Tumblr Hack Week, January 2024 Edition

Once again it was Hack Week (more than just a day!) at Tumblr! This is getting repetitive in the best way. A couple of times per year we slow down our normal work and spend a week working on scratching a personal itch or features we want as user and see how far we can get with our hacks. One thing from the last Hack Week in September made it all the way to a new experiment out to some testers: Tumblr Patio!

Here are some of the projects that got built for our most recent Hack Week in January. Some of these things you may also end up seeing on the site…

Spoiler text, spoiler blocks, and centered text!

This one is so obvious and amazing, it’s wild we don’t already have it. For Hack Week, Katie added the ability to select text in a paragraph to be hidden behind a wall of black that can be revealed with a tap. This can be super useful to hide spoilers. And even better: whole spoiler blocks. And while we’re here, the ability to center text!

A plethora of new default blog avatars

We haven’t updated our default avatars in several years. (Some of you may remember this one from 10+ years ago.) They’re feeling a bit stale to us, so why not update them? And while we’re at it… make a ton more variations! Paul from the Tumblr Design team came up with a suite of new default avatars, using our latest Tumblr color palette. Here’s a look at some of them, but there are actually many dozens more using different colors:

Notifications and emails about engagement on your posts

This one is for the folks on Tumblr who love numbers and their Activity page. Daniel, @jesseatblr​, and the Feeds & Machine Learning team worked on some new notifications and emails we could send out to people about how their posts have been doing lately on the platform, such as how many views they’ve gotten, and by how many people. We already have this available (and more) when you Blaze a post, but why not open it up to more people? It’s really useful to the folks who use Tumblr to help build an audience for their work!

A new way of navigating the web: the Command Palette

Some apps we use a lot have a “command palette” accessible via a keyboard shortcut for quick keyboard-driven access to different parts of the platform. For example, Slack and Discord have Command + K to access their quick switchers to hop around conversations. What if Tumblr had one? Kelly and Paul built one! Press Command/Control + K on Tumblr and you can use your keyboard to jump to your blog, Activity, your recent conversations, search, dozens of places!

As always, stay tuned to the @changes​ blog to see if any of these hacks make it on Tumblr for real!

alias please=sudo

Keeping a site like Tumblr alive and snappy for you to post at a moment’s notice, all day and night, is no small feat. Pesky crabs sneak into our data centers and cut cables all the time…

If you want to help our small but excellent systems team, want to work from anywhere, and are deep into nginx, mysql, kubernetes, and caching, join us in this adventure. Or, if you have a friend or a colleague who’s good with servers, send them our way.

Tumblr Hack Week, September 2023 Edition

Once again it was Hack Week (more than just a day!) at Tumblr! A couple of times per year we slow down our normal work and spend a week working on scratching a personal itch or features we want as user and see how far we can get with our hacks. One thing from the last Hack Day in March made it all the way to production: redesigning how direct messaging looks on Tumblr! Pretty cool!

Here are some of the projects that got made for this most recent Hack Week in September. Some of these things you may also end up seeing on the site…

Tumblr Patio

Maybe this will look familiar to you, but we love this idea of being able to organize Tumblr feeds into many “columns” side-by-side, creating a very dense but lively view of Tumblr. Lenny, Kelly, and Paul hacked this together, and we’re pretty excited to see where it’ll go. Each column can be a different feed on Tumblr, like For You, Following, your Activity, a specific blog, a search, Trending, even a Collection, so many possibilities!

Tumblr Booths

Meanwhile, a separate team of @autoplanes, Katie, @lex, Shaun, and Eve dug into the idea of selling digital and physical goods through blogs on Tumblr, leveraging our sibling platform WooCommerce! Blogs could put whatever they’d like for sale here, and have a dedicated space for it. We know there are so many amazing artists and artisans here who could use this to more easily sell their creations on Tumblr!

Avatar Frames/Hats

This one is a golden oldie, it keeps coming back hack day after hack day, and each time it gets even better. Santi and Maxime hacked together some example avatar “frames” and “hats” that folks on Tumblr could purchase for their blog. Maybe eventually people could create these and sell them or gift them to each other!

As always, stay tuned to the @changes blog to see if any of these hacks make it on Tumblr for real!

StreamBuilder: our open-source framework for powering your dashboard.

Today, we’re abnormally jazzed to announce that we’re open-sourcing the custom framework we built to power your dashboard on Tumblr. We call it StreamBuilder, and we’ve been using it for many years.

First things first. What is open-sourcing? Open sourcing is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. In more accessible language, it is any program whose source code is made available for use or modification as users or other developers see fit.

