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URL Shortener · Google Drive Link Shortener

Shorten a Google Drive link

Turn a long Drive sharing link into a short one people can type, with a QR code for print. Free, no account.

Press Enter or the Shorten button.

More options custom back-half, expiry, password, campaign tags
Appearance
Letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores. Leave empty for a random one.
Access and expiry
In your time zone (UTC).
Before then, visitors see when it goes live.
Visitors type it before they’re sent on.
Tracking
Redirect type

Want different pages for different countries, phones or times of day, or an A/B test? Set that up after you create the link.

  • Free, no sign-up
  • Every link safety-checked
  • QR code with every link

How to shorten a Google Drive link

  1. STEP 01

    Copy the sharing link

    In Drive we right-click the file or folder, pick Share, then Copy link. Before copying, look at General access in that same box. A file left on Restricted shows everyone else a request-access page, short link or not.

  2. STEP 02

    Paste it above and press Shorten

    Open More options for an expiry date or a password, if the file shouldn’t stay open forever.

  3. STEP 03

    Send the short link

    We’d turn the Google Drive link into something like /class-notes-week3. That’s short enough for one slide, and people can copy it off a whiteboard. On a printed handout, the QR code does the job better.

A Drive sharing link is about 80 characters of random letters, ending in ?usp=sharing. It breaks across lines in emails, nobody can type it from a slide, and it gives no hint of what it opens.

Short and readable

Turn it into something like /class-notes-week3 that you can say out loud or write on a whiteboard.

Swap the file later

Uploaded a newer version as a separate file? Point the short link at it. Everyone who has the short link gets the new one.

Stop sharing on a date

Set the short link to expire after the deadline, or after a number of opens.

See how many opened it

The click count tells you how many people followed the link, which Drive doesn’t show you for most files shared by link.

Not any more. Google’s own URL shortener, goo.gl, stopped making new short links in 2019, and Drive has never had a shortener built in. The Share box only gives you the full drive.google.com address.

So a Google Drive URL shortener today means a separate one like this. Paste the Drive link, and you get a short link that opens the same file, with a QR code and a click count. It works for Docs, Sheets, Slides and Forms links too.

Check who can open the file first

A short link only passes people on to Drive. Whether they can see the file is up to Drive’s sharing setting:

Restricted
Only people you added by email can open it. Everyone else sees a “request access” page, short link or not.
Anyone with the link
Anyone who has the Drive address, or your short link, can open it. Use this for files you’re happy to hand out.

If you set “Anyone with the link” and add a password to the short link, remember the password only guards the short link. Someone who already has the full Drive address can still open the file.

Things to know

  • Deleting the file in Drive breaks the link, however short it is. If you replace the file, point the short link at the new one.
  • Folders work too. Copy the folder’s sharing link the same way.
  • An expired short link doesn’t change Drive. To stop access for good, change the file’s sharing setting in Drive as well.

Questions about Google Drive short links

How do I shorten a Google Drive link?

Copy the file’s sharing link from Drive, paste it above and press Shorten. It takes about a second and needs no account.

Will people need a Google account to open it?

Only if the file’s sharing is set to Restricted. With “Anyone with the link”, it opens in the browser without signing in.

Can I make the link stop working after a week?

Yes. Open More options and set “Stops working at” to the date and time you want. After that, people see that the link has expired.

Does the password protect my file?

It protects the short link: nobody gets through it without the password. It doesn’t change Drive, so anyone who has the full Drive address can still open the file if it’s shared with anyone who has the link.

Can I change which file the short link opens?

Yes, from the link’s Edit page, at any time. The short link and its QR code stay the same.

Does Google still have a URL shortener?

No. Google stopped making new goo.gl links in 2019, and Drive has no shortener of its own. A separate shortener like this one does the same job for Drive, Docs and Sheets links.