TinyURL for Firefox — bytecrafter.net

01 / Why it's useful

Short links, without the ceremony

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 the site, paste, click, copy the result, come back. That's a lot of steps to make something shorter.

This add-on collapses all of that into one click on the toolbar button. The shortened link lands on your clipboard, ready to paste. It even shortens a URL you've already copied, so you don't have to visit the page first.

Click

Hit the TinyURL button, or right-click a page/link.

Shorten

TinyURL or is.gd shortens it — your choice.

Paste

The tiny link is already on your clipboard.

02 / Options

What you can configure

Open the add-on's preferences (about:addons → TinyURL → Preferences). Settings save instantly and live only on your machine.

URL Shortening Service

Firefox exclusive

Choose your shortener: TinyURL or is.gd. Two great tastes — pick whichever you trust or prefer the look of.

TinyURL API Key

Optional

Paste a token from your TinyURL.com account (Settings → API) and TinyURLs are created through your account — showing up in your dashboard with click analytics. Leave it blank to use the free, anonymous service. Applies to the TinyURL service only (is.gd doesn't use it). Use a token with only the "Create TinyURL" permission. If the key is set but rejected, the add-on tells you rather than silently falling back.

Use Shortest URL

Occasionally the "short" link is actually longer than the original. With this on, the add-on copies whichever is genuinely shorter — no more short links that aren't.

Show Notifications

Pops a small confirmation on the page when a link is copied. Off by default, in which case the result is quietly logged to the console.

Context Create

Adds the "Create a TinyURL" action to the right-click menu on tabs, pages, and links — shorten without leaving what you're doing.

Context Send To

Adds the "Send to TinyURL.com" action to the right-click menu (tab, page, link), opening the URL on TinyURL's site for custom aliases and more.

Create Preview Links

Firefox exclusive

Appends the service's preview character (+ for TinyURL, - for is.gd) so recipients see a preview page before the real destination. Great for "trust me, it's genuinely not a rickroll." (Or, honestly, for the rickrolls.)

There's also a "Create a TinyURL (from Clipboard)" menu item on the toolbar button — shorten a URL you've already copied, no navigation required.

03 / Things to look out for

Good to know

⚠

Your API key is stored locally in the add-on's storage as plain text, and applies only to the TinyURL service. If you use Firefox Sync it may sync to your other devices. Use a restricted "Create TinyURL"-only token.

⚠

Preview Links change the link you copy — the trailing + / - is intentional and sends recipients to a preview page first, not straight to the destination.

⚠

On-page notifications can't appear on restricted pages — about: pages and addons.mozilla.org — because there's no ordinary web page there to draw on. The result is logged to the console instead.

04 / Permissions

Every permission, and exactly why

Transparency matters, so here is the complete list of what this add-on requests and the specific reason for each. No analytics, no ad networks, no data sent anywhere except the shortening service you chose.

API permissions

Permission	Why it's needed
activeTab	Read the URL of the tab you're on when you invoke the add-on. No always-on access to your browsing.
tabs	Read a tab's URL for the right-click page/link actions, and open a new tab for "Send to TinyURL.com".
clipboardRead	Powers "Create a TinyURL (from Clipboard)" by reading the URL you've already copied.
clipboardWrite	Copy the finished short link to your clipboard so it's ready to paste.
storage	Remember your settings (service choice, 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.

Website access (host permissions)

Host	Why it's needed
tinyurl.com	Call TinyURL's free, anonymous shortening endpoint.
api.tinyurl.com	Call TinyURL's authenticated API — used only when you supply an API key.
is.gd	Call the is.gd shortening endpoint — used only when you pick is.gd as your service.

Data collection

Firefox asks every add-on to state up front what kinds of personal data it handles, and shows that on the install screen. This one declares exactly one category — Browsing activity — so here's plainly what that is and why it's unavoidable.

Declared	What it actually means
browsingActivity	Firefox defines this as "information about the websites users visit, such as specific URLs." When you shorten a link, the address of that page is sent to the shortening service you picked — TinyURL or is.gd. That one URL is the entirety of what's covered here.

There's no way around this one: a short link works because the service's server remembers where it points. Handing them the long URL is the feature. Nothing can be shortened without leaving your computer, so the declaration is marked required rather than optional — it isn't a side feature you could switch off and still have a working add-on.

Note on a correction. Versions before 2026.7.23 declared a different category, websiteActivity, which was simply the wrong choice on my part. That category covers interaction tracking — scrolling, clicking, typing — which this add-on has never done. If you saw that on your install screen and thought it sounded excessive, you were right, and it's fixed.

Either way, it's worth being specific about where this actually stops:

It only happens when you ask — a click on the button or the right-click menu. Nothing is sent while you're just browsing.
It's only the one URL you're shortening. Not your history, not the contents of the page, not what you type, not the other tabs you have open.
Nothing comes to me. There's no ByteCrafter server involved, no analytics, no tracking, no account. The URL goes to TinyURL or is.gd and nowhere else.
Nothing is kept. The add-on doesn't build a history or a log — the URL is sent, the short link comes back on your clipboard, and that's the end of it.
If you add your own TinyURL API key, links are created in your own TinyURL account instead — the URL still goes to TinyURL, just attached to you on purpose so you get your dashboard and click stats.

Once the URL reaches TinyURL or is.gd, their privacy policy governs what they do with it — same as if you'd pasted it into their website by hand. See the privacy page for the full detail.

One click. One tiny link.