What, then, is StreamBuilder? Well, every time you hit your Following feed, or For You, or search results, a blog’s posts, a list of tagged posts, or even check out blog recommendations, you’re using this framework under the hood. If you want to dive into the code, check it out here on GitHub!

StreamBuilder has a lot going on. The primary architecture centers around “streams” of content: whether posts from a blog, a list of blogs you’re following, posts using a specific tag, or posts relating to a search. These are separate kinds of streams, which can be mixed together, filtered based on certain criteria, ranked for relevancy or engagement likelihood, and more.

On your Tumblr dashboard today you can see how there are posts from blogs you follow, mixed with posts from tags you follow, mixed with blog recommendations. Each of those is a separate stream, with its own logic, but sharing this same framework. We inject those recommendations at certain intervals, filter posts based on who you’re blocking, and rank the posts for relevancy if you have “Best stuff first” enabled. Those are all examples of the functionality StreamBuilder affords for us.

So, what’s included in the box?

What’s still to come

If you have questions, please check out the code and file an issue there.

Tumblr Hack Day, March 2023 Edition

Well well well, it was Hack Day once again at Tumblr. A few times per year we slow down our normal work and spend a day (or sometimes a whole week) working on whatever we want and see how far we can get with our hacks. Here are some of the projects that got made for our most recent Hack Day earlier this month. Some of these things you may also end up seeing on the site…

Wesley worked on adding the ability to translate the text content of posts using LibreTranslate, which works really well! We know this is a big pain point for folks who use Tumblr around the world, so we’re excited to keep experimenting with this.

Omar built a Feature Wishlist for the Android app, which has different lists for community-driven and staff-driven feature ideas, with the ability to upvote which ones you’d like the most! Really cool, we’re trying to think of ways like this to expand what we can do to collaborate with the community, like we already do with the @wip and @changes blogs.

One thing that’s been bugging @blowery forever is trying to figure out who exactly added the tags when you’re viewing a reblog of a post. It can be hard to tell whether the person reblogging it added the tags, or if they’re meant to come from the reblogged post. To help distinguish this, they hacked together putting the reblogger’s avatar next to the tags they added at the bottom of their reblog!

@straku hacked together a more modern look for our 1:1 messaging on Tumblr, bringing the message bubbles into a left-and-right back-and-forth format, and using some better colors. Looks a lot snazzier!

As always, stay tuned to the @changes blog to see if any of these hacks make it on Tumblr for real!

Tumblr Hack Day, December 2022 Edition

Ah yes, it was Hack Day once again at Tumblr. A few times per year we slow down our normal work and spend a day (or sometimes a whole week) working on whatever we want and see how far we can get with our hacks. The main star of the last Hack Week was… pretty much all of them!

Here are some of the projects that got made for our most recent Hack Day earlier this month. Some of these things you may also end up seeing on the site…

@yi5h worked on a huge suite of “rewards” that folks on Tumblr could unlock by doing various things on the platform, such as reblogging, creating content, even just logging in! Maybe you could earn badges this way to put on your blog…

@straku hacked together a new way of viewing reblog trails. We commonly get feedback that reblog trails are difficult to understand, so styling them differently to make the information clearer is fun to try out!

Meanwhile, Evgeniy built a beautifully simple “Back to Top” button for the Android app, which does exactly what it sounds like: brings you back to the top of whatever feed you’re currently viewing. No more scrolling, scrolling, scrolling — just one tap!

As always, stay tuned to the @changes blog to see if any of these hacks make it on Tumblr for real!

Tumblr Hack Week, September 2022 Edition

It was Hack Week (more than just a day!) once again at Tumblr! A couple of times per year we slow down our normal work and spend a week working on whatever we want and see how far we can get with our hacks. The main star of the last Hack Week was the “Summon crab!” button, and we loved it so much that we rolled it out not just for April Fools this year, but we made it our first gift-able widget in TumblrMart!

Here are some of the projects that got made for this most recent Hack Week in September. Some of these things you may also end up seeing on the site…

Tumbeast Digital Pet

Ben worked on adding our friendly server room Tumbeasts to Tumblr as a cute little digital pet. You can feed them and play with them, and they poop and get unhappy and need tending, of course. Who wouldn’t want one of these to take care of every day on Tumblr, forever and ever?

Tumblr Blaze on TumblrMart

@adalpari added Tumblr Blaze as a gift-able item in TumblrMart, which would allow folks to buy Blaze "credits" for other people. Perfect for those times you see an amazing post on Tumblr that definitely deserves to be spread around, and you don’t mind throwing some money at letting that person have a chance to spread it via Blaze!

