A URL cleaner removes the tracking parameters that marketing tools, ad networks and share buttons add to links, and hands back a shorter address that opens the same page. This free URL cleaner strips utm_ tags, fbclid, gclid, msclkid, YouTube and Spotify si codes, Amazon /ref= segments and more than 250 other known trackers, and it shows you each parameter it took out. It also does something most cleaners don’t: drop a bookmarks.html file and it cleans every bookmark URL at once, keeping your folders and titles intact.
Everything happens in your browser tab. Nothing you paste and no file you drop leaves your device.
What is a URL cleaner, and what does it remove?
A URL cleaner is a tool that deletes the parts of a web address used for tracking and keeps the parts that tell the server which page to send. You get the same page from a shorter, more private link.
A web address has a fixed structure, defined in RFC 3986: scheme (https), host (www.example.com), path (/blog/post), an optional query string after ?, and an optional fragment after #. The query string is a list of name=value pairs joined by &. Browsers expose it through the URLSearchParams interface. Some pairs are functional, like ?q=chrome+bookmarks on a search page or ?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ on YouTube. Others exist only so a company can count or identify the click.
This tool removes four kinds of clutter:
| Kind | Examples | Removed by default? |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign tags | utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, mc_cid, pk_campaign, mtm_source |
Yes |
| Click and user identifiers | fbclid, gclid, gbraid, wbraid, msclkid, ttclid, twclid, li_fat_id, yclid, mc_eid, _hsenc |
Yes |
| Share-button codes | YouTube si and pp, Spotify si, Instagram igsh, X s and t, Reddit share_id, TikTok is_from_webapp |
Yes, only on those sites |
| Redirect wrappers | google.com/url?q=, l.facebook.com/l.php?u=, Outlook Safe Links, youtube.com/redirect |
Yes (can be turned off) |
| Affiliate IDs | Amazon tag, linkCode, ascsubtag, Awin awc, CJ cjevent |
No, opt in |
| Generic referral words | ref, source, src, via, cid, from |
No, Aggressive mode only |
Site-specific rules matter. The parameter t is tracking on x.com but is the start time on YouTube, so the tool removes it only on X and Twitter. si is removed on YouTube and Spotify, where it is a share identifier, and left alone elsewhere. That is the difference between a careful cleaner and a regex that deletes everything after the question mark.
What are tracking parameters in a URL?
Tracking parameters are query string pairs that record where a click came from or who made it, without changing the page. There are two families: campaign tags that describe the source, and click identifiers that are unique per click.
UTM parameters explained
UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module. Urchin was a web analytics company Google acquired in 2005, and its tagging scheme became the standard way to label campaign links in Google Analytics and nearly every other analytics product (background on Wikipedia). Google documents the current set in its help page on collecting campaign data with custom URLs.
| Parameter | What it records | Typical values |
|---|---|---|
utm_source |
Who sent the visit | newsletter, google, facebook |
utm_medium |
The channel | email, cpc, social, referral |
utm_campaign |
The specific promotion | spring_sale, launch_week |
utm_term |
Paid search keyword | bookmark manager |
utm_content |
Which link or ad variant | header_button, video_ad_b |
utm_id |
Campaign ID (Google Analytics 4) | abc123 |
utm_source_platform, utm_creative_format, utm_marketing_tactic |
Extra GA4 dimensions | varies |
The cleaner treats anything that starts with utm_ as a tag, so misspelled or custom variants like utm_reader or UTM_Source are caught too.
Click identifiers: fbclid, gclid, msclkid and friends
Click identifiers are more personal than UTM tags. A UTM tag says “this came from the spring newsletter”, which is the same for thousands of readers. A click ID is a unique string generated for your click, which the ad platform can join to its own records about you.
fbclid: Facebook Click Identifier, added by Meta to outbound links on Facebook and Instagram.gclid,gbraid,wbraid: Google Ads auto-tagging.gbraidandwbraidare used for iOS app and web-to-app measurement.gad_source,gad_campaignid: newer Google Ads parameters that appear alongside or instead ofgclid.msclkid: Microsoft Advertising (Bing ads) auto-tagging.ttclid(TikTok),twclid(X),li_fat_id(LinkedIn),yclid(Yandex),epik(Pinterest).mc_eid: Mailchimp’s per-subscriber email ID._hsencand_hsmi: HubSpot email tracking.mkt_tok: Marketo.
