Have you ever experienced a simple link-sharing task becoming unnecessarily tedious?
Dragging to copy a long URL, switching tabs to a link shortening service, pasting it, and then copying the generated short link to paste into a messenger or social media… When you think about it, sharing a single link requires quite a lot of manual work.
Especially for bloggers, marketers, and affiliate marketing operators, these tasks are repeated dozens of times a day.
It might not seem like much at first, but it consumes significant time and energy as it accumulates. Furthermore, mistakes like missing a part of the link or sharing the wrong URL often occur during the copying process.
In this article, we will introduce how to reduce this cumbersome process to just 2 steps with a single Chrome extension. By utilizing Vivoldi’s Chrome extension, a short link is generated and automatically copied to your clipboard with one click of an icon on the web page you are currently viewing.
The copy-and-paste process itself becomes obsolete.
Why is URL Shortening Tedious? — The Problem with Traditional Methods
First, we need to point out why the traditional method is inefficient. Generally, creating a short link goes through the following steps.
- Drag and copy the URL of the current page
- Switch tabs or open a new tab to access a short URL service website
- Paste the copied URL into the input field
- Click the generate link button
- Copy the generated short URL again
- Return to your original messenger or social media tab and paste
Counting them, it’s at least 5 to 6 steps. If you have to repeat this process for every single link, sharing just 10 links a day will consume a considerable amount of time.
Moreover, the feeling of losing your context while switching back and forth between tabs negatively impacts productivity.
To solve this problem, short URL services offer Chrome extensions in their own ways.
Services like Bitly or Rebrandly also have extensions, but the interface and feature support methods vary by service. Vivoldi’s Chrome extension has enhanced practicality by providing automatic page title input and immediate clipboard copying features together.
Installing and Setting Up Vivoldi’s Chrome Extension
To use Vivoldi’s Chrome extension, you must first install it from the Chrome Web Store. The installation itself is simple, but configuring a few settings afterward will make it much more convenient to use.
Two Things You Must Do After Installation
1. Pin the Extension
Clicking the extension icon (puzzle piece shape) at the top right of your Chrome browser reveals the list of installed extensions.
Clicking the pin icon next to Vivoldi keeps the icon permanently fixed next to the browser address bar for much faster access. This way, you can utilize it like a keyboard shortcut.
2. Log in to Your Vivoldi Account
Opening the extension for the first time requires logging into your Vivoldi account. If you don’t have an account, simply sign up on the Vivoldi website first and log in. After logging in, you can use it immediately without further authentication.
After logging in, thanks to Chrome’s account synchronization feature, the extension remains ready to use even if you access it from another PC with the same Chrome account. This is a particularly useful aspect for professionals working across multiple devices.
Creating a Short Link with One Click — Practical Usage
If installation and login are complete, here comes the core part. Let’s see firsthand how simple the process of actually creating a short link is.
The 3 Steps of Short Link Creation (Actually 2 Steps)
Step 1: Click the Vivoldi icon while viewing the web page you want to shorten
Clicking the pinned Vivoldi icon at the top of the browser opens a pop-up window. At this point, something amazing has already happened — the current page’s URL and page title are automatically filled into the input fields. You don’t need to type anything.
Step 2: Click the ‘Create Link’ Button
Since the URL and title are already entered, simply clicking the ‘CREATE LINK’ button completes the short link generation. You can additionally utilize options like designating link groups, setting brand links, and configuring push notifications.
When Auto-Copy to Clipboard is Set: Ready to Paste Immediately
If you turn on the ‘Auto-Copy to Clipboard’ option, the link is copied to your clipboard the moment it’s generated. Afterward, pressing Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on Mac) in your messenger or social media instantly pastes the short link. You don’t even need to click a separate copy button.
Ultimately, the workflow looks like this: Open page → Click Vivoldi icon → Click create link → Ctrl+V wherever you want. There’s no tab switching, and no complex copy-pasting process.
Before & After — How Your Workflow Changes
Direct comparison is more intuitive than a verbal explanation.
We compared the process of creating and sharing a single short link using the traditional method side-by-side with Vivoldi’s extension method.
It isn’t just about reducing the number of steps. The context switching of moving between tabs is eliminated, and mistakes that can occur during the copying process (copying the wrong URL, missing parts, etc.) are fundamentally prevented. Even if you share only 10 links a day, the perceived difference is substantial.
Looking at actual working time, what took an average of 30 to 60 seconds per link with the traditional method drops to 5 to 10 seconds with the extension. In a business environment with many repetitive tasks, the time-saving effect is highly noticeable.
Manage Generated Links at a Glance on the Dashboard
Short links generated with the extension don’t just vanish after a one-time use. They are all saved on the main dashboard of the Vivoldi website, allowing you to manage them later.
