TrackerZapper Mac app silently removes tracking parameters from links you copy | Hacker News Reader

TrackerZapper Mac app silently removes tracking parameters from links you copy

github.com

152 pointsdlackty45 comments

It's unusual to see the word "silently" used as a selling point these days. In headlines, it's almost always used in the context of some bad behavior and as such has taken on negative connotations for me. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=silently

I plugged the title of this post into a few online sentiment analysis tools and they both rated it as having negative sentiment. If the author sees this, you might want to swap it out for another word like "automatically" in the readme.

"Transparently" is a conceptually similar word that had positive connotations

Or in this case ”automatically”.

>If the author sees this, you might want to swap it out for another word like "automatically" in the readme.

On the other hand, giving up on using "silently" in a positive light does nothing to push back against its negative connotation and cedes the word to the negative Nancys. The author doesn't appear to be trying to make a living from this and I appreciate their using language they want to use whether or not it's approved by the marketing department.

I wasn't happy with the use of "silently" but I kept forgetting to remove it. It's now been updated. Thanks for the feedback.

Nice app! Have to say it’s pretty clean.

For those who may be looking at similar functionality in presxisting software, I bet you could build this with Hammerspoon[0] and their clipboard[1][2] apis too using lua if one was inclined

[0]: https://www.hammerspoon.org/

[1]: https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.pasteboard.html

[2]: https://www.hammerspoon.org/docs/hs.pasteboard.watcher.html

Could also be a PopClip extension: https://pilotmoon.com/popclip/extensions/

The ClearURLs addon [1] also gives you the in-browser option to copy "clean link location," as they call it.

[1] https://github.com/ClearURLs/Addon

I tried this a while ago but had to turn it off because it made too many links stop working, especially URLs in emails. It also breaks some Google Sheets functionality.

There's a request on Github to add a whitelist for sites that break when referral parameters are removed, but the devs haven't replied or commented on the request.

I tried this recently and promptly uninstalled after discovering Google search result links were still hijacked to go through a tracker redirect.

This "TrackerZapper" seems to only address the end of the URL not the beginning, suffix versus prefix, right versus left. Tracking can of course be accomplished by prefixing or "shortening" URLs, too. Thats what Google, Facebook, Twitter, even DuckDuckGo, routinely do. These websites, and many more, are wont to claim that they do prefixing or shortening for the users benefit, e.g., to remove the Referer header, or to screen external URLs for "safety", however there is no enforceable agreement with users where the website agrees it will limit the use of this data to any purpose. These third party websites have freedom to use it however they wish.

URL sanitisation is easy using a local proxy. This way we can have rules that are site-specific. Not every site needs it, but for those that do, we can write specific rules. The proxy also allows us to log HTTP traffic and to limit redirection through a variety of methods, so its easier to discover when attempted redirects are occuring.

Every redirect is an opportunity for data collection, whether its used for that purpose or not. If "data is the new oil" then it contributes to greenhouse gases.

FWIW as a follow-up, this extension does seem to clean google tracker redirects from search results:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remove-google...

What if I want an app that loudly removes tracking parameters?

Submit a PR with more cowbell.

That would be funny that a few clanks of cowbell sound randomly when the Cmd-C buttons are pressed.

I assume this only works on well known tracker formats? I don’t see how a tool like this could distinguish necessary url parameters from tracking parameters unless it is going off a list of known tracking params.

They are hardcoded here https://github.com/rknightuk/TrackerZapper/blob/main/Tracker...

"name" is definitely not a good parameter to remove...

https://github.com/rknightuk/TrackerZapper/pull/8

Pull request has been merged and released as version 1.1.1 https://github.com/rknightuk/TrackerZapper/releases/tag/1.1....

As much as I like TrackerZapper or ClearURLs for pasting links, it sets a precedent of tools that modify clipboards, which is bad for crypto addresses.

