Control what a link shares with strangers when you're just sharing it with a friend.
Ever copied a link and seen extra gibberish tacked onto the end,
something like ?utm_source=facebook&fbclid=AbC123xyz? That's not
part of the real address. It's tracking information, added quietly so
companies can tell where you found the link, when you shared it, and
who you sent it to. Bit by bit, that builds a picture of you, without
ever asking.
Tidy removes that part before you share a link. What's left is the plain, clean address, nothing extra riding along, and nothing about you attached to it.
It's a small, free app. No account, no setup, no ads. Everything happens right on your phone, nothing about your links is ever sent anywhere else.
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Share a link to Tidy, or paste one in, and it comes back clean: tracking
parameters gone, short links (bit.ly, t.co) unwound to where they
actually lead, m./mobile. subdomains dropped. It happens as you
type. No button to hunt for.
You stay in charge of the rules, not just the outcome:
- Know what was removed, and why. Tap any stripped parameter to see
what it actually was.
fbclid, for instance, is Facebook's way of tying a click back to you. Whitelist it for that one domain in a single tap, or flag a rule as wrong straight into a prefilled GitHub issue. - Whitelisting with nuance. Keep
vonyoutube.comwhile stripping it everywhere else. Add your own rules where the defaults don't fit. - A record, entirely yours. The Privacy Dashboard counts URLs cleaned, trackers blocked, and bandwidth saved, with unlimited history, per-entry open/copy actions, and full JSON backup and restore. It never leaves your phone unless you export it yourself.
- Quick Settings tile. Clean whatever's on your clipboard from the notification shade, no app launch required.
- Clipboard checking. Off by default. Turn it on and choose how far it goes, from a quick review prompt up to fully automatic.
- Share to Tidy. Same choice for shared links: see the cleaned result, or let Tidy copy and even re-share it for you.
- Clean from anywhere (Tidy+). Select a URL in any app, tap Clean with Tidy in the selection toolbar. No switching apps to do it.
Tidy's tracker blocklist lives in this repository. The app checks in every few days for updates: a plain, read-only pull of public rules, so it keeps catching new trackers without waiting on you to update the app. Nothing about you or your links travels the other way. On first install, before it's ever fetched anything, Tidy already works fully offline using its bundled rules. Every change to the blocklist is public: see the history for yourself.
Short-link expansion needs the network too, by nature. Unwinding
bit.ly/xyz means asking where it goes. That request travels straight
from your phone to the link's own server. Nothing of Tidy's sits in
between.
That's the whole list, each one explainable in a sentence, both one-way.
There's no Firebase in here. No Crashlytics, no analytics SDK, nothing phoning home in the background.
If Tidy crashes, the report stays on your device. Find it under Settings → Diagnostics & Crashes: read it, delete it, or share it yourself through the system share sheet if you want to help. Tidy never sends anything without you choosing to.
The same goes for Android's Auto Backup (Google account or ADB). Tidy blocks these by default to prevent silent cloud uploads of your settings and sanitisation history. You can opt in any time under Settings → Data & Backup.
An app that claims zero remote logging shouldn't ask you to trust that blindly. The code's right here. Go check.
Tidy is free and open source, and free isn't a trial here. Everything that gives you control, the cleaning engine, custom rules, whitelist profiles, unlimited history, your own backups, stays free, for good.
Tidy+ is a one-time unlock on Google Play for people who already trust how Tidy behaves and want a few less taps: the upper tiers of clipboard and share automation, cleaning from any text field, extra themes. It's also how this stays a real, maintained project instead of an app that quietly stops getting updates. No ads, no subscription, no data collected to sell instead.
Tidy+ isn't live yet. The GitHub build above works fully today. Tidy+ is finishing testing before it lands on Google Play, and this README will update the moment it does. Think of the table below as a preview of what's coming.
| Tidy | Tidy+ | |
|---|---|---|
| Cleaning engine, short-link expansion | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom rules, whitelist profiles | ✅ | ✅ |
| Unlimited history, dashboard, backup/restore | ✅ | ✅ |
| Quick Settings tile | ✅ | ✅ |
| Clipboard checking, review before copying | ✅ | ✅ |
| Clipboard checking, auto-copy or auto-clean | — | ✅ |
| Share to Tidy, view the cleaned link | ✅ | ✅ |
| Share to Tidy, auto-copy or auto-share | — | ✅ |
| Inline text-selection cleaning | — | ✅ |
| Extra themes | — | ✅ |
Same app, two doors in:
- GitHub Releases: open source, no Play account needed. You update it yourself, whenever you check back.
- Google Play: coming soon. Tidy+ and automatic updates will live here once the listing is public.
They're signed separately and install as two distinct apps. Switching from GitHub to Play later takes one export and one restore. Tidy walks you through it on first launch.
Built to Material 3 Expressive, in a quiet, nature-leaning palette: forest slates, moss charcoal, sage green. Inputs sit low enough for a thumb to reach without adjusting your grip. Nothing here is trying to be noticed. A tool you'll open twenty times a day should feel like part of the phone, not an occasion.
Kotlin Multiplatform, split cleanly between core logic and the Android client:
:shared:UrlCleaner(the parameter-stripping and whitelisting engine),UrlDetection(the single loose "looks like a URL" check used everywhere a link needs spotting),SettingsRepository(DataStore-backed rules, stats, and tiered automation settings).:app: Compose UI (Navigation3), share-intent handling, the Quick SettingsTileService, andUrlExpanderfor redirect resolution.
Written with AI-assisted tooling for code and drafting. Every line is reviewed, tested, and shipped by a human before it reaches you.
Requirements: JDK 21+, Android SDK 26+, Android Studio Ladybug or newer.
We have two build flavours, under Gradle's distribution dimension.
foss is what's here: no Google Play Services, nothing else needed
to build or run it, works fine even on a de-Googled phone. play
adds the paid Tidy+ features. Some of that code sits in a separate repo,
purely to protect the one-time purchase. Your data is handled exactly
the same either way. The build commands below are for the foss flavour.
# Compile and build the FOSS flavour APK
./gradlew :app:assembleFossDebug
# Run unit tests
./gradlew :shared:testAndroidHostTest
./gradlew :app:testFossDebugUnitTest
# Run lint checks
./gradlew lintFossDebugBug fixes, blocklist corrections, and improvements to the foss
flavour are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup,
code style, and how to submit changes.
There's no iOS app, and I likely won't be the one to build it. I'm on Windows, I'd rather not take on another platform to context-switch into, and this project already uses up what spare time I have. If you'd like to bring Tidy to iOS, I'd genuinely welcome the help.
If you discover a security vulnerability in Tidy, please report it privately via the Security tab on GitHub rather than opening a public issue. See SECURITY.md for details on scope and disclosure.
Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE.