Easy IndieWeb interactions on Android

Commenting, liking, and retweeting have never been quite as easy on the IndieWeb as on Facebook, Twitter, and other silos, especially on mobile. There are bookmarklets for WordPress and Known that work well on desktop, but they’re not easy to set up on phones or tablets, and they don’t work at all outside the browser. If you’re reading a post in your feed reader app, and you want to indie like it, you’re out of luck…

…until now! The Bookmarklet Free app lets you share to a custom URL – like your site’s posting interface! – and pass the title and link as parameters. This means you can reply to or like a post from any Android app with just three taps: Share, then the Bookmarklet Free custom URL, then your site’s publish button. What’s more, if your site can POSSE silo interactions, or you use Bridgy Publish, it even works from the Twitter and Facebook apps. Living the dream!

For example, if you use the IndieWeb Press This bookmarklets, here’s how to set up a share bookmarklet for likes. Open the Bookmarklet app, tap Custom Services, then the menu icon in the bottom right, then Create Custom Services, then fill in the fields like as shown here, replacing https://snarfed.org/ with your site’s WordPress path. (Also make sure you have the most recent version of the IndieWeb Press This plugin as of Oct. 21 2014.)

For other types of interactions, just change type=like in the Base URL to type=reply, type=repost, or type=rsvp, respectively.

If you’re on Known, try using http://YOURSITE/share?share_type=reply as the Base URL, share_url as the URL parameter name, and leave the Title parameter name blank.

Happy interacting!

Also on IndieNews.

31 thoughts on “Easy IndieWeb interactions on Android

  1. “The Bookmarklet Free app lets you share to a custom URL – like your site’s posting interface!” but won’t get selected text as well

  2. Great tip! I added some simple sanitizing: if “http” appears in the string and isn’t at position zero, remove everything before its position. This way it strips the “check out so-and-so’s tweet” text and just leaves the URL.

  3. Finally put this in place on my phone & it works well for all types of post beside the “note” or simple status type: it doesn’t pick up the title of the post just the url. I wish there was some kind of parameter I could add to the custom bookmarklet so to be able to pick up the title of the webpage I want to share or talk about.
    I need to test if in a reply-to context I can get the url-to-reply to be filled in the “reply to site” area of the post I want to create.

  4. #indieweb Thanks @tinokremer. I was just noodling around with one @kylewmahan & @schnarfed recommended for @WithKnown and having issues. I’m hoping to get it sorted as it’s one of the daily stumbling blocks I encounter with respect to #indieweb on mobile.

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