A long time ago, I had an app called Favs that collected everything I liked/hearted/bookmarked/whatevered across a ton of services (it was sadly abandoned). We’re talking Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, newsreader services, Pocket—probably over 20 services. It was a one-stop journal to find that thing I know I liked somewhere, and it made me happy.

IMG_0124I miss Favs, so I recently decided to try and recreate it using apps and services at my disposal. Last week, I settled on Day One + IFTTT, and so far it’s working pretty well. If you dig this idea and you’re a Day One user (2.0, not Classic), or this post inspires you to give it a try, here’s how to set it up. I’ll write from the assumption that you have accounts for both apps and a basic understanding of how they work:

  • Open Day One and create a new journal. Name it something relevant to you. I went with “Favs”
  • Open IFTTT, tap the Search tab, and search for the first service for which you want to archive your likes
  • (Optional) You might need to log into that service in order to enable it for your IFTTT needs
  • Tap it, scroll down a smidge, then tap “New Applet”
  • In the “If ‘This’ then that” screen that appears, tap ‘This’ and pick the action for your service related to liking something
  • “That” should now be highlighted in the applet screen. Tap it, then find Day One and select it (you might need to log into Day One to enable it for IFTTT)
  • Tap “Create new journal entry”
  • In the Day One journal entry customization screen that appears, be sure to select your new Day One journal for these entries
  • (Optional) Customize the entry template to your desires
  • Save your applet
  • Rinse and repeat for every relevant service

Day One can often grab things like metadata about the item you liked, and sometimes the related photo thumbnail or featured image.

Things To Know

One drawback of this setup is that IFTTT doesn’t support grabbing your likes from every service. For example, while Facebook does support IFTTT, it doesn’t allow access to grabbing your likes.

Other services simply may not be available since, as I understand it, even if they have an API, their maker needs to opt into IFTTT’s service and pay a monthly fee to be listed. Some, like my new bookmarking service Dropmark, do not yet have an interest or budget for it.

A Tip

When it comes to searching your likes later in Day One, you might need to make sure you select this specific journal. Day One has an “All Entries” view that searches everything, or you can search each individual journal by first selecting it, then searching.

So Far, So Mostly Good

I’m generally happy with this setup so far. My main gripe is that, since it’s dependent on IFTTT, there are a number of services I can’t plug in simply because they don’t support IFTTT. Swarm checkins are there (handy because I’m bad at remembering restaurant names), so are Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Pocket, and Feedly. But Untapped, Distiller, and others aren’t.

That said, I’ll probably stick with this unless something better comes along. I’d love to see Favs return or a new app built to solve this exact problem, though I realize indie App Store economics can be tough these days. Still, this is a good way to keep an ongoing catalog of those many things you like all over the internet.

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