Zero Width Shortener

In plain words

Zero Width Shortener is a URL shortener that conceals shortened links using invisible zero-width characters instead of traditional shortened URLs. The tool makes links appear normal to humans while encoding the destination address in spaces that are imperceptible to the eye. It's designed for anyone looking for an unconventional way to share links, and works as a web app. The approach of hiding data in invisible characters is what makes this tool distinctive.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

Zero Width Shortener (abbreviated as ZWS) is a URL shortener that shortens URLs using spaces that have zero width, making them invisible to humans.

ZWS is a URL shortener which uses zero width characters to shorten URLs.

Shorten URLs with zero width characters, instead of XyGa7z . ZWS uses zero width characters instead of the typical alphanumeric ones that URL shorteners use. When rendered, these characters appear invisible, but they're still there, which means that ZWS is able to use them to encode information about your URL. Hi, I'm Jonah , the creator of ZWS. I hacked together the first version of ZWS back in 2019, mostly just to see if the concept would actually work. It turns out it did work, and since then we've shortened a few hundred thousand URLs, and handled redirects millions of times. Over time, ZWS has gone through a lot of design iterations, on both the frontend and backend. If you're curious…from zws.im

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  I also created a Chrome Ext that reveals use of zero-width characters2018 · github.com · ▲17

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• ZB
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