An fbclid remover or gclid remover is really the same job as a UTM remover: delete the pair, keep the page.
Why remove tracking parameters from URLs you save or share?
You remove tracking parameters from URLs to make links shorter, more private and more accurate. The page doesn’t change, but what the link reveals does.
Privacy. A click ID can connect your visit to an ad profile. When you forward a link that still has your fbclid or mc_eid, the recipient’s click can be attributed back to you, and some email platforms can tie a subscriber ID to a specific inbox. Stripping these is a small, cheap privacy win.
Clean sharing. A 40-character link is easier to read, paste into a chat and trust than a 400-character one full of encoded junk. People are more likely to click a link they can read.
Honest analytics for the site you share. If you paste a link that still says utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email into a forum, every visitor from that forum gets counted as newsletter traffic. Cleaning the link lets the site see the real source.
Better bookmarks. Bookmarks saved from newsletters, social feeds and search ads carry old campaign tags forever. The same article saved twice with different utm_campaign values looks like two different bookmarks, which hides duplicates. A clean URL is also easier to search and recognise later. If your library is full of these, clean the whole file with the Bookmarks file tab, then run the duplicate bookmark finder to catch copies that only differed by their tracking tags.
How do I remove UTM parameters from many links at once?
To remove UTM parameters from many links, paste them into the List tab, one per line, and press Clean list. You get a cleaned list you can copy or download, plus a table showing what came off each link.
The list mode is built for real-world pastes:
- Blank lines are skipped. Lines that aren’t web addresses are kept unchanged and flagged, so the output lines up with your input.
- Bare domains such as
www.example.com/post?utm_source=rssgethttps://added. - The Download CSV report button gives you three columns: original URL, clean URL and the removed parameters. That is handy for SEO audits, spreadsheet cleanup or documenting what was changed.
- Up to 50,000 lines per run; the table shows 500 rows at a time with a Show more button so the page stays responsive.
If your list is really a set of links you want to turn into bookmarks, clean it here first and then paste the output into the URL list to bookmarks converter.
How do I clean every URL in my bookmarks for free?
To clean every bookmark URL for free, export your bookmarks to an HTML file, drop it on the Bookmarks file tab, download the clean copy and import it back. The whole round trip takes a couple of minutes.
- Export. In Chrome, open the Bookmark Manager (Ctrl+Shift+O on Windows, Linux and ChromeOS; Cmd+Option+B on Mac), click the three-dot menu at the top right and choose Export bookmarks. Our guide to exporting Chrome bookmarks walks through every platform step by step. Edge, Firefox and Safari all have their own export to the same bookmarks.html format.
- Clean. Drop the file on the tool. It also accepts Chrome’s raw
Bookmarksprofile file and Firefox’s.jsonbackup. You’ll see how many bookmarks were read, how many URLs changed, the most common parameters found and a table of every change. - Download. Click Download clean bookmarks.html. Titles, folder structure, bookmarks bar placement and date added are preserved; only URLs change. Keep the CSV of changes if you want a record.
- Import. In Chrome’s Bookmark Manager choose three-dot menu → Import bookmarks, then pick the clean file. Chrome puts imported bookmarks in a new folder rather than replacing what you have.
Replacing the old bookmarks safely
Import never overwrites, so after step 4 you have both the old and the clean set. You can either keep the clean folder and delete the originals by hand, or move the clean folders into place and delete the old ones. Before deleting anything, keep your original export file somewhere safe: it is your backup. If you use Chrome sync, deletions sync to your other devices too, so check the clean folder looks right first.
When should you not strip URL parameters?
You should not strip URL parameters that the page needs to work, that carry your login, or that pay someone you want to support. This tool’s defaults are designed to leave these alone, but it helps to know which is which.
| Parameter type | Examples | Why keep it |
|---|---|---|
| Content selectors | q, v, id, p, page, list, t on YouTube |
They pick the search, video, product, page or timestamp |
| Product options | Amazon th, psc, smid; store color, size, variant |
They choose the variant or seller |
| Signed or expiring links | token, sig, Signature, X-Amz-Signature, Expires, key |
Removing them breaks download and share links |
| Login and reset links | code, state, reset_token, otp |
One-time secrets; don’t share these links at all |
| Affiliate IDs | Amazon tag, linkCode, Awin awc |
They pay a creator you may want to support |
| Coupons | coupon, promo, discount |
They apply a discount |
This tool never removes signing, login, coupon or content parameters. Affiliate IDs stay unless you turn on Remove affiliate IDs, and generic words such as ref and source stay unless you turn on Aggressive, because some sites use them for real features (a ref can pick a git branch on GitHub, for example).
