Clishortener

A lightweight, feature-rich CLI tool to shorten links using 12+ services—with zero configuration required.

Key Features

• 🚀 Lightweight & Fast: Works right out of the terminal, all dependencies besides requests are 100% optional.
• 🔌 12+ Services Pre-configured: TinyURL, Bitly, Short.io, CleanURI, and more.
• 🛠️ Custom & Self-Hosted: Full support for custom domains and YOURLS instances.
• 🎨 Colored Output: Optional colorful terminal UI using rich.
• ⚡ Pipeline Friendly: Pass raw output directly to stdout or other scripts using bare/silent flags.
• 🕹 Plug & Play: Start shortening immediately after installation, no setup required.

Requirements 📦

Installation Options 📥

Via PyPI (recommended)

pip install clishortener[rich]

This will also install rich. To install necessary files only, use pip install clishortener

From source via git

git clone https://github.com/Ruizennis/Clishortener
cd Clishortener
pip install .

Installing all optional packages

pip install clishortener[full]
activate-global-python-argcomplete # This will setup argcomplete globally

Quick Start

Shorten your first url ✂️

cshorten shorten https://example.com

Set your preferred service as the default 🔧

# Usage: cshorten service default <servicename>
cshorten service default dagd

List all available services 📜

cshorten service list

Pipe data to create a pipeline 🔗

echo "https://example.com" | cshorten shorten >> links.txt

[!IMPORTANT] The Default Shortening Service Is Tinyurl (No Api Key Is Required)

All Services 🌐

[!WARNING] As of 2026-08-01 file hosting on the public 0x0.st instance is temporarily paused with no ETA for its return, self hosting is recommended. Self-host The Null Pointer (0x0) from The Official Git Repository.

Global Flags

Shortening Flags

Additional Commands >_

Notes & Usage Tips 💡

• Self-Hosted & Custom Domains: Use the full URL and set the --domain flag when using yourls or custom providers.
• API Keys: API keys can be provided via the -k / --key flag for services requiring authentication.
• Service Identifiers: When specifying or setting a default service, always use the service's Identifier (e.g., dagd, tinyurl-auth) rather than its display name or URL.

"httpbin": {
    "serviceurl": "https://httpbin.org/post",
    "method": "POST",
    "auth_header": "apikey",
    "url_param": "destination",
    "params": {
        "destination": ""
    }
}

cshorten shorten https://example.com -s httpbin -k ApiKey

"dagd": {
    "serviceurl": "https://da.gd/s",
    "method": "GET",
    "params": {
        "url": ""
    }
}

"shortio": {
    "serviceurl": "https://api.short.io/links/public",
    "auth_header": "authorization",
    "url_param": "originalURL",
    "method": "POST",
    "json_key": "shortURL",
    "json_body": true,
    "params": {}
}

Planned Features 📌

• Saving api keys with Keyring & automatically loading saved api keys
• Saving links created to a file

Additional Links & Credits 🔗

• PyPI - Clishortener
• Github - Clishortener
• Issues - Clishortener
• The No Color Initiative

Credits to Pyshorteners made by ellisonleao for inspiring this tool

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license, see LICENSE.