Let's talk about: Favorites
This guide is currently outdated. In September of 2020, as part of Micro.blog 2.0 the team updated Favorites into Bookmarks.
Let’s talk about Favorites.
On Micro.blog you can save posts into a separate collection, made available in a special version of the timeline called Favorites. This collection is entirely private and the authors of posts you choose to favorite are not made aware of this action at all; there are no notifications of any kind when it comes to favorites.
Let’s save and view some Favourites.
Whether on the web or in the app, saving favorites means using your main timeline. Make sure you have it loaded.
When you see a post you would like to favorite, look for the Favorite action which can be found in the meta data below the post, next to the Reply action:
Once you have selected the action it changes to Unfavorite:
This means you have favorited that post and it is now saved to your Favorites collection. To view this collection look to the top of your timeline on the web:
… or in the tab menu on iOS:
In there you will see the posts you have saved, as part of your Favorites collection, a static timeline:
One important issue with Favorites is the availability of the feature; whilst it is available via the method displayed above, it is not as consistently available in every view, for example you can favorite replies in certain situations but not all of the time.
You can also use Favorites outside of the official apps, whether in dedicated third-party apps or those that use protocols built on open web standards. For example, you could use the Bookmark feature with OmniBear, Quill, or Indigenous to save anything from across the web.
Favorites can be used in different ways depending on how you’d like to use them;
- they can serve as a simple bookmark system for different posts and replies, all saved conveniently in a separate timeline;
- you can also treat them as a read-later timeline for those posts you don’t currently have time to read;
- lastly, they can be used for grouping together mini-collections by favoriting the individual posts and replies one after the other.
You can use them in one of these ways or a mix of them, such is the flexibility inherent to this simple feature.
As with the rest of Micro.blog, there is no doubt Favorites will be improved over time in a stable, iterative manner; in the meantime you can ask for help and provide feedback via the official support channels.
There we have it; that’s Favorites. Now you know what to do and how to do it.
Links
