You really like me
October 6, 2018 at 7:51 AM by Dr. Drang
If you’re like me, you tend to think of automation as a way to streamline the performance of complex, many-step actions. And while that’s certainly an important use of automation, sometimes its the simple things, things that barely seem worthy of automating, that are the most satisfying. Today I used Shortcuts to replace a bit of lost functionality in Tweetbot that’s been bugging me for quite a while.
Once upon a time in Tweetbot, you could see who liked one of your tweets by swiping to the left to see it by itself and then tapping on the number of likes.
You can still do this with retweets, but not with likes. As a fundamentally insecure person, desperate for the approval of others, I miss being able to quickly see who liked my tweets. That’s what my “You Really Like Me” shortcut addresses.1
Here it is, a Share Sheet shortcut with just two steps:
It takes advantage of Twitter’s simple URL system. If you want to see the likes of the tweet with URL
https://twitter.com/drdrang/status/1047637958130642945
you just stick /likes onto the end of it:
https://twitter.com/drdrang/status/1047637958130642945/likes
That’s what the first step of the shortcut does. The second step shows the web page for that URL.
Boom. Lost functionality replaced. To be sure, what used to be a single tap in Tweetbot is now three (Share→Shortcuts→You Really Like Me), but at least I don’t have to mess around with launching another app and either pasting in a URL or navigating through my tweets.
Update Oct 6, 2018 10:13 AM I didn’t include a download link for this shortcut, because I figured it was too short to bother. Then I heard from Sebastian Peitsch:
@drdrang Everything’s different in German but I managed to get this done via comparing the icons
Thanks Doc!
— Sebastian Peitsch (@SPeitsch) Sat Oct 6 2018 2:57 PM
If you’re using Shortcuts in a different language, the names of the actions aren’t the same, which makes it harder to copy than it should be. But an imported shortcut will be localized to your language. So here’s a link to download: You Really Like Me.
Thanks to Sebastian for the help.
Update Oct 6, 2018 10:30 AM If you find that the shortcut isn’t working for you, that it opens the tweet in a browser view but not the list of likes, it’s because you aren’t logged in to Twitter in that browser. I thought I had tested it under those conditions, but I hadn’t. Thanks to Grant Buell for finding the error and Sean for explaining it.
I should also point out that John Cutler has a two-tap system for getting to his likes:
@oscargong1995 @drdrang @OpenerApp Tapping the time/date stamp on a tweet in Tweetbot will also open the tweet in the mobile twitter site. As long as you’re logged in, you’ll be able to view likes there too.
— John Cutler (@JohnCutler) Sat Oct 6 2018 1:46 PM
This takes one less tap, but I find it takes slightly more time than my shortcut, as it loads the entire mobile Twitter site after you tap on the time/date stamp. Still, you might prefer it.
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With apologies to Sister Bertrille. ↩