Agree. I would love to have a mobile app that did this as an explicit function: “copy url without tracking”

Not sure why you're being downvoted. It's a legitimate concern.

This can also be done with Finicky and some configuration, and doesn’t require anything that observes the pasteboard.

Here’s the section of the config (~/.finicky.js) that sets it up; the actual tracker cleaning is the last item in that list and is based on the above.

https://github.com/halostatue/dotfiles/blob/main/private_dot...

https://github.com/johnste/finicky

Anyone know of windows or linux equivalents?

Shame that this couldn't exist on iOS, where I do the majority of copying and pasting of links.

Thanks, Apple.

Same here. Editing the links on iOS is bloody difficult.

I'm thinking that one way to get something useful along these lines in iOS would be a Shortcut that clears the tracking parameters and puts the result on the clipboard. I think that's possible, and then it's a matter of using the share sheet to get the URL into the Shortcut.

Certainly has a bit more friction than this, but doesn't seem so bad if it could work. This (unfortunately ad-filled) page has an example:

https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/auto-remove-annoying-trac...

Chrome Android copies canonical URL from the share menu. On desktop browser, I use a browser extension (CanonicalCopy) that makes available canonical link. It usually works fine on most websites. A lot of websites don't have canonical meta tag. Others have it misconfigured.

Now that Apple allows Safari extensions (with iOS 15), I wonder if it would be possible to create the functionality.

But honestly most times I copy a link, I’m going to open it in Firefox Focus. Maybe they or Brave could add the feature?

I built a similar Mac app that removes common trackers from clipboard links. It works on your iPhone with Apple's Universal Clipboard.

Copy Cleaner macOS app https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1528299767

Universal Clipboard only works with iCloud, most of which is not e2e encrypted, and is thus not safe to have enabled.

There are apps[0] that do this via the share sheet. Share is basically the same effort as Copy on iOS so that seems pretty good.

In some cases, like AMP pages, simply using the share button in safari to copy it will get you the canonical URL, but I don‘t think that works everywhere.

If you actually use a keyboard with iOS, you could find a shortcut that does this and assign it a global keyboard shortcut via Full Keyboard Access settings.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/de/app/resolver-share-clean-urls/id14...

Does it really need to sit in my menubar?

I've never understood why apps get the final say on what goes in my menubar in macOS. Skype says I need a menubar icon; I say I don't. Why does Skype's opinion trump mine?

Because the Apple software product model isn't built to be customizable by the end user.

I don't understand how you can be surprised at a lack of customization options on an Apple OS. It's literally one of their selling points.

Yes, exactly—Apple decides what's best for me. I know they'll fiddle with my menubar as they please. But it's very much outside their usual mode of operations to let random other apps decide what's best for me.

It would be nice if it were built into the OS, but especially when I had smaller screens on a laptop I found Bartender an invaluable application.

Fwiw there are some apps to hide menu bar icons:

- Open source https://github.com/Mortennn/Dozer

- Freemium https://matthewpalmer.net/vanilla/

- $15 https://www.macbartender.com/

That's what I was thinking. On top of that, if it's only a menubar app, why wouldn't you write it in some platform-agnostic language? I have a similar "toolbar sitter" app I wrote with a couple Rust crates and a free afternoon, and that compiles to Windows/Mac/Linux fine. I guess it's more of a Swift exercise than a full-fledged program.

You're right it was more of a project for me try out some stuff rather than having a plan to release an app for everyone.

Can anyone explain how it works? Do I have to paste the link into the app and it opens Safari for me? A single screenshot of the app in action in their ReadMe could clear this up. I don’t understand why so many GitHub projects have this problem.

I think it just listens to changes in your clipboard and if it detects you having copied a link, it removes all tracking parameters and enters that to your clipboard instead.

It seems to observe the OS pasteboard. Every time you copy a string, it reads the value, removes tracking parameters, and then puts the clean string back into your pasteboard.

So no action required on the user side, it’s all automatic.

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