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Bitly finally gets a dedicated Android app

Bitly - the most popular link shortening service - finally has a dedicated app for Android, making shortening and sharing links for social media much easier.
By
July 8, 2016
Bitly Android app teaser

When it comes to exciting app launch news, a link shortener probably isn’t exactly high on your list. But for those of us that shorten dozens of links every day for social media, having a dedicated Bitly app on Android is going to be a massive time saver. Never again will you have to do the Chrome tab shuffle every time you want to share a URL on mobile.

Goo.gl URLs can now deep link to Android and iOS apps
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Now, there are other – and arguably better equipped – link shorteners already available on Android, but if you’re a committed Bitly user this is definitely long overdue. While our iOS counterparts have had a dedicated Bitly app for years (that hasn’t been updated for years by the way), it’s now our time to bask in the sun of conveniently shorter URLs.

While the old keep-a-Bitly-tab-open-in-Chrome method allows you to avoid signing into the service, the app requires you to do so. But the benefits of creating an account if you don’t already have one include being able to track the traffic on your links and create your own branded short links. You’ll also have access to the sexily-named Dark Social data.

Bitly Android app screenshots

Just copy and paste a link into the app or highlight it and select Bitly from the overflow menu in your browser. It’s a pretty basic affair right now, but as more users start piling in we can only hope the Android version will get a little more attention than the iOS. If it doesn’t, it might be hard to drag users away from whatever other third-party link shortener app they’re already using.

How much link shortening do you do? What app or method do you use?