Leon Overweel

Link Syncer

Link Syncer creates quick shareable URLs that will only redirect everyone to the link you're sharing once everyone has clicked the Synced Link.

It's a great way to sync up with friends if you're all trying to watch a YouTube video at the same time while chatting about it, for example.

Check it out right here!

How it works

First, the user pastes a link and selects how many people will join in the sync.

Clicking “Generate!” will generate a unique Synced Link, with a prompt to click the link and then send it to others.

Once any of the users clicks the Synced Link, they see the “Waiting…” page that specifies how many people still need to click the link before everyone is redirected.

When everyone has clicked the link, the users are all redirected at the same time.

Then, for example, you can all start watching that YouTube video at the same time!

Technical stuff

This project runs on Google App Engine, Python and Jinja2 on the backend, with HTML, CSS and JavaScript on the frontend. It uses the NDB Datastore API to store Synced Links, and the Channel API to keep users connected once they start clicking on a Synced Link.

It took about a week to set up, and the entire codebase consists of less than 450 lines of code.