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Reviews for CleanLinks

CleanLinks by Cimbali

3.7 Stars out of 5
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7 reviews
  • by jawz101, 7 months ago
    After 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 traction

    Developer response

    posted 7 months ago
    Sorry 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.
  • by Firefox user 13948547, 4 years ago
    Since 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 ago
    Please 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.
  • by peterfnet, 4 years ago
    Breaks sites like fakespot.com. As soon as I disable it, site works again.

    Developer response

    posted 4 years ago
    As 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.
  • by Firefox user 14043159, 4 years ago
    Android version doesn't work for my Android Firefox.
  • by Firefox user 14702040, 5 years ago
    Broke 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 ago
    Hi @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.
  • by Black🏴‍☠️Sails, 5 years ago
  • by Firefox user 12655166, 5 years ago
    Can't login to google/gmail with this addon enabled, no matter wot?
    In setting I added also "google.com" to be excepted, but no luck...

    Developer response

    posted 5 years ago
    Hi, if you open the recently cleaned links popup (using the addon button), you'll see recently cleaned links and you can whitelist the correct one easily (probably accounts.google.com or something like that).

    If that doesn't work, would you care to post a bug report on https://github.com/Cimbali/CleanLinks/issues ? I'd be happy to figure out what goes wrong once I know which version you use, which browser, etc.