Timo Josten, a German developer who stood out for the sharing app Dropshare, has released Shortshare, a utility for shortening URLs or shortening web addresses, a technique used in the Web to shorten long web addresses (URL) in links of a few characters.
Shortshare supports the main URL shortening mechanisms (Bitly, Rebrandly, Shortio, Tinyurl, Kutt, Is.gd, Hive, dsh.re) and also self-hosting solutions such as YOURLS and other solutions with customized APIs. It supports features such as custom URLs or URLs where you can enter keywords), and shows the history of already created shortened URLs.
On the Mac, the (free) app is downloaded from the App Store and shows a simple icon in the menu bar. Just copy an address you want to shorten into memory (e.g. https://www.macitynet.it/10-trucchi-per-macos-12-monterey-che-forse-non-conoscete/) and paste it into the app to automatically obtain a shortened link (in the case of the example: https://dsh.re/6e69e).
From the utility Preferences it is possible to change the service to use, create keyboard shortcuts, enable or disable the notification center. It is also possible to activate an extension for Safari that allows you to add an icon to the browser navigation bar, to always have the URL shortening function available on the fly.
On iPhone or iPad, the Shortshare app offers an Action Extension that can be used with any browser available for iOS. The app offers a handy overview of previously shortened URLs and search functionality. URL history is automatically synced with Shortshare for Mac and iOS device app.
Shortshare for Mac requires macOS 11 or later. Version for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch requires iOS/iPadOS 14 or later. Shortshare 1.1 is free and can be downloaded from the Mac App Store or the App Store.