Amzn Link Shortener

This Windows app shortens product links from Amazon to a shorter URL ready to be shared with others by any messenger, email or whatever.

Requirements

This app was made with C# for Microsoft´s .NET Core 3.1. You may have to download and install the desktop runtime for your operating system: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/3.1/runtime

It was tested under Windows 10 (32 and 64 bit) and Windows 11 (64 bit).

Installation

Download the zip file for your platform from Releases, extract it and create a shortcut to AmznLinkShortener.exe in your start menu or create a desktop icon.

Alternatively, you can download the Setup executable programm, which includes both platforms as well as a check for the required .NET Core runtime, which will be downloaded and installed during the setup process if not detected.

Usage

Start the app, copy a link from an Amazon product page, paste it to Amzn Link Shortener and hit RETURN or click the button:

The shortened link will automatically be copied to the clipboard and will overwrite the former content. Use it by pasting it wherever you like.

Toggles

If the toggle Amzn Smile is activated, the app will shorten Amazon links and lead them to Amazon´s Smile program. Defaults to Off.
If Use Bitly is activated, the links created are even shorter, like https://amzn.to/3AlOcx7. Defaults to Off.

Bitly shortening requires the usage of a personal API key to use this service. The binary release of Amzn Link Shortener uses the author´s personal API key, which results in the fact, that all URL transformations and clicks are listed in the author´s API console. So it´s highly recommended to create an own free Bitly account, get a personal API token, copy the file Apikey_sample.cs to_Apikey.cs, insert the private token there and build the project from source using Visual Studio.

If Use Bitly is deactivated, no data will be sent to anywhere, all operations are running on your local machine.

Technical Information

Amzn Link Shortener searches the clipboard text for two regular expressions. If the clipboard contains https\:\/\/[a-z]+\.amazon\.[a-z]{2,3} and a unique product identification string (matching B[A-Z0-9]{9}), it will construct the short URL from https:// plus the host name from the original URL (amazon.com, amazon.uk, ...) plus /dp/ plus the product identification from the second RegEx.

License

This app is licensed under GPL v3, see License.txt