User Account Switcher

@yi5h hacked together an account switcher for the web, so that folks can log in to more than one Tumblr account and easily switch back and forth between them. Super handy if you have one account for your roleplaying character, and another for your Star Trek fandom discussions. Very useful!

Tumblr Collections

On web as well, João made a version of an idea that’s floated around many times, the idea of being able to organize posts on Tumblr into "collections" that can be named and shared. I think everyone would very much enjoy having a collection called "waves" that’s just soothing GIFs of ocean waves.

As always, stay tuned to the @changes blog to see if any of these hacks make it on Tumblr for real!

Making GIFs load faster

AKA why are some of my GIFs being turned into videos?

Overview

Tumblr Hack Week, March 2022 Edition

It was Hack Week (more than just a day!) once again at Tumblr! A couple of times per year we grind everything to a halt and spend a week working on whatever we want and see how far we can get with our hacks. Since last time, we’ve launched the ability to have a Discord => Tumblr integration, we’re close to launching Twitch embed support, and custom logos are now possible in the mobile apps! And from a previous Hack Day, we’ve launched “Timestamps Everywhere” on web, and we’re working on rolling it out to the mobile apps very soon!

Here are some of the projects that got made for this last Hack Week. Some of these things you may also end up seeing on the site…

Interacting as a Sideblog/Secondary blog

@designpatternpirate put together a proof of concept for switching to a sideblog/secondary blog when liking or replying to posts. Using this hack, you’d be able to switch which of your blogs you’re “acting as” when hitting the like button or when replying to a post, to start. You’d even have separate Likes pages for each blog!

“One Year Ago” Dashboard Feed

André hacked together a feed which shows a portal backwards in time, to what the blogs you’re following were posting a year ago today:

Moving Android notification settings

On Android, Omar moved all of our notification settings out of the Tumblr app and into the Android OS level notifications settings view, like other apps do:

“Time for crab!” 🦀

@superchlorine hacked together a delightful button for the dashboard that summons crabs which scuttle across the page, and even comment on what they’re traipsing over:

As always, stay tuned to the @changes blog to see if any of these hacks make it on Tumblr for real!

Tumblr Hack Day, December 2021 Edition

It was Hack Day once again at Tumblr! A couple of times per year we grind everything to a halt and spend 24 hours working on whatever we want and see how far we can get with our hacks. Here are some of the projects that got made for Hack Day! Some of these things you may end up seeing on the site…

Twitch Embeds

Wesley hacked together the ability to post Twitch streams to Tumblr! These can be live streams or clips.

Tumblr to Discord

@cyle put together a very simple webhook integration between Tumblr and Discord so you can send events about your blog to a Discord server:

Custom Tumblr logos on mobile

@mlu, @dakotairene, and friends hacked together the ability for us to put custom Tumblr logos in the mobile apps’ dashboard tab bar, like we do on the web!

Tumblr Time Machine

Lucila constructed an elaborate Tumblr Time Machine, so you can filter search results to a specific year:

Stay tuned to the @changes blog to see if any of these hacks make it on Tumblr for real!

(GIF by @jjjjjjjjjjohn )

OAuth 2 on the Tumblr API

Ten years ago HTTPS wasn't as nearly as widespread as today. It is hard to believe that HTTPS was essentially opt-in, if available at all! Back then, people also had to get creative when inventing means to delegate access to someone else. One solution was OAuth 1, conceived by the IETF, later adopted by Tumblr in 2011.

Time went by, and here we are in 2021, with hardly any popular website not shielded with HTTPS (including your own blog!). Today, it wouldn't make much sense to adopt OAuth 1 as inconvenient as it is. Yet here we are, still asking people to use outdated protocols for their new fancy Tumblr apps. Not anymore!

Starting today, you have another option: we're officially opening up OAuth 2 support for the Tumblr API!

Get started

OAuth 2 flow requires you to know two key URIs:

If you're familiar with OAuth 2, register an application and check out our API documentation (specifically the section on OAuth 2) to get up and running.

The future of OAuth 1

There are no plans to shut down OAuth 1. Your app will continue to work as usual. But be sure to keep an eye on this blog just in case anything new pops up that would prevent us from serving OAuth 1 requests.

What's more, if you wish to adopt OAuth 2 in your app, given its superior simplicity, you don't have to migrate entirely to OAuth 2 at once. Instead, you can keep the old sign-up / log-in flow working, and exchange OAuth 1 access token to OAuth 2 tokens on the fly. There's only one catch: this exchange will invalidate the original access token, so you should be using only the OAuth 2 Bearer authentication for any subsequent requests.

Next steps

That's all from us today. Happy hacking!