A separate warning about private links: if a URL contains a token that grants access, such as a password reset link, a shared document with a secret key or a signed download, cleaning it doesn’t make it safe to share. The token is the part that matters, and the cleaner deliberately keeps it.
Which browsers remove tracking parameters automatically?
Firefox, Brave and Safari remove some tracking parameters on their own; Chrome and Edge do not, as of September 2026. Even the browsers that do it only remove a known list, and mostly at the moment you open a link, not in links you copy or bookmarks you already saved.
| Browser | Built-in stripping | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Firefox | Query Parameter Stripping with Enhanced Tracking Protection set to Strict (Settings → Privacy & Security); also Copy Link Without Site Tracking in the right-click menu | A list of known click IDs on navigation; the copy option cleans links you share |
| Brave | On by default | Known click IDs such as fbclid, gclid, msclkid, mc_eid |
| Safari (Mac, iPhone, iPad) | Link Tracking Protection in Private Browsing, and in links opened from Mail and Messages; optional for all browsing under Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection | Known user-identifying click IDs; Apple leaves generic utm_ tags alone |
| Chrome | None | Nothing |
| Microsoft Edge | None | Nothing |
Firefox’s approach is documented in the Query Parameter Stripping source docs and Mozilla’s help page on Enhanced Tracking Protection. Brave describes its version in its query stripping privacy update.
Two gaps remain even in the best case. First, these features mostly target click IDs, so UTM tags usually survive. Second, they act on the link you are opening now. They don’t touch the thousands of URLs already sitting in your bookmarks, which is exactly what the Bookmarks file mode of this URL cleaner is for.
How does this URL cleaner compare with other ways to clean URLs?
This tool is best for occasional links, long lists and whole bookmark files without installing anything. Extensions are better if you want every link cleaned automatically as you browse. Here is an honest comparison.
- Bookmend URL cleaner (this page): free, no install, works in any browser on any device, cleans one link, a list or a full bookmarks.html, and shows each removed parameter. It does not clean links automatically while you browse and cannot follow short links.
- Browser built-ins (Firefox Strict mode, Brave, Safari Private Browsing): automatic and invisible, but limited to a fixed list, mostly click IDs, and they don’t touch saved bookmarks or links you paste into documents.
- Firefox Copy Link Without Site Tracking: great for sharing from Firefox, one link at a time, Firefox only.
- Extensions such as ClearURLs, or uBlock Origin’s
removeparamfilters: clean links automatically on every page load and are the right choice if you want set-and-forget protection. Check any extension is still maintained and works with Chrome’s Manifest V3 before you rely on it, and remember an extension that rewrites URLs can see every page you visit. - Manual editing: delete everything after the
?. Fast for one link, but it breaks YouTube timestamps, search queries and product variants, and it misses Amazon/ref=segments and redirect wrappers. - Other online cleaners: many handle a single link well; few handle a list, and very few can clean a bookmarks file while keeping its folders.
Short links are a separate problem. A bit.ly or t.co link hides its destination until a server answers, and a cleaner that never touches the network cannot see it. Expand it first with the URL expander, which shows every redirect hop, then paste the final address here.
How does the tool decide what to remove?
The tool reads each link locally and applies rules in a fixed order: unwrap redirect wrappers, remove path tracking, then remove query and fragment parameters that match known lists. Everything else is kept exactly as written.
1. Unwrap. If the link is a wrapper such as https://www.google.com/url?q=https://example.com/..., l.facebook.com/l.php?u=, l.instagram.com, youtube.com/redirect, LinkedIn’s redir/redirect, Outlook Safe Links (*.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=), Proofpoint URL Defense v3, Slack, Steam or DuckDuckGo redirects, it takes out the real destination. It repeats this up to four times, because a Safe Link can wrap a Google redirect that wraps the real page. Google AMP links (google.com/amp/s/...) are turned back into the publisher’s address.
2. Path tracking. On Amazon domains, the /ref=... segment in the path is internal click tracking and is removed. In Aggressive mode, long Amazon product URLs are shortened to the canonical /dp/ASIN form.
