About
Modern applications like Slack, Obsidian, Zoom, Notion, and Figma use custom URL schemes for deep linking — URIs like slack://channel or obsidian://open?vault=wiki that open specific views inside desktop and mobile apps.
The problem: these links stop working the moment you paste them into a wiki, an email, or a chat on another platform. Those tools only make web links clickable, so the deep link shows up as plain text. LinkOpen converts it into a standard https link that those tools accept, and opening that link hands the original to the app.
Why
Custom scheme URLs break in almost every cross-app context. LinkOpen exists because these workflows are common and currently painful:
- Documentation teams embedding
slack://channel links inside Notion wikis or Confluence pages, only to find they render as plain text. - Obsidian users sharing
obsidian://vault links in team chats where the protocol is stripped or blocked by IT policy. - Zoom meeting links using
zoommtg://pasted into project management tools like Linear, Jira, or Asana that refuse to parse non-HTTP schemes. - Any cross-app workflow where a deep link needs to survive being pasted into a medium that only understands HTTPS.
How
- 1. Paste your custom scheme URL
- 2. Choose auto-redirect or manual mode
- 3. Copy the https link
Under the hood, LinkOpen uses LZ-based compression with dictionary substitution to encode your original URL directly into the https link path. There is no database, no server storage, and no lookup table. The entire payload lives in the URL itself, and the page you land on decodes it and passes it to the app. This means links never expire and don’t depend on a database staying online.
Use Cases
- Internal documentation — Embed deep links in Notion, Confluence, or Google Docs without them breaking.
- Knowledge management — Share Obsidian vault links and Roam Research graph links with teammates who use different tools.
- Team communication — Slack deep links and Zoom meeting links that survive being pasted into any chat or email client.
- Developer workflows — Custom protocol handlers, IDE deep links, and local dev-server URLs wrapped in a shareable HTTPS link.
Privacy
LinkOpen doesn’t store links. There is no database, no server-side storage and no user accounts: your URL is compressed into the link itself, and the page you land on decodes it.
The site does use analytics. Google Analytics and Vercel Analytics record which pages are visited, and for a shared link the page address contains the encoded URL. Google Analytics also sets cookies to count visits. The code is open source, so you can check this yourself.
Name
LinkOpen used to be called Shortlink, at shortlink.studio. Links made there still work: shortlink.studio forwards every one of them here. The code lives in the spx repository, after the project’s first name, scheme proxy.
Stack
Next.js 15 / React 19 / Tailwind CSS / Vercel