But today our Twitter activity is much more on the smartphone. So sharing that cat gif becomes inconvenient if you have to use your phone’s browser to shorten its address. So let’s see how to make that cumbersome process somewhat easy on an Android Smartphone.
The App – URL Shortener
This is a simple and useful app which simplifies the process of creating and sharing a short URL. While it doesn’t support all the URL shortening providers, the major ones, goo.gl, tinyurl, v.gd & is.gd are there. You can install it from the Play Store.
Shortening a Link
Using the app is straightforward, enter or paste your desired link and press on the SHORTEN button. The generated URL is automatically copied to the clipboard, and a corresponding QR code is generated. You can select the providers by touching the Provider drop-down menu. There are four providers, is.gd, v.gd, goo.gl & tinyurl. Out of them is.gd is the default one. Unfortunately, you can’t add your own provider. There are 7 types of Short URL structures as shown in the image below. The types are self-explanatory; nevertheless, we have provided you with the following picture to get an idea. The custom structure is open to your creativity. Note: If you use goo.gl provider, only Standard structure will be available, and statistics will be logged by default. In the settings menu, accessed as usual by touching the three dots, the length of the short URL can be set, from 6 to 30 characters long, and the size & colour of QR code can also be customized. Did you know? You can also create short links which don’t remain active forever, perfect for sharing personal content which you are not comfortable with sharing for too long.
Checking the Statistics
Not many may know, but URL shortening not only decreases character counts but also provides an easy way to track how many time it has been clicked. This way you can know for sure whether your baby’s photo or what you had for lunch is of any interest to your followers. You can enable this by checking the Log Statistics for this link option before generating the link. Note: If you use tinyurl provider you will be not able to turn on statistics as tinyurl doesn’t support them natively. Now to check how many times your link has been clicked and other info, touch the History icon shown in the second image. Here all the links you generated are present. Press the three dots beside the link to see more options. You can also check the stats for your link on the website of each provider. For v.gd link, just visit the shortened link, view it and click on the statistics link as shown in the screenshot below. For is.dg links, you need to add a dash (-) to the end of the link before you view it in browser. For goo.gl links just .info at the end of the link and visit it.
Did it Fasten Your Flow?
Was the app helpful to you in quickly enabling you to share whatever you wanted to share, with minimal fuss? Do share your thoughts with us via the comments section. SEE ALSO: 4 Advanced Tasks to Perform with Copied Text in Android
