Description
Lemmy Universal Link Switcher, or LULs for short, scans all links on all websites, and if any link points to a Lemmy instance that is not your main/home instance, it rewrites the link so that it instead points to your main instance. Currently only works for community/user links.
Home Instance Setup
Simply visit the Lemmy instance you want to set as your home while the script is active. You will be asked if you want to set this instance to your home instance:
If you initially set your home instance wrong or just want to change it, no worries - simply go to your settings on your new home instance and press the button for it!
Features
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Rewrite all links of communities or users on all websites everywhere to your new instance! The rewritten links will have an icon next to it, and hovering/touching the icon will show you the original link, allowing you to go there if you want to.
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If you are already on a page that has a corresponding page on your home instance, a link will automatically be added to the page header.
Coming soon
- Post & comment links. Those are a bit harder because the URL has to be requested from the instances.
Repository & Issues
Also works on Android on Firefox with TamperMonkey, that’s what I’m mainly using it on. Also only tested it on Firefox, no idea about Chrome or anything else.
I installed it on Firefox with Greasemonkey. I don’t get the dialog asking if I want to set my instance to my home instance, and I have no button in my settings. So, at the moment, the script appears to be inoperative.
Edit: Tried a few more things. I visited several other instances, other than my home instance of lemmy.ca, and still don’t get any dialog about setting an instance to my home instance. Greasemonkey shows the script as enabled, but that’s it. I’m running Firefox 114.0.2 on Arch Linux.
Edit2: Attempted to post an issue at the referenced Gitlab page, but this page does not exist, and a search for this project was a dead end. I have disabled the script until/unless the authors provide more information as to what is going on.
Edit3: Found the Gitlab project. The provided URL on the Greasyfork page is incorrect. It should be https://gitlab.com/foundry-azzurite/lemmy-rewrite-links
I will leave an issue.
Same experience here.
Went to bed after I posted this. Will take a look in a bit.
Need to get a bit of feedback from you.
Any errors in the browser console (F12 by default)? So go to lemmy.ca, press F12, make sure the console is open, refresh, look for red error messages. If there are, copy them to me.
Yes. The following error appears:
Script error in [Greasemonkey script http://azzurite.tv//Lemmy - Rewrite Links to Home Instance; version 1.0.0]: ReferenceError: GM_getValue is not defined
What addon are you using for userscripts?
Greasemonkey
Alrighty, try updating, I’ve released a new version.
Got the ‘home instance’ dialog this time. Briefly checked it out, some of the links seem to be now directed towards my home instance, but there are no icons beside any link to show the original link as indicated in the description above.
Edit: Noticed the following error in the console:
Source map error: Error: URL constructor: tippy-bundle.umd.min.js.map is not a valid URL. Resource URL: user-script:http%3A//azzurite.tv//Lemmy%20-%20Rewrite%20Links%20to%20Home%20Instance Source Map URL: tippy-bundle.umd.min.js.map
That error’s irrelevant. Can you check that you have version 1.0.2 not 1.0.1?
tried it on ff with violent monkey, works great
Glad to hear it :) Post/comment support is coming!
This should be integrated into Lemmy itself as a feature.
I don’t believe this would be possible without relying on a userscript or a centralised site.
Assuming you are logged in to the website, couldn’t the website just check to see where you’re logged in to? Seems like a cookie might be able to do that (if the user gave permission)?
The functionality in this script is indeed only possible as an addon or userscript. Browsers specifically spent a lot of work trying to make it impossible for one site to get any information about which other sites the user visited, and for good reason. Just imagine the phishing this would allow if it were possible.
That said, there could of course be an official lemmy browser addon/userscript for this functionality. But it definitely wouldn’t be baked into the sites themselves.
Because idk if you noticed, but this script actually rewrites all links everywhere, so for example even if you get a result to some lemmy instance on duckduckgo, the link on duckduckgo itself will already point to your instance. Please tell me how that would be possible without an addon/userscipt :D
Cookies can only be read by the same domain (or subdomain). So a cookie set by lemmy.ml couldn’t be read by lemmy.world, as their domains are different. This is called the “same-origin policy”, and applies to all forms of local storage in browsers.
This works great for me on lemmy instances! However, it doesn’t seem to work on kbin.social (it is included in
const INSTANCES_KBIN
). Would be great if this was working on kbin instances too!That’s already known, see “Coming soon”.
Right, it’s right there, read past it, nvm.
This is amazing! Just what I’ve been looking for, at least until this gets implemented into the site itself. Thanks a lot for making and sharing this.