3. Parameters. Each query pair is matched, case-insensitively, against:
- a global list of tracking names (
fbclid,gclid,msclkid,mc_eid,_hsenc,igshidand many more), - prefixes that are always tracking (
utm_,hsa_,pk_,mtm_,matomo_,piwik_), - site-specific lists for Amazon, YouTube, Spotify, X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, Google Search, Bing, Medium, Substack, AliExpress, eBay, Etsy and The New York Times,
- the affiliate list and the aggressive list, only when those options are on.
4. Fragment. If the part after # is written like a query (#utm_source=twitter), tracking pairs there are removed too. Normal anchors such as #section-2 and text fragments such as #:~:text= are kept.
Kept parameters are not re-encoded. A lot of simple cleaners rebuild the query string, which quietly turns %20 into + or reorders parameters, and occasionally breaks a link. This tool splices out only the removed pairs, so ?q=caf%C3%A9%20au%20lait comes out exactly as it went in.
Troubleshooting: common problems when cleaning URLs
Most problems come from links that aren’t really web addresses, from short links, or from sites that use parameters in unusual ways. Here is how to fix each one.
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| “That doesn’t look like a web address yet” | Partial paste, or text without a domain | Paste the full link including https://; a bare www.example.com/... also works |
| “Isn’t an http or https address” | javascript:, chrome://, file:// or mailto: link |
Nothing to clean; these have no tracking parameters |
| Cleaned link opens a different or generic page | The site used a parameter the Aggressive option removed | Turn Aggressive off, or add the removed parameter back from the list shown |
| Short link (bit.ly, t.co, lnkd.in) unchanged | The destination is hidden behind a server redirect | Use the URL expander, then clean the final URL |
| Amazon link lost the creator’s tag | Remove affiliate IDs was on | Turn it off to keep tag= |
| Bookmarks file rejected | Wrong file (a .zip, a history database, or a non-export page) | Export again from the Bookmark Manager and drop the .html file |
| “No bookmarks in it” | Exported an empty profile, or a Firefox JSON with only folders | Check the profile; open the file in a text editor and look for HREF= |
| Imported bookmarks appear twice | Chrome import adds a folder rather than replacing | Delete the old copies after checking the imported folder |
| Some tracking still visible | An uncommon parameter the lists don’t know | Turn on Aggressive, or remove it by hand; tracking names change often |
No rule list is complete. Ad platforms introduce new parameters every year, and plenty of sites invent their own. The cleaner errs on the side of keeping a parameter it doesn’t recognise, because a link with one leftover tag still works, while a link with a missing product ID doesn’t.
Is this free URL cleaner private?
Yes. The tool is a static page: once it loads, all the cleaning runs as JavaScript in your tab, with no server calls, no analytics on what you paste and no upload of your bookmarks file.
You can test that claim. Load the page, disconnect from the internet, and clean a link or a bookmarks file. It still works, because there is nothing to send. The downloads are generated in the browser from memory too.
That applies to this free tool only. Bookmend, the bookmark manager, works differently: your library lives in your Bookmend account, Bookmend’s servers fetch the pages you save so they can be read, and the AI features send page text to model providers. There are no ads and no selling of data. If you want your cleaned links to stay purely on your machine, keep the downloaded file and import it into your browser instead.
Keep bookmarks clean after this
Cleaning URLs fixes one kind of clutter. The other kind is links that no longer work at all: pages that return 404, domains that expired and became parking pages, and articles that quietly redirect to a homepage.
Bookmend is an AI-native bookmark manager for Chrome and the web, and the clean bookmarks.html this tool produces is exactly the kind of file it imports (up to 20,000 bookmarks per import, with your folders). Once your links are in, Bookmend reads each saved page, writes a two-to-four-sentence summary and suggests tags, a note and an existing collection, which you can accept, edit or ignore. You can then ask your library questions in plain language and get answers drawn from your saved pages, with numbered citations back to the bookmarks. On Premium, which is free for new accounts during early access, link health checks saved links in the background at most once a day, flags dead ones and offers the Wayback Machine snapshot closest to when the page last worked. The free plan covers saving, collections, tags, search and import and export. It works in Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc and Opera, plus a web app. See the full feature list and how it works.
If you just want a quick look at the state of your library first, the free bookmark rot check shows your bookmark count, duplicates and oldest saves in a few seconds, and the bookmark dead link checker tests the links in an exported file.
Written by Nafiul Hasan, Founder, Bookmend. Last updated.