Using Sparkles to post across devices

Been using Sparkles for a few weeks and liking it so far, so here’s my setup for using it to post from different devices:

Prerequisites: Sparkles is a Micropub client and uses IndieAuth to authenticate against your website and post to it, so you would need those two technologies set up. I’m using IndieKit myself, which takes care of both.

Android: by far the easiest. After setting up IndieKit, just go to https://sparkles.sploot.com/ using Chrome, log in using your website, and add the site to your home screen. Since Sparkles is a progressive web application, it will show up as a share target and will let you chose how to share whatever you want to share (as a like, bookmark, RSVP or reply).

Desktop: since it is a Web application after all, with a bit of reverse engineering, I managed to create a bookmarklet that opens the same page that is used when sharing in Android, so I can share whatever I am reading / watching on my browser with a click on my bookmarks bar. And you can too! Just drag this to your bookmarks bar: Post with Sparkles.

iOS: this was a bit more involved. I first tried to use the first iOS Shortcut listed here: iOS Shortcut Actions for Micropub posting, but I had a hard time generating the Micropub token just to have it expire after a while -_-, so I edited the shortcut to just open the Sparkles page that corresponded to each post type (since it has URLs for creating each, such as /new/bookmark). And you can also use this! (isn’t it wonderful? :D), just open this link in your iOS device: Post with Sparkles.

And that’s it. If something fancier comes along, this page will get updated (b’-‘)b