I’ve been working on a small project called Drift, a free, open-source Chrome extension for sharing articles and passages to Mastodon. Version 1.0.0 is now available on GitHub as a prerelease.
Drift cuts down on the copying and pasting. Highlight a passage in an article, click the extension, and it creates an editable draft with your selected text first, followed by the page title and link. Add your thoughts, choose your Mastodon server, and continue to Mastodon to review and publish.
You can also share a whole page or use the right-click menu to share a link or selected text.
A few other useful features:
Save multiple Mastodon servers and choose a default.
Optionally remove common tracking tags from shared links.
Recover edits when reopening a draft on the same page during your browser session.
Copy your draft to use elsewhere.
Use light or dark mode and a customizable keyboard shortcut.
Drift doesn’t need your password or an API token. There’s no advertising or usage analytics inside the extension, and publishing stays in Mastodon’s own composer.
The Chrome Web Store submission package is ready. For now, trying Drift requires downloading the extension and loading it through Chrome’s Developer mode.
Visit the project website · Download the 1.0.0 prerelease
All features are free, and donations are optional. If you find Drift useful, supporting me here helps make time for development, testing, and maintenance. Trying it, sharing it, or reporting a problem helps too.
Thanks for supporting my work.
— Kyle