Reviews for CleanLinks
CleanLinks by Cimbali
Response by Cimbali
Developer response
posted 4 years agoAs explained in its description, the extension blocks all links that contain hidden URLs inside them. You can then whitelist manually which use cases seem reasonable to you from the add-on’s popup menu.
35 reviews
- Rated 5 out of 5by Сырное, a day ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by jawz101, 7 months agoAfter a decade of this add-onb it praise because it is very powerful, I have decided to drop it back down to how I really feel. I hate it. I know it is powerful but I've never understood how to use its rule engine nor understand the concepts.
It is powerful and does something but it's not quite clear. I think it can use several techniques to control what urls do but none of them make sense and I don't know who does know. The UI speaks volumes about its unintuitive.purpose
I wish it at least did not do what other, more popular add-ons do so I can see what value it offers over other add-ons. Otherwise, I don't see it getting any tractionDeveloper response
posted 7 months agoSorry to see you go jawz and thanks for all the feedback you’ve given over the years.
The thing this add-on does and others don’t is simply auto-detect embedded URLs. This also causes many breakages and means the ruleset has to be whitelisting instead of when & how to clean links…
I’m sure the UI and many other things can be improved, but I have limited time on my hands, Also any suggestions on improvements of the UI or anything else are always welcome. - Rated 5 out of 5by AvHmT, 8 months agoI know this plugin from the FF28 period, it has been improved since then, the interface is perfectly scalable, it works flawlessly. Awesome work, thank you very so much.
- Rated 3 out of 5by Minneyar, 10 months agoI really like the concept of this add-on, and when it works it's great, but it breaks so many web sites. Common things like clicking on links in Tweetdeck or logging in to PayPal simply don't work unless you open up the add-on's settings and start manually whitelisting sites, and the add-on's interface is unintuitive enough to me that I feel like I'm solving a puzzle every time I use it.
- Rated 4 out of 5by Quinn, 3 years agoOverall, the best link-cleaning addon by far. The only issue I have had is with Amazon, which can be fixed (with slightly reduced functionality) by unchecking "Match subdomains" in the rule for Amazon.
- Rated 5 out of 5by crump el, 3 years agogenerally great experience.. but BREAKS shopping on amazon: multi item selectors arent actually selecting preventing adding to cart. problems with any item requiring user choices. items without choices can add to cart
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 15905022, 4 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Max, 4 years agoGood work! Please add the following rule to your default list, it will help to watch facebook photos on mobile devices normally:
domain: m.facebook.com
path: /photo*
whitelist: fbid refid - Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 13948547, 4 years agoSince two days Clean Links started to request new rights which are not listed here. "Download" and "access to all Tabs" . I read your answer to #79 on github but sorry, I'm not completely convinced.
To get the rights for "Download" is, for instance, the first thing Emotet tries to get.
Having no time to check the code right now, I'll put Clean Links on Quarantine for the next month.
Thanks for your fast answer. But further questions arise:
1. If 'access to all tabs' was needed in the past, why does CleanLinks newly requests this right?
2. https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/clean-links-webext/ only mentions two access rights:
- Auf Ihre Daten für diverse Websites zugreifen
- Zwischenablage ändern
in English:
- Access your data for all websites
- Input data to the clipboard
I'd interpret 'Access your data for all websites' differently than 'access to all tabs'. But that may be because I'm not a mother-tongue.
Anyway, if it was there in the past, why would CleanLinks request it again?Developer response
posted 4 years agoPlease read that issue fully, or have a look at the latest version (4.0.2), which DOES NOT REQUIRE « Download » permissions. « access to all Tabs » was always needed, CleanLinks can’t work otherwise.
On your further questions:
- I don’t control which permissions are show by AMO and how they are worded. The full list of permissions required by CleanLinks are in the manifest.json file and explained here: https://github.com/Cimbali/CleanLinks/#why-are-the-requested-permissions-required
- I don’t know why you would trust an add-on that has access to data for all websites (thus could read all your login/passwords!) but not one that has access to the download list. In any case, check the source code before installing/upgrading (and also before rating the add-on…) if you’re unsure!
