FastForward

FastForward is a browser extension that automatically skips link shorteners, so you land on the actual destination without having to wait through countdown timers, solve captchas, or click through interstitial pages. Link shorteners are services that wrap a real URL inside a redirect chain, often to track clicks or run ads before letting you through. FastForward detects these and bypasses them in the background.

The extension is available for Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox. Installation instructions are in a separate guide in the repository. A public list of supported websites is also maintained in the docs folder.

This project began as a continuation of an earlier extension called Universal Bypass, which was abandoned by its original developer. The FastForward team picked it up and extended the list of supported services over time. A community Discord server was used to coordinate new bypass rules and get help.

The README prominently notes that FastForward is no longer actively maintained. The team stopped development and suggests two alternative userscripts for anyone still looking for this functionality: bypass-all-shortlinks-debloated and ads-bypasser. The underlying API server the extension used for crowd-sourced bypass data is still running and its documentation is public, so developers who want to fork and continue the project have access to it.

For anyone already using it, the extension may still work for many of the bypass rules written before development stopped. However, new link shorteners added after the project went dormant will not be supported unless someone forks it and resumes work.