You can perform the following tasks on the dashboard:
- Check Click Statistics: See numerical data on how often your shared links were clicked
- View and Edit Link Lists: Manage all your generated short links in one place
- Manage Link Groups: Systematically organize links by classifying them per campaign or project
- Set Push Notifications: Configure settings to receive alerts when a link is clicked
Because the convenience of the extension is connected to the management features of the dashboard, you can achieve both rapid link generation and systematic link management simultaneously.
The more links you create, the higher the utilization of the dashboard becomes.
For example, if you created links for various contents while running a marketing campaign, you can later check the dashboard to see which links were clicked the most and what time frames had concentrated traffic. This data helps in establishing your next content strategy.
Especially Useful for These Professionals
Vivoldi’s Chrome extension provides practical assistance to various professions that frequently handle URLs. Let’s look at which situations yield the greatest effects depending on work characteristics.
Bloggers / Content Creators
While writing, situations frequently arise where you need short and clean links when sharing reference materials with team members or posting external links on social media.
Particularly when researching with multiple tabs open simultaneously, whenever you find a useful page, you can instantly generate a short link on the spot without opening a separate tab.
Also, when inserting external links into social media or newsletters, the original URLs are often excessively long or look messy due to tracking parameters. Using short links enhances the readability of your posts and gives readers a more trustworthy impression. What used to take 30 seconds to clean up one link drops to 5 seconds, allowing the flow of your content work to be maintained uninterrupted.
Digital Marketers / Advertising Managers
For marketers, link management is not merely a matter of convenience.
Generating multiple landing page URLs for each campaign, tracking click performance by channel, and organizing links in reports are tasks repeated daily. Accessing a link shortening site to convert each URL individually consumes more time than expected.
Using the extension, you can generate and copy short links directly from the landing page you are checking, drastically accelerating link collection and management speeds. Since generated links are integrated and viewed alongside click counts on the dashboard, you can organize data in one place for channel performance comparisons or report writing.
As repetitive tasks decrease, the time you can focus on more important work like strategy formulation or content planning increases.
Affiliate Marketers
Due to their nature, URLs for affiliate marketing links are often quite long.
Because they contain tracking codes or partner IDs, sharing them as-is exposes unnecessary information to readers, and the link itself can become a factor that lowers credibility.
For instance, while reviewing a product page, if you convert the link into a short URL like vvd.im/review01, it displays much more cleanly in blog posts or social media.
Even when consecutively collecting and organizing multiple product links, instead of repeating copy-paste across tabs, you can process them instantly on each page with the extension, visibly improving work speed. You can also view link click statistics, which is useful for identifying which product links receive more attention.
Customer Support (CS) Representatives
When guiding customers to specific pages or guide links, providing a short and clear link rather than a complex URL delivers a more professional impression.
Especially during chat support, response speed is critical, and the process of copying URLs and navigating to link shortening sites every time can cause delays in response times.
Being able to rapidly generate and paste a short link during a chat session also improves response speed. For example, you can share links cleanly in formats like https://vvd.bz/support.
How to Set Up Auto-Copy to Clipboard
This feature can be activated in the preferences of the Vivoldi dashboard. Once turned on, it is automatically applied to all subsequent link generations.
The setting is located at the bottom of the page after clicking the [Settings → Basic Settings] menu. If you enable the ‘Auto-Copy to Clipboard’ option, every link you create hereafter will be copied to your clipboard instantly upon generation.
💡 Practical Business Tip
Pinning the extension icon to the top of your browser allows you to access it quickly, like a keyboard shortcut. The distance to move your mouse to the icon is minimized, which also helps reduce wrist fatigue during repetitive tasks.
Upcoming Features
Convenience features will continue to be updated in the Chrome extension. In addition to the current one-click link generation and auto-copy features, various functions based on user feedback are planned for addition.
If features like editing already generated links, managing multiple links at once, or viewing specific link groups directly from the extension are added, its utility is expected to rise even further.
While it’s still in the early stages, installing it now is advantageous. As features are added, the user experience will continuously improve, and as an early adopter, your feedback could influence the direction of feature development.
Conclusion — A Big Difference Made by One Small Habit
URL shortening isn’t an extraordinary technology on its own. However, if you have to repeat this minor task dozens of times a day, the story changes. Accumulated time waste, lost concentration from tab switching, and trivial mistakes eventually affect work efficiency.
Vivoldi’s Chrome extension is a practical tool that minimizes these repetitive tasks. Reducing 5 steps to 2, processing right on the current page without switching tabs, auto-copying to the clipboard upon generation — each is a small difference, but the perceived effect grows as it is repeated.
You can start simply by installing Vivoldi’s extension from the Chrome Web Store and pinning it to the top of your browser. Just don’t forget that logging into your Vivoldi account is required upon first use.
Experiencing the time it takes to create a short link drop from 30 seconds to 5 seconds — you’ll immediately feel the difference once you try it yourself.