Just download the add-on, unzip it, and look inside. CleanLinks does not minify/uglify code so you can look at it. Not only can you see what the add-on does, but you can also compare the permissions from the different versions that way, and see that they are the same (if not less) for v4 than for v3.x. - Rated 2 out of 5by Diod, 4 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Doug, 4 years agoAfter just a little testing, this is the best link cleaner I've tried.
- Rated 1 out of 5by peterfnet, 4 years agoBreaks sites like fakespot.com. As soon as I disable it, site works again.
Developer response
posted 4 years agoAs explained in its description, the extension blocks all links that contain hidden URLs inside them. You can then whitelist manually which use cases seem reasonable to you from the add-on’s popup menu. - Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 14043159, 4 years agoAndroid version doesn't work for my Android Firefox.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 15109409, 4 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by AbdAbd10, 5 years ago
- Rated 2 out of 5by Firefox user 14773836, 5 years agoit makes control click open link in current tab instead of a new tab
Developer response
posted 5 years agoHi @user 14773836, and thanks for your feedback. Currently control click works fine for me. If you could come over to https://github.com/Cimbali/CleanLinks/issues/ to report your setup (OS, Firefox version, etc.) and an example of a link on which this happens, then I could have a look at fixing it for you too! - Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 14702040, 5 years agoBroke images loading in Gmail emails and Hangouts. Took me a long time to finally figure out it was this extension.
Developer response
posted 5 years agoHi @user14702040, sometimes you can be tracked by images, and when that is automatically detected the add-on blocks them.
Fortunately you can easily whitelist per domain by clicking the add-on icon, selecting the offending link, and click "Whitelist Selection."
You can also choose to have the application only clean links that you clean, not other resources loaded, by unticking "Clean outgoing HTTP Requests" in the add-on preferences. - Rated 1 out of 5by Black🏴☠️Sails, 5 years ago
- Rated 3 out of 5by peekaa, 5 years agoCould it work even with facebook events, to remove all the stuff after the events/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx? Thank you.
- Rated 3 out of 5by jupiter2, 5 years agoUpdate: Thanks for the response. Really like the fact that the project is active. Will remove an alternate cleaner I started to use (it just does google cleanups) and will reinstall this. Will fully test for a couple of days and provide better feedback, if any (on github).
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Cleaned links on google w/o issue.
Massive failure on RSS reader (The Old Reader): "414 Request-URI Too Large". When I copied the resulting url, it was the original URL repeating itself, ad-infinitum. It happened when accessing theregister.co.uk/2019/01/26/apples_swift_patents/ but worked fine on other links.
This review based on extension version 3.2.1 (Oct 18, 2018).Developer response
posted 5 years agoHi and thanks for using Clean Links! When encountering a bug, you can report it on https://github.com/Cimbali/CleanLinks/issues with the original link that loads incorrectly, so that I can find out what went wrong and fix it.
The bug causing "Request URI Too Large" has been fixed in version 3.2.4 - Rated 5 out of 5by F.Z., 5 years agoThis is a great handy add-on! Could you have an option to let user convert obfuscated link in Location bar only?
Developer response
posted 5 years agoHi, I'm not sure what you mean. We un-obfuscate links when they are clicked and when they are loaded, but none of those are really aware of the location bar. If you open an issue on https://github.com/Cimbali/CleanLinks/issues we can discuss it and I'll look into it. - Rated 3 out of 5by Nigirimeshi, 5 years agoI needed to add 'mail.google.com' into 'Skip Domais' in order to connect with the Gmail.
I wasted time.Developer response
posted 5 years agoHi and thanks for using Clean Links! As it stands there is a bit of a learning curve with Clean Links where everyone builds up their whitelist. I'm looking to get a centralized set of rules while still allowing customization, which isn't easy -- but I'm working on it. - Rated 5 out of 5by fushigi-kun, 5 years agoI missed Clean Links. It is the best add-on in its class out of all the ones I have tried.
Recommendable.