this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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Does anyone know if a Linux program that is similar to URLCheck?

For URLCheck, you can set it as your default browser on Android, and when you click a link, it'll open up there first. It can go through all of the redirects for you, and lets you edit the URL before opening it in another web browser. Useful for removing tracking referrals as well if the user wants.

For Linux, I'd be happy with a program that I can paste the URL into to do all of this, it doesn't have to have the ability to be a default web browser. I'd prefer to not have to use Waydroid for URLCheck.

URL when clicking on an email

URL after it goes through the redirects

URL after clicking the X for parameters to clean it up

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Nothing that I’m aware of that’s standalone, but from a brief review of the functionality it seems like something that would be better as a browser extension. Which would be cool and I would probably install.

[–] Salix 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

but from a brief review of the functionality it seems like something that would be better as a browser extension.

I actually didn't think about that. That would be amazing as a browser extension.

Hopefully I'll find one or someone will make one someday in the future! It's very useful on Android.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Salix 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I actually do already have this installed, but most of the time, it seems to not remove the tracking parameters. Maybe it can't tell due to some formats.

For example this link doesn't remove stuff after the ?: https://www.downpour.com/?vgo_ee=yVKPXuXTb3pOVC1%2BObLYIKCuW0CuYLqMqodDjvlwA9PZWjoKQA%3D%3D%3Ah1fuIWzG7PGjYqA%2FUh4bqIjx6MMD9PJM

Though sometimes you don't want it to auto remove stuff after the ? because you need that query to pull up stuff such as: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=query+string&t=h_&ia=web

You need the ?q=query+string&t=h_&ia=web for that search to work.

The thing with URLCheck is that you can choose which parameters to remove as well, which is really useful. Also it resolves redirects so that you know where the link will take you.