How this works: this page parses the .lnk binary format directly in your browser tab with plain JavaScript. No WebAssembly, no CDN dependency, nothing uploaded — your file is never sent anywhere.
Why this matters: a .lnk file can reveal more than its target. Windows embeds a "tracker" block with the machine name and internal disk identifiers where the shortcut was created, which is sometimes used in digital forensics and incident response to trace where a file or shortcut originated.
Reading a .lnk file on Mac or Linux
A .lnk shortcut only makes sense to double-click on Windows, but the file format itself (Microsoft's published MS-SHLLINK specification) is just a documented binary layout — nothing here requires Wine, a Windows VM, or any Windows-only tooling. Drop the file in above from any operating system and this page reads it directly.
Is my .lnk file safe to open?
A shortcut can carry more than its visible icon suggests: a working directory, command-line arguments, and an optional "tracker" block recording the machine it was created on. Some malware abuses exactly this — a shortcut disguised as a document (for example, invoice.pdf.lnk, which Windows may display as if it were just "invoice.pdf") that actually launches PowerShell with hidden arguments when double-clicked. This page only reads the file's fields to display them; it never executes a shortcut's target or arguments, so it's safe to inspect a suspicious .lnk file here before deciding whether to run it at all.
Troubleshooting
The "tracker" section is empty
This optional block (NetBIOS machine name, volume serial number, and similar identifiers) is only written by some Windows versions and configurations. Its absence is normal and doesn't indicate a parsing problem.
The target path shows an old-style 8.3 DOS name
Some .lnk files store a legacy short path (like PROGRA~1) alongside a full Unicode path in a separate extra-data block. This page shows both when both are present in the file.
Prefer the command line?
LnkParse3 is a cross-platform Python library; exiftool file.lnk also reads the basics on Mac, Linux, or Windows.