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Sharing from a phone

Send a picture, a text or a link from another app on your phone to a feed: Photos → Share → notefeed → pick the feed → Post.

Android

Install notefeed as an app with Chrome (Add to Home Screen or Install app) and open it once. Installed from Samsung Internet, notefeed is in the share sheet, but sharing only opens the start page (#314). From then on it is in the share sheet of other apps:

  1. Share one or more pictures, a text or a link and pick notefeed.
  2. The start page asks which feed it goes to: one of Your feeds (the feeds this browser has opened), or type a name.
  3. That feed's compose box opens with the pictures waiting and the text filled in. Add words if you like, then Post.

What to know:

  • The pictures stay on the phone until you post. They wait in the browser, not on the server; nothing is uploaded before Post, and sharing something new replaces what was waiting.
  • Shrunk and checked like any picture you add in the compose box: PNG, JPEG, GIF and WebP, at most 10 per note (the first 10 are attached), shrunk to 1 MiB before upload. Other files don't offer notefeed in the share sheet; shared along with pictures, they are left out. See Pictures.
  • A protected feed or a locked instance asks for its password or the sign-in first; what you shared is still there afterwards.
  • Open notefeed once after installing (or after clearing the browser's data for it). Sharing pictures needs the small helper the app installs on its first visit (a service worker). Without it, the share fails with "not found"; open notefeed and share again.

iPhone

iOS doesn't put web apps in the share sheet, so the way in there is a Shortcut that posts to the API. Set it up once in the Shortcuts app:

  1. New shortcut, then in its details turn on Show in Share Sheet and let it receive Images.
  2. Dictionary: one entry per feed, the feed name as key and its feed password as value (empty for an open feed).
  3. Choose from List with the dictionary's keys: the feed. Get Dictionary Value for that key: the password.
  4. Ask for Input (text, "Caption"), which may be left empty.
  5. Repeat with Each item of the Shortcut Input:
    • Convert Image to JPEG, with Preserve Metadata off: iPhone photos are HEIC, which notefeed does not take. (The server shrinks the photo and removes its metadata anyway.)
    • Add to Variable Pictures.
  6. Get Contents of URL: https://<your instance>/<feed> (the chosen feed), method POST, request body Form with a field file of type File set to Pictures, and, only when the caption is not empty (an If around it), a field text with the caption. Under Headers add X-Feed-Password with the password when it is not empty, and, on an instance with a password (NOTEFEED_PASSWORD), Authorization with Bearer <instance password>.
  7. Show Result or Show Notification with the answer.

With a caption, the pictures arrive as one note with them attached; without one, each picture is a note of its own (see Posting a note with its pictures).

Not tried on a device yet

The action names follow Apple's Shortcuts app; the recipe has not been run on an iPhone yet. One thing to watch the first time: whether the form's File field sends every picture of the Pictures variable, not only the first. If a step is named differently or it doesn't, open an issue.

On notefeed.me

Pictures need a license: on the free tier every picture is refused with 402. See Free tier and licenses.