About
Modern applications like Slack, Obsidian, Zoom, Notion, and Figma use custom URL schemes for deep linking — URIs like slack://channel or obsidian://open?vault=wiki that open specific views inside desktop and mobile apps.
The problem: these links break the moment you paste them into a web page, a wiki, an email, or a chat message on a different platform. Browsers don’t know how to handle them, firewalls strip them, and Markdown renderers refuse to turn them into clickable links. Shortlink fixes this by converting any custom scheme URL into a standard HTTPS link that works everywhere.
Why
Custom scheme URLs break in almost every cross-app context. Shortlink exists because these workflows are common and currently painful:
- Documentation teams embedding
slack://channel links inside Notion wikis or Confluence pages, only to find they render as plain text. - Obsidian users sharing
obsidian://vault links in team chats where the protocol is stripped or blocked by IT policy. - Zoom meeting links using
zoommtg://pasted into project management tools like Linear, Jira, or Asana that refuse to parse non-HTTP schemes. - Any cross-app workflow where a deep link needs to survive being pasted into a medium that only understands HTTPS.
How
- 1. Paste your custom scheme URL
- 2. Choose auto-redirect or manual mode
- 3. Copy the universal link
Under the hood, Shortlink uses stateless LZ-based compression with dictionary substitution to encode your original URL directly into the HTTPS link path. There is no database, no server storage, and no lookup table. The entire payload lives in the URL itself, decoded and redirected fully client-side. This means links never expire, never hit a rate limit, and never depend on a third-party service staying online.
Use Cases
- Internal documentation — Embed deep links in Notion, Confluence, or Google Docs without them breaking.
- Knowledge management — Share Obsidian and Roam Research vault links with teammates who use different tools.
- Team communication — Slack deep links and Zoom meeting links that survive being pasted into any chat or email client.
- Developer workflows — Custom protocol handlers, IDE deep links, and local dev-server URLs wrapped in a shareable HTTPS link.
Privacy
Shortlink is fully stateless. There is no database, no server-side storage, and no analytics tracking on generated links. Your original URL is encoded directly into the link itself using client-side compression — the server never sees, logs, or stores the target address.
No cookies, no telemetry, no user accounts. The entire codebase is open source, so you can verify every claim by reading the code yourself.
Stack
Next.js 15 / React 19 / Tailwind CSS / Vercel