August 2026 Work Log (Patreon)

Hi everyone! I was busy for most of August with personal and work trips, so there's not much to report. That's also why this post is several days late. Without further ado, here's everything I worked on in the month of August, exclusively for Patreon subscribers.

Link Cleaner

I already wrote a post about all the Link Cleaner news, so go read that if you haven't already. The short summary is that I moved the actual link cleaning code to a new Link Cleaner JS library, and introduced the Link Cleaner command line application. The web app and CLI app are now just interfaces (frontends) for the library, and the library can be used in more projects.

Shortly after that announcement, I rolled out the web app update that switched to the library, added download links for the CLI tool, and slightly changed the settings page to correspond with the library's supported options. For example, shortening Walmart product links is now always enabled, instead of being an optional feature.

The Link Cleaner web app is set up to always use the latest available version of the Link Cleaner JS library, using the UNPKG CDN. The next step is making an official Link Cleaner browser extension using the library, which I think would be able to un-shorten links in addition to cleaning them. That's not possible in the web app due to CORS restrictions.

Just the Browser

I rolled out a minor update for my Just the Browser project in August—specifically, while I was waiting at the airport for my flight back home from Boston. It adds a new setting for Google Chrome's SearchContentSharingSettings policy, which turns off the "Ask Google" button in the address bar, "Search this tab with Google Lens" context menu option, and other features for sharing the current page to Google AI Mode and Lens.

The next feature I would like to implement is Microsoft Edge configuration support for Linux, since that has been an open issue since January. Hopefully, soon!