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Remove tracking information from the current page and automatically copy the URL to your clipboard.

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sanitizeit

Sanitize It

Sanitize It allows you to quickly remove tracking information from the current page and automatically copy the URL to your clipboard with a single click. Available for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari.

How It Works

Click the Sanitize It icon on any page to strip tracking parameters and copy the clean URL to your clipboard. The page stays as-is — you just get a clean link to share.

Want to also refresh the page with the clean URL? Use Shift+Click (Firefox) or the keyboard shortcut.

CleanShot 2024-08-05 at 22 12 19@2x

Keyboard Shortcuts

Sanitize It includes keyboard shortcuts for power users. These work on all supported browsers.

Action macOS Windows / Linux
Sanitize + Copy Option + Shift + X Alt + Shift + X
Sanitize + Copy + Refresh Option + Shift + R Alt + Shift + R

You can customize these shortcuts:

  • Chrome: chrome://extensions/shortcuts
  • Firefox: about:addons → gear icon → Manage Extension Shortcuts
  • Edge: edge://extensions/shortcuts

What Gets Removed

Sanitize It strips the following from URLs:

  • Query parameters — everything after ? (e.g., ?utm_source=..., ?ref=..., ?fbclid=...)
  • Ref paths/ref/... and /ref=... segments in the URL path (common on Amazon)
  • Hash fragments — everything after #

Browser Support

Sanitize It 2.0 is a single codebase that supports both Chrome and Firefox (and Chromium-based browsers like Edge, Brave, etc.).

Feature Chrome / Edge Firefox
Click to sanitize + copy Yes Yes
Shift+Click to refresh No (Chrome limitation) Yes
Keyboard shortcuts Yes Yes
Minimum version Chrome 88+ Firefox 121+

Building for Each Browser

Sanitize It uses a build script to produce browser-specific packages:

./build.sh

This creates:

  • dist/chrome/ — Uses service_worker in the manifest
  • dist/firefox/ — Uses scripts in the manifest with browser_specific_settings for Gecko

The JavaScript is identical across both builds. Only the manifest.json differs.

Requested Permissions

Sanitize It requests a few permissions in the manifest.json file.

activeTab allows the extension to access the currently active tab when the user invokes the extension. This permission is used to access and modify the URL of the current tab when the user clicks the extension icon.

scripting allows the extension to inject and execute scripts in web pages. This permission is used to inject the clipboard and notification functions as a content script into the active tab after sanitizing the URL.

clipboardWrite allows the extension to write data to the system clipboard. This permission is used to copy the sanitized URL to the user's clipboard.

tabs allows the extension access to the tabs API, allowing it to interact with the browser's tab system. This permission is used to query the active tab for keyboard shortcut commands.

Privacy

Sanitize It runs completely locally in your browser. It does not collect any analytics, it does not store any information about your tabs or browser history, it does not send any data back for processing or analysis. Your data is yours and yours alone.

Installing Sanitize It

Sanitize It is available in the Google Chrome Web Store, the Microsoft Edge Add-ons Store, macOS App Store for Safari, and available for manual download and installation.

Get on the Google Chrome Web Store

Get on the Microsoft Edge Store

Get on the macOS App Store

Download the Latest GitHub Release

For Chrome

Download the latest release and unzip it. Then navigate to chrome://extensions/ and enable "Developer mode" using the toggle in the top right corner. Upload the extension manually by pressing "Load unpacked" and selecting the unzipped folder.

For Firefox

Download the latest release and unzip it. Navigate to about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox and click "Load Temporary Add-on", then select manifest.json from the dist/firefox/ folder. For permanent installation, install from Firefox Add-ons (AMO).

For Edge

Download the latest release and unzip it. Then navigate to edge://extensions/ and enable "Developer mode" in the left sidebar, it's near the bottom. Upload the extension manually by pressing "Load unpacked" and selecting the unzipped folder.

For Safari

sanitize-it-1.3.2-macos is available for download in the latest release. You can unzip this and drag Sanitize It.app to your Applications folder. Sanitize It.app was created using Xcode and signed for Direct Distribution, however there are a few steps you'll need to take to enable it. Once you install Sanitize It you'll need to launch Safari and go to Safari > Settings > Advanced and check Show features for web developers. Once you've done that, go to the Developer tab and enable Allow unsigned extensions. Need help? Watch the installation video from my other extension, TabCloser.

Support the Addon

You can support Sanitize It by contributing through these links:

Buy Me A Coffee

PayPal

GitHub Sponsors

Signing up through these services through these affiliate links is also a good way to support Sanitize It.

Try DigitalOcean

Try Fathom Analytics

Thanks

Thanks to Ryan Cuppernull for inspiring Sanitize It and for his help implementing Firefox support for this extension!

License

Copyright (C) 2024--2026 Seth Cottle

Sanitize It is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or any later version.

Sanitize It is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Please see the GNU General Public License for more details.

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