Untrail

About

Untrail removes tracking identifiers from a link BEFORE your browser sends a single request — so the tracking URL is never even contacted.

Most of the web tags your clicks: the ?si= on a shared YouTube link, ?utm_source= in newsletters, ?fbclid= from Facebook, ?gclid= from Google Ads, and dozens more. Untrail strips them at the moment of navigation, before any data leaves your browser.

HOW IT'S DIFFERENT
Unlike tools that tidy the address bar after a page loads, Untrail rewrites the URL at the network layer using Chrome's declarativeNetRequest engine. The original, tracker-laden URL receives no request line, no headers, and no body. It's removed first, then the clean link loads.

WHAT IT DOES
- Strips ~140 known tracking parameters (utm_*, fbclid, gclid, msclkid, si, igshid, mc_eid, and many more) on every site, automatically.
- Keeps your links working: it only removes tracking-specific keys, never ambiguous ones like id, ref, or q.
- Shows how many trackers it stripped — per page and over time.

YOU'RE IN CONTROL
- One-click on/off from the toolbar.
- Pause it on any site that needs a parameter to work.
- TEACH it trackers it doesn't know yet. Open the popup, tap a leftover parameter, and it learns to remove it — just for that site, or everywhere. Power users can highlight any part of a URL to teach a custom rule.

PRIVACY BY DESIGN
- No accounts, no analytics, no data collection. Nothing you browse is sent anywhere.
- Your settings and learned rules stay in your browser (and sync through your own Chrome account if you use sync).
- Fully open source — read every line.

WHY "BEFORE ANY REQUEST" MATTERS
A tracking ID in a link is meant to tell the destination who sent you. Stripping it after the page loads is too late — the data already left. Untrail removes it first.

Note on what leaves your browser: when a tracker is in the URL's query string (the normal case), none of it is sent. As with any navigation, a speculative DNS lookup to the site's hostname can still occur; that reveals only which site you're visiting, never the tracking ID.