PasteClean
Desktop app to strip tracking parameters from clipboard
Details
- External ID
- 46283458
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- PasteClean
- Website domain
- github.io
- Launched
- Dec. 16, 2025
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 20
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.6507633587786259
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
I built a small desktop tool called PasteClean to solve a personal annoyance: sharing URLs filled with tracking garbage (utm_source, fbclid, etc.).It runs in the background and automatically cleans URLs in your clipboard when you copy them. It handles 50+ tracking parameters and can also unshorten links (bit.ly, t.co) to reveal the destination and clean them before pasting.Tech stack is Electron/React/TypeScript.The core privacy features are free. I added a "Pro" lifetime license for some advanced features (unshortening, batch mode) to support development.
Enrichment
- Theme
- desktop and macOS productivity utilities
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- —
- Audience
- B2C
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- remove tracking parameters from urls
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes A desktop clipboard monitor that strips URL query parameters and resolves redirects is a lightweight utility easily built using standard desktop frameworks like Tauri or Electron.
Discussion
13 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Firefox's "Copy Link Without Site Tracking", uBlock Origin with removeparam filters, Leon - The URL Cleaner (Android), Rectangle Pro (window management), Alfred (macOS launcher)
Concerns raised: Closed source despite claiming to be open source, Fake readme with non-working build instructions, AI-generated code quality (appears to be Gemini-written), Requires login/email registration to download, Doesn't work with YouTube links
Feature requests: Support for YouTube links, Web app/PWA with Share Target support (Android), Automatic clipboard copy after cleaning URL
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 88 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #40 of 89 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Looks like the first mover among its competitors.
- PasteDaemon · hn · 2026-08-14 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- Bookmark Cleaner · ph · 2026-09-21 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- PasteNote · ph · 2026-09-13 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Cliptray · ph · 2026-09-21 · 3 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Pastely · ph · 2026-09-22 · 59 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- CopyPal · ph · 2026-09-20 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- PasteZero · ph · 2026-09-20 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- DeskJoin Clipboard · ph · 2026-09-14 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.43
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.