New XKit and the new Tumblr dashboard
Hi everyone! Some of you may be aware that Tumblr has been offering a beta of the new web interface for a little while now. This new web experience comes with some nice perks, such as color palettes, soft refreshing, a built-in tag viewer, and a better user blocking system. It’s also built from the ground up with accessibility standards in mind, and designed to be fully compatible with screen readers.
Unfortunately, such long-needed improvements have come at a price for those that truly rely on XKit features—the new web interface is entirely new, written from the ground up, and thus, XKit doesn’t work on it.
Recently, we’ve become aware that some people have been forcibly opted into this beta with no option to exit it, and this lines up with the projection that this new web interface will be fully launched by April 2020. However, the New XKit project is entirely staffed by volunteers, and we do not expect to have enough bandwidth to be able to fully update XKit for this new dashboard before its full launch.
Update (2020-03-24): Tumblr has introduced an opt-out toggle in the Dashboard Settings for XKit users, which will give us a little more time until the full switch-over.
“Oh no! Tumblr’s trying to kill XKit!”
You would be amazed at what’s actually happening. A few Tumblr engineers are working with us and are building things into the new dashboard specifically to make our jobs easier! So please, rest assured that XKit being broken currently is not part of some grand scheme to make the Tumblr dashboard unmodifiable - we just need more time to catch up, and we’re being helped along.
“But I can’t use Tumblr without XKit!”
This is a problem we see echoed a lot. While we will be updating XKit to work on the new dashboard, we don’t know yet how long it will take us. We’re prioritizing features based on the suggestions you all give, so it’s extremely helpful when you let both us and Tumblr know which parts of XKit are absolutely essential to your day-to-day Tumblr usage. In the meantime, we ask that you try out the new dashboard, with all its new features, and give clear, constructive, and respectful feedback to both us and Tumblr support.
Tumblr has already implemented some equivalents of existing XKit features, and we’re already expecting more to appear down the line. As Tumblr gains a better understanding of why and how people use XKit, we expect to see that list grow.
This is not the end for XKit - merely a stage of metamorphosis.
Thank you all for your patience!