Shrinker
Shrinker is a small, free app that can shorten URLs using a number of popular services. At the moment, there is support for is.gd, TinyURL, bit.ly and tr.im, and support for other services is on the way.
If there’s a URL on the pasteboard, or an instance of Safari running,. Shrinker will detect it. Simply click “Shrink” to shrink the URL, and Shrinker will copy the shrunken URL to the pasteboard ready for you to use in whatever application you like. If you’re using bit.ly and have set your username and API key (which you can do in the preferences panel) you can also choose to have the shortened URL added to your bit.ly history. You can find your API key on the bit.ly API page, if you have an account.
There are two convenient ways to speed up URL shrinking even further. There is a global shortcut key - ⇧⌘L - i.e. Shift-Cmd-L - which will detect a URL on the pasteboard and shrink it automatically. Alternatively, you can drag this link to your bookmarks bar so that you can shorten URLs with just one click: Shrink. You need to have run Shrinker at least once in order for this to work.
You can download the latest beta release from this site. Download Beta 10 now
When the download is complete, simply drag Shrinker.app into your Applications folder. Shrinker requires Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.1 or higher.
If you have Growl installed, Shrinker will use it to inform you whenever a URL is shrunk.
Shrinker will update itself whenever a new release is available, using the Sparkle framework. It will check for new versions regularly, or you can use the Check For Updates… menu item to check there and then.
There are the following known bugs at the moment:
- The preferences pane is not shown relative to the main window
- URL shrinking is not asynchronous, so the UI may lock up if shrinking takes a while
- The File > New Window menu item doesn’t behave correctly - it should be disabled when the main window is open
Shrinker is currently in beta, which means that it might not work at all on your machine. I’m keen to get as much feedback as I can, so please send me your bug reports, suggestions and criticism.
