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.
• 🛡️ Privacy Focused: Automatically strips common tracking urls.
• ⚡ 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 📦

[!NOTE] If you are using Termux or a terminal that doesn't support keyring use keyrings.alt instead. (pip install keyrings.alt)

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)

Supported Services 🌐

[!IMPORTANT]
Privacy & Service Usage: Requests routed through third-party shorteners are subject to each provider's independent privacy and logging practices. Self-hosted options (YOURLS, custom) give you total control over data logging.

Disclaimer: These legal policy links are provided for convenience only and do not constitute legal advice. links may change over time and as a solo developer, I can't guarantee every link stays up to date.

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

"0x0": {
        "serviceurl": "https://0x0.st",
        "method": "POST",
        "multifile": true,
        "url_param": "shorten",
        "json_body": false,
        "params": {}
     },

cshorten shorten https://example.com -s 0x0

"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 (Off by default)

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.