Requiring HTTPS on the Tumblr API

The time has come folks! We're officially dropping support for insecure (http://) requests to the Tumblr API after October 31st, 2021. Instead, please use https:// for all requests. The following day we'll start failing all insecure requests and invalidating any credentials sent in plain text. You can expect the API to respond with a 403 Forbidden status and a 5006 subcode in this scenario.

Yes, this means you can still get freaky for one last Halloween, but please make sure you add the s to https before you head out for your annual trick-or-treating adventure!

Tumblr Hack Week, September 2021 Edition

It was HACK WEEK at Tumblr and Automattic earlier this month! Just like back in June, we stopped our normal work to focus on some great possible new features, some bug fixing, and more. Here’s a taste of some of the projects that got hacked together. Some of these will hopefully make it to be real new parts of Tumblr, but as always, we can’t guarantee anything here with a timeline or even that they’ll ever see the light of day again -- they’re hacks!

Fixing Tag URL issues across Tumblr

L and @superchlorine are working on fixing a lot of issues about how we parse tags in URLs, so that we are more consistent across the web and the apps. This is something that we know has been frustrating for a long time: trying to search for posts tagged with a + sign or with spaces often doesn’t work as you’d expect. But not for much longer! We’ve been slowly fixing these issues one at a time and posting about it on the Changes blog.

Tumblr Ignite: pay to promote posts!

This actually carried over from a previous Hack Day: the ability to click a little 🔥 button on a post, throw down some cash, and promote that post as a Sponsored post across Tumblr. There’d be some kind of moderation queue on our side to ensure nothing unsafe gets sponsored in this way, and any sponsored post would be “frozen” and not editable during the time it’s being promoted. The Ads Core team, lead by @thstall with help from Argyris, Oleg, and Nathan took this pretty far towards being production-ready.

Bringing two-factor authentication settings to the mobile apps

We really want as many people as possible to protect their accounts by leveraging Two Factor Authentication, which you can currently enable by going to your account settings on the web. But it’d be even better to be able to access these settings in the mobile apps themselves! Megs, Adam, and Eduardo are still working to make this a reality.

The Return of Reblog Graphs

For those of you who remember this experiment in Tumblr Labs, this is a popup you can check out on posts which shows you a graph of all of the reblogs on a post and how they’re connected. This is one crazy way you can visualize how posts on Tumblr get reblogged around in huge chains and clusters! @cyle got a working React-based prototype working for Hack Week, and now we’re working to bring this back to the web for real.

Tumblr Fan Funding

Connie and the Post+ team built a prototype of Fan Funding on Tumblr, to help creators set a funding goal and get to that goal, using a lot of the same technology we used to create Post+.

Stay tuned to the @changes blog to find out if any of these end up becoming a part of Tumblr for real!

Very cool stuff! 👏 Give it a read.

Want to embed a tweet? Just paste the URL into a new link block on Tumblr. Or you can use the Share feature in other apps, like Twitter itself, to send the tweet URL to the Tumblr app.

You’ll get a perfect little screenshot of the tweet. You don’t have to flap your device around to help the image develop, but nobody is going to stop you.

A great piece from Vicki, an Automattic engineer on rotation at Tumblr, about the ritual of deploying code to production! 🚢

Tumblr Hack Day, June 2021 Edition

It was Hack Day again at Tumblr! A couple of times per year we grind everything to a halt and spend 24 hours working on whatever we want and see how far we can get with our hacks. Here are some of the projects that got made for Hack Day! Some of these things you may end up seeing on the site...

Timestamps on Posts

@superchlorine hacked the website to show timestamps on every post, reblog trail item, and note in the notes view. This is also already a popular XKit extension, and it's easy to see why!

Mutual Love

Evgeniy hacked the Tumblr Android app to play a cute sound and animation whenever you follow someone who already follows you! Being mutuals on Tumblr is something special, and this celebrates it in such a cute way.

(This example uses this lovely kiss animation.)

Grid and Masonry View for the Dashboard

@cyle hacked the dashboard on web to view it in a grid format (like the Likes page on web) or a masonry format (like the Explore and Tagged pages on web). It creates a dense amount of information!

Post only to a Tagged Page

Tanya hacked the post editor to let you post directly to a tagged page! The posts made this way will only show up on that tagged page, and not your blog, or anywhere else. Great for folks that want to participate in a tag but not have it show up on their blog!

Mobile Rave Room

And it wouldn't be a Tumblr Hack Day without a rave room hack: @oli took the rave room mobile and did a (completely not officially sponsored) DJ set in NYC and live streamed it.

Stay tuned to the @changes blog to see if any of these hacks make it on Tumblr for real!