I’ve been experimenting recently to see how seamless I can make IndieWeb interactions – replying, liking, reposting, following – on my phone. Silos have these down to a single tap each, which I haven’t quite achieved, but I have it down to three, and the network request happens in the background so there’s no visible delay. Progress!

The use case is, I’m looking at a post on the web or the fediverse, in my social reader or browser, and I want to reply. Or like, or repost. Or I’m looking at someone’s profile, and I want to follow them. I’m doing this IndieWeb style, so I want to post these here, on my web site, with the appropriate tag and syndication target(s), and let webmentions propagate them out. And I want it as quick and simple as possible. Very few taps, minimal delays.

Ideally these interactions would be built into my reader or a Micropub app, which are often the same thing. That has definitely happened! But current Android social readers and Micropub apps aren’t well maintained. There’s hope, and renewed interest, which is great, but I want something now. I also often want to respond to things outside my reader, not just inside it.

The standard way to do this is a share target that either opens an app or, ideally, performs the interaction directly. Remember, minimal taps. Navigating inside an app is a non-starter. Same with manually entering tags or toggling syndication targets. The silo gold standard is a single tap and immediate response. Aspirational!

I ended up making my own share targets with Roland Meyer‘s HTTP Shortcuts app. I had to construct raw Micropub HTTP requests in its UI, including auth token, content, tag, and syndication target, which took a bit of work, but the end result is exactly what I want. Three taps to like. Same for reply, repost, and follow. It even has a built in text input pop-up for composing replies. Slick!

Screenshots below. Here’s my config. Import it into the app, fill in your site’s Micropub endpoint and auth token in each shortcut, and you should be good to go.

Hopefully, this is all temporary. Mark Sutherland has started working on Indigenous/IndiePass again, and I’d love to switch to using that, or a similar proper Micropub app, once there’s one that works for me. Until then, though, I’m happy with this.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.