toolbar button. The shortened link lands on your clipboard, ready to paste wherever you were headed.
Hit the TinyURL button (or right-click a link).
The current URL is sent off and shortened.
The tiny link is already on your clipboard.
Open the extension's Options (right-click the toolbar icon → Options, or via chrome://extensions). Settings save instantly and live only on your machine.
Paste a token from your TinyURL.com account (Settings → API) and links are created through your account — so they appear in your dashboard with click analytics. Leave it blank to use the free, anonymous service. Best practice: create a token with only the "Create TinyURL" permission. If the key is set but rejected, the extension tells you rather than silently falling back.
Occasionally the "short" link is actually longer than the original (very short pages happen). With this on, the extension notices and copies whichever is genuinely shorter — no more short links that aren't.
Pops a small confirmation on the page when a link is copied ("Tiny URL copied to the clipboard."). Off by default, in which case the result is quietly logged to the console instead.
Adds the TinyURL actions to the right-click menu on links, so you can shorten a link's target without visiting it first — not just the page you're currently on.
Your API key is stored locally in the browser's extension storage as plain text. If you use Chrome profile sync it may sync to your other devices. Use a restricted "Create TinyURL"-only token so a leak can't do more than make links.
On-page notifications can't appear on restricted pages — chrome:// pages, the Chrome Web Store, the PDF viewer — because there's no ordinary web page there to draw on. The result is logged to the console instead.
The copy is performed through a tiny hidden offscreen document. That's the standard Manifest V3 way for an extension to reach the clipboard — nothing is displayed and nothing is stored there.
Transparency matters, so here is the complete list of what this extension requests and the specific reason for each. No analytics, no ad networks, no data sent anywhere except the shortening service you chose.
| Permission | Why it's needed |
|---|---|
| activeTab | Read the URL of the tab you're on — but only at the moment you click the button. There is no always-on access to your browsing. |
| clipboardWrite | Copy the finished short link to your clipboard so it's ready to paste. |
| storage | Remember your settings (API key and toggles) on your own machine. |
| contextMenus | Add the "Create a TinyURL" and "Send to TinyURL.com" entries to the toolbar/right-click menu. |
| offscreen | A Manifest V3 background worker can't touch the clipboard directly, so this permission lets the extension spin up a hidden document solely to perform the copy. |
| Host | Why it's needed |
|---|---|
| tinyurl.com | Call TinyURL's free, anonymous shortening endpoint (the default). |
| api.tinyurl.com | Call TinyURL's authenticated API — used only when you supply an API key. |
Install it from the Chrome Web Store — free, and one click.
Prefer to load it unpacked? Download the chrome/ folder, visit chrome://extensions, enable Developer mode, and choose Load unpacked.
Found a bug or want a new feature? I read everything — feature requests especially welcome.
Drop me a line and I'll get back to you.