Review by Firefox user 11640498
Rated 5 out of 5
by Firefox user 11640498, 9 years agoClearURLs is a must!
Why this and not other similar add-on?
Most of the other adds-on have around 13 rules to remove garbage fields. But ClearURLs has 65 rules to remove garbage fields and much of them are regex-rules (so the rule does not only block one field, it blocks all fields with the same structure). Also, ClearURLs is a open source.
If you are a kind of average user looking to improve privacy without loosing a decade studying a PhD in tech details... ClearURLs is the most complete ready-to-use plug-and-play alternative.
I would like to suggest future requests to the author:
1) To test the system performance impact of the 65 rules. I don't have know-how to distinguish if the 65 rules are indispensable. If "yes", then keep all and add more rules! But if some of them are exceptional and affects system resources/performance, then it could be interesting to prioritize system performance.
2) To evolve ClearURLs in an all-in-one add-on for URLs nasty issues ("clearing", "redirecting", "skipping" etc).
I perfectly understand the author' point of view, in the sense that some requests demand tons of work, not just for build the add-on, but also for keep it updated, supported etc. But from the user' point of view, less adds-on, less system resources, better performance etc... is always more than welcome and most desirable.
I will be more than happy to help donating for this kind of all-in-one add-on.
Congrats and thank you to the author!
Why this and not other similar add-on?
Most of the other adds-on have around 13 rules to remove garbage fields. But ClearURLs has 65 rules to remove garbage fields and much of them are regex-rules (so the rule does not only block one field, it blocks all fields with the same structure). Also, ClearURLs is a open source.
If you are a kind of average user looking to improve privacy without loosing a decade studying a PhD in tech details... ClearURLs is the most complete ready-to-use plug-and-play alternative.
I would like to suggest future requests to the author:
1) To test the system performance impact of the 65 rules. I don't have know-how to distinguish if the 65 rules are indispensable. If "yes", then keep all and add more rules! But if some of them are exceptional and affects system resources/performance, then it could be interesting to prioritize system performance.
2) To evolve ClearURLs in an all-in-one add-on for URLs nasty issues ("clearing", "redirecting", "skipping" etc).
I perfectly understand the author' point of view, in the sense that some requests demand tons of work, not just for build the add-on, but also for keep it updated, supported etc. But from the user' point of view, less adds-on, less system resources, better performance etc... is always more than welcome and most desirable.
I will be more than happy to help donating for this kind of all-in-one add-on.
Congrats and thank you to the author!
Developer response
posted 9 years agoThanks for your positive feedback, I am glad to hear that you like and hype the addon.
1,106 reviews
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 20088018, a day agoAbandoned. This app hasn't been updated in almost two years as of August 2026. CleanURLs is a massive security risk that leaves users machines and data extremely vulnerable to attack. If still using uninstall and rate 1 star to get this abandoned ware out of suggested addons.
- Rated 5 out of 5by jsis8, 17 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Linne, 20 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by yogi, 22 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by formalist, 23 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Heqaruu, 24 days ago
- Rated 3 out of 5by redgamehunter, 25 days agoHonestly, it just really, really needs a basic site whitelist option. Sometimes you don't mind the things this targets because they are actually necessary for functionality. Good example: When I go to my health insurance web portal, a different company handles the online payment. When I click to pay on web portal, it opens their website, and uses a lot of things ClearURLs auto-cleans to tell that payment site who I am without me needing to explicitly log in, and in fact doesn't have a normal log in method for said site, so I have to turn of ClearURLs... to pay online for my health insurance.
This is far from the only situation I've ran into with this. - Rated 5 out of 5by Tets6723642, a month ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Wolfy, a month agoFor a while I had some issues with websites, after a while I started checking what was ruining it. I came onto this extension, the reasons I found is that it too aggressively kills script or cookies or whatever a extension fx google.ai relies on (google search engine) The idea behind the extension itself is good but the function and the use i need it for did not help. This extension did mess it up a bit so.
- Rated 5 out of 5by The Real frostbyte, a month ago
- Rated 3 out of 5by Kai, a month agoIt hasn't worked properly with Google since the FireFox update. A tracking link will be created in Google search results. Use Don't Track Me Google.
- Rated 3 out of 5by Firefox user 14676096, a month agoIn general I really like this addon, but it caused a memory leak that would eventually use all of my memory and would cause my computer to go unresponsive. I tried disabling addons one by one, and my memory usage upon disabling this addon went from 40GB to around 7GB with many windows open. I'm sure I found some edge case here, but I've had to disable it for now.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Rigai, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by ECreator, a month agoVery useful. After the question mark ("?"), the rest of the link is very likely completely useless and is made of parameters. Some time ago, my brother clicked on a link with more than 10 defined parameters including my f***ing location and device! Not only that, but this will be very useful for Youtube now that Google is filled with AI tracking...
The colors and overall UI is not like those old extensions that have 2000's style, it is actually very clean and it's worth it to pin this extension. - Rated 1 out of 5by Yondu, a month agoThis app is generally useless. It does nothing. For example, I want to share a youtube video without trackers. I press the share icon then press copy url then i paste this url in the massage box to send it to my friend. And this app changes nothing. In the message box url will be the same. For me it is just easier to remove text after question mark in url to remove tracker part of url. So i really don't get. Does this app even work? Or maybe url clipboard checking is not enabled? Then how do i turn it on? So nope. I had enough. I will not use it.
- Rated 5 out of 5by kujaw, 2 months ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by fireside, 2 months agoRemoving this addon fixed searching in Reddit. Do Google AI search for "removing clearurls addon fixes various problems". Removing it fixes many problems. This should not be a recommended addon.
- Rated 2 out of 5by eleman , 2 months agoCauses gmail to open the same links twice. I now removed it and use instead firefox's privacy.query_stripping.enabled.pbmode and privacy.query_stripping.enabled settings.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Mehedi Hasan, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by ebayybe, 2 months agoA must-have add-on for every Firefox user. It doesn't just make links look neat; it actually blocks cross-site tracking via referral parameters. Works flawlessly, pages load quickly, and garbage is stripped instantly. Thanks to the developers for such a high-quality product!
- Rated 5 out of 5by PK, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Alphonse, 2 months ago