Android app for removing tracking parameters from shared URLs

When using a search engine, the results links are often garbaged w/ tracking info. It'd be amazing if Léon could handle these, too.

Examples when searching léon url cleaner & choosing link to this repo:

• [x] Google: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://github.com/svenjacobs/leon&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwiB2f7ZqJr3AhVMjYkEHQ-DC6gQFnoECAEQAg&usg=AOvVaw2u8hlrT4OUF1_m1GnmhVAy

• [x] Yahoo!: https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geKLovoVtisIEAUapx.9w4;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzQEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1650201007/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fgithub.com%2fsvenjacobs%2fleon/RK=2/RS=rHoItccMzwyZAXsJuDMkBaKUMx0-

• [x] AOL: https://search.aol.com/click/_ylt=A0geK.HAoltiwykAlAR8CWVH;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzQEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1650201408/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fgithub.com%2fsvenjacobs%2fleon/RK=0/RS=cXRWej4shdsEIIDm147.G4CRZEo-

First of all, thanks for this project! Found this from F-droid circles and loved the idea❣️

What do you think about adding domain specific rules to clean URLs like these:

https://www.amazon.com/BEAST-40oz-Black-Tumbler-Stainless/dp/B08GTPXJBL/?_encoding=UTF8&smid=AHFMMW9O1FG2X&pf_rd_p=d11c243d-9bba-498d-bb87-2e184199c856&pd_rd_wg=zP7f5&pf_rd_r=43Z35PH2XY62GBS2WZ7J&pd_rd_w=2b5Rj&pd_rd_r=7cd0fb38-2890-4adc-b51e-b12056bd09ec ➔ https://www.amazon.com/BEAST-40oz-Black-Tumbler-Stainless/dp/B08GTPXJBL/

May be the rule can be: www.amazon.com/(.*)/dp/([0-9A-Z]+)/* -> www.amazon.com/$1/dp/$2/

Great app and clean code! Thank you!!

Copy paste from the EbaySanitizer, first version to figure out the inner workings

• [x] Automated test
• [x] Resource translations
• [x] Plugging the sanitizer into ContainerInitializer.kt
• [x] Testing it really

Closes #91

ref: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/jobs/3261713737#L399

ref: https://github.com/svenjacobs/leon/commit/bf86e5dc4976f926ba5ccbecb2fcf45db3e701e4#diff-8cff73265af19c059547b76aca8882cbaa3209291406f52df1dafbbc78e80c46R39

Is it possible to make the URL cleaner the target for default browser in Android?

It would be nice to have an this as my default browser (I'm not expecting actual browser behavior) so that it can strip all the tracking junk and then I can copy the URL to the browser myself.

If you click on Licenses in the settings, the app crashes. This happens both whole the app is opened during a share intent and if you open it standalone

Happens on Android 13, Leon Version 1.2.0

I think Leon should have a sanitizer for TikTok URLs.

I'm pretty busy, myself, but if I find time, what's the most tricky part of adding a sanitizer? What's the best way to resolve it?

Minimum feature request:

Please implement a solution to make Leon able to read URL from clipboard. (Only exact URL is stored in clipboard.)

Maximum feature request:

In addition to min. feature request, make Leon able to filter out URL from clipboard text. (Text containing an URL is stored in clipboard.)

Why?

In apps such like Telegram messenger you are often not able to share a link with an external app. You are only able to copy URL to clipboard.

Tnx in advance, Enkidu

The link that i shared: https://a.co/d/4X8EKfk

After i select decode link, it doesn't decode it into a raw form: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FDSW9CS/

https://youtu.be/video-id should be transformed into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=video-id. These youtu.be links comes from the share function.

Thanks for the app!

Currently sanitizers are purely based on regular expressions and can only remove parts from a URL. However feature requests have shown that this concept is not flexible enough since sanitizers could also for example extract parts from, rewrite or decode URLs.

The current sanitizers are stored in a SQLite database on the device. The idea was to have some kind of form in a future version of Leon where users can add their own sanitizers / rules. However this concept does not work with more flexible sanitizers. Prospectively sanitizers will not be stored in a database. But sanitizers could provide their own UI. For instance there could be a CustomParametersSanitizer which provides a UI for specifying own URL parameters to be removed. How these parameters are stored is implementation detail of the sanitizer. It could be shared preferences or SQLite.

The question remains what should be shown on the result screen where currently the number of removed parameters are shown? Since future sanitizers must not necessarily remove parameters, different metrics must be displayed?

For each sanitizer, the user should be able to select whether he/she wants the Leon activity/window to open (current behavior) vs. Leon just directly opening the URL in the user's preferred browser (without further confirmation / button presses).

Why? For certain types of links that I click frequently, the manual steps ("Share -> Select Browser app from list") seem inefficient.

This would be especially useful when Leon is set as the Android-wide default browser for all links.

In followup to #44 & #70:

Minimum feature request:

Please implement a solution to make Leon able remove a specific set of parameters from URLs, like

• clever*

Many websites use same analytic software for campain & user tracking. The name prefix above are a very common one and Léon should be able to generally remove them, with all of their variations.

Exampel URL:

https://www.ruhr24.de/service/krankenkasse-beitrag-steigt-aok-barmer-tk-guenstig-24h-r24-dak-versicherung-deutschland-zusatz-91998261.html#?cleverPushBounceUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ruhr24.de%2Fservice%2F&cleverPushNotificationId=yMlhjgj4gsLdgfjhjhgfYdnGCYDEyc

Real necessary:

https://www.ruhr24.de/service/krankenkasse-beitrag-steigt-aok-barmer-tk-guenstig-24h-r24-dak-versicherung-deutschland-zusatz-91998261.html#

Maximum feature request:

In addition to min. feature request, it would be very helpful to be able to add own parameter patterns.

E.g. like "_ref="

Real high end idea:

Enable community of active Léon users to provide their custom parameter list.

Why?

Keep URL short, keep privacy and empower the user to remove unwanted stuff.

Tnx in advance, Enkidu

Spiegel.de seems to use tracking parameters as well, I suspect from the app. Example: https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/elon-musk-twitter-sperrt-konten-mehrerer-journalisten-von-new-york-times-washington-post-etc-a-040213a0-aa1e-4627-9a5a-69d5f4f929fb?sara_ecid=soci_upd_KsBF0AFjflf0DZCxpPYDCQgO1dEMph

I will try to provide a filter as previously

Instead of having to manually add new sanitizers to a list in order to load them, we could write a small KSP library which generates the list automatically based on annotations.

Add a sanitizer which converts Twitter to Nitter links. Nitter is an alternative, privacy focused interface for Twitter. However as there can be various Nitter instances, the sanitizer should probably provide a configuration screen where an instance can be specified.