Snippet: Quickly Shorten Links from Address Bar

With so many blogs and websites floating around on my address bar everyday, I find myself sending more and more “shortened” URLs to my friends. Generally the process is a bit of a pain as I have to first I have to copy the URL from the address bar, then I need to go to a URL shortening website (such as bit.ly), then I need to paste the URL into the input field and finally I receive a shortened URL.

To cut down on all these steps, all you have to do is type in “bit.ly/” or “j.mp/” before the URL in the address bar.

So, for example if the URL is “http://twitter.com” you would type in “bit.ly/http://twitter.com” or “j.mp/http://twitter.com”.

chrome - address_bar

Then hit the Enter key.

Depending on whether you used “bit.ly/” or “j.mp/” you will be taken to the respective page from where you can copy the shortened URL.

bit.ly - shortened
j.mp - shortened

That’s it! You are now free to share the shortened URL.

Snippet is a short tip/trick or just a quick fix for a certain issue that we discover from time to time. Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed for more up to date tutorials/tips/tricks.

Subscribe to our newsletter!

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

Abhiroop Basu Avatar

Read next

Suzanne Simard sealed paper birch and Douglas fir seedlings inside plastic bags, fed them carbon-14 and carbon-13 dioxide, and nine days later found carbon had crossed between species through fungal threads in the British Columbia soil beneath her boots
A species of jellyfish called Turritopsis dohrnii can revert its adult cells back to a juvenile polyp stage when injured or starving, effectively restarting its life cycle, and biologists have so far failed to identify any natural limit to how many times it can do this.
A Japanese man named Jiroemon Kimura, who lived to 116, was born in 1897 when Queen Victoria still ruled and died in 2013, meaning a single human life personally overlapped with the invention of the airplane, the atomic bomb, the internet, and Instagram
The Hollywood sign originally read HOLLYWOODLAND when it was built in 1923 as a real estate advertisement for a housing development, and it was only meant to stand for 18 months, but nobody ever got around to taking it down and the city eventually adopted it as a landmark
Almost all of the world’s internet traffic does not travel by satellite but through fibre-optic cables lying on the ocean floor, a hidden web of wires crossing the deepest parts of the sea to connect the continents.
People who flip their phone face down on every table aren’t being secretive. They figured out that staying interruptible meant handing their time to whoever rang first
Twitch vs. Facebook Gaming vs. YouTube Gaming: What’s the Best Live Game Streaming Platform?
Chrome Extensions Ownership Transfer is a Direct Threat to You: How to Stay Safe