I'm working on something: a browser-based tool for viewing a mastodon account archive that requires zero setup or knowledge of the file format and works completely without a server so your data never leaves your device and you have full privacy (your nudes are safe).
I've gotten the very basics to work in a proof of concept and now I'm interested what features would be good to have in such a tool.
How would you like to navigate an archive of all your posts? Maybe an export into some other format? Filters? Search?
@esther oh ja, Volltextsuche, endlos scrollbar, nach Datum filterbar, jeweils mit Link zum Originaltoot.. und ich fände Statistiken cool, also zB wann ich am wenigsten oder am meisten gepostet habe, zu welcher Tageszeit ich am aktivsten war, welche Toots die meisten Interaktionen hatten etc.. und ich bin unsicher was ich mit Boosts haben wollen würde, weil einerseits fremder Content der nicht einfach bei mir sein sollte, andererseits such ich oft Dinge die ich mal geboostet hab..
@esther wow, I'm looking forward to this! my utopian best case would be to have more or less the same functionalities like tweetnest: (https://github.com/graulund/tweetnest): search and sortable by month/date with nice graphs of when you posted/boosted
@esther Could I view my own threads as threads? Even when I posted some of their toots weeks or months appart? That would be so lovely because I loreally like picking up old threads when I post. 😊
@esther Personally my one thing would be a chronological view with the ability to separate posts that I've posted the parent posts(with ability to see the reply chain) and ones where I'm replying.
For me, any searching capabilities would be a nice to have.
@esther Understandable(to be honest I was expecting it was going to be at best only replies from the same instance if it were possible considering how Fediverse works).
Personally I'm a big fan of tumblr's fairly-flexible approach to archive browsing (by-month, tags, text search). But tbh I think just having the ability to text search an archive of my own posts would be great.
The reason for building this is that the archive file format that Mastodon spits out isn't very useful without specialised tools that can work with the ActivityPub data format. Even if you manage to unpack the actual files, what that heck is an "outbox.json"? Right?
There are a few things that use python scripts and similar solutions but those aren't usable for most people and privacy is a core concern since the archive includes DMs and other non-public content.
@esther i think this could be super useful. ive viewed the files and its really fun to look back at whatever nonsense i forgot i wrote. filtering out images vs text etc seems useful as well as just plain search since i mostly just use ctrl f through mine now. i think making links clickable would do a lot to make even the most basic viewing of it super useful since right now i just paste them into my search bar here to find the post. not sure if theres a way around that that avoids logging in though. but yeah even just search, sort, and a few filters would be amazing hahah
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