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Posting to social accounts

Post knits to Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Threads, X and YouTube, now or at a time.

Partly available. Posting and scheduling are built. Seeing how each post did is not built yet.

Open a knit and press Post, or pick several and press Post together for a carousel. Pick the accounts, check the caption, and post it now, at a time, or keep it as a draft. Every post is in the project's Posts tab: what went out, with a link to it, what is scheduled, and anything that needs you.

Why each platform needs an app of your own

knitted runs on your computer and has no server in between. So you sign in to each platform through a developer app that is yours, made once, and your sign-ins stay on this computer, in its secret store (the Keychain on a Mac). Nobody else's app can post as you, and no knitted company sees your accounts.

Making an app takes ten minutes or so per platform, and the sections below walk through each. In knitted, go to Settings, Social, and each platform's card shows what to copy where.

When posts go out

Posts go out while knitted is open. A post due while it was closed goes out when you open it, if that is within two hours. Later than that, it waits as missed, for you to post it now or pick another time, because a post meant for 9 in the morning may be wrong at 4 in the afternoon.

YouTube is the exception. A post scheduled at least 15 minutes ahead is uploaded straight away as a private video with its time, and YouTube makes it public then, whether or not your computer is on. Cancelling it in knitted takes it off YouTube.

If a post fails because the network dropped or the platform was busy, before anything was sent, knitted tries again twice, a few minutes apart. If it fails after the post was sent, knitted does not try again: it says to look on the platform first, so nothing is posted twice.

Your model and posts

Your model can make posts too (the schedule_post tool). Unless you turn on Let your model schedule posts in Settings, Social, what it makes are drafts, and you schedule them from Posts.

Instagram

Posts pictures, carousels of up to 10 and Reels. A picture taller than 4:5 goes to your Story. Instagram needs a media host.

  1. Your Instagram account has to be a professional one, Business or Creator. In Instagram: Settings, Account type and tools, Switch to professional account.
  2. At developers.facebook.com/apps, create an app. Pick the use case for managing content on Instagram (or Other, then Business), and add the Instagram product. Choose API setup with Instagram login.
  3. Under Set up Instagram business login, open the business login settings and add this to the OAuth redirect URIs: https://knitted.filefreak.page/oauth/
  4. In App roles, Roles, add your Instagram account as an Instagram Tester, then accept the invitation in Instagram (Settings, Apps and websites, Tester invites). Your own account needs no review by Meta.
  5. Copy the Instagram app ID and Instagram app secret (on the Instagram API setup page, not the Facebook app's ID) into knitted, then press Connect Instagram.

The sign-in lasts 60 days and knitted renews it while it is open, so it does not run out unless knitted stays closed that long.

Threads

Posts words, pictures, video and carousels. Threads needs a media host for pictures and video.

  1. At developers.facebook.com/apps, create an app with the use case Access the Threads API.
  2. In its permissions, add threads_basic, threads_content_publish and threads_manage_insights.
  3. In its settings, add this to the redirect callback URLs: https://knitted.filefreak.page/oauth/
  4. In App roles, Roles, add your Threads account as a Threads Tester, then accept it in Threads (Settings, Account, Website permissions, Invites).
  5. Copy the Threads app ID and Threads app secret into knitted, then press Connect Threads.

LinkedIn

Posts words, pictures (up to 20 at once) and video, as you, not as a Company Page.

  1. At linkedin.com/developers/apps, create an app. LinkedIn asks for a Company Page to link it to: any page you look after works.
  2. In Products, add Share on LinkedIn and Sign In with LinkedIn using OpenID Connect. Both are there for any app, with no review.
  3. In Auth, add this to the authorized redirect URLs: https://knitted.filefreak.page/oauth/
  4. Copy the Client ID and Primary Client Secret into knitted, then press Connect LinkedIn.

LinkedIn's sign-in for an app like this lasts 60 days and cannot be renewed without you. Settings, Social shows the date; press Connect again before then. A post due after it runs out fails, saying so.

X

Posts words, up to 4 pictures, or one video.

X charges for each post from credits you buy in its developer console, and a post with a link costs more. See the prices there before you start.

  1. At console.x.com, make an app, and buy some credits.
  2. In the app's User authentication settings, turn on OAuth 2.0, set App permissions to Read and write, and pick Native App as the type. (A Web App works too, and comes with a client secret to add in knitted.)
  3. Add this as the callback URI: https://knitted.filefreak.page/oauth/. For the website address, any address of yours works.
  4. Copy the OAuth 2.0 Client ID (not the API key) into knitted, then press Connect X.

X's sign-in lasts two hours, and knitted renews it each time it posts.

TikTok

Posts videos. TikTok takes pictures only from an address it has verified as yours, which a desktop app does not have, so pictures cannot be posted there from knitted.

  1. At developers.tiktok.com, make an app. It asks for an icon, a description, and the addresses of terms of service and a privacy policy.
  2. Pick Desktop as its platform.
  3. Add the products Login Kit, Content Posting API (turn on Direct Post) and Display API, and the scopes user.info.basic, user.info.stats, video.publish, video.upload and video.list.
  4. In Login Kit, add this redirect URI: http://127.0.0.1:*/api/social/callback/. The star is any port: knitted picks one each time it starts. If TikTok will not take the star, add the address Settings, Social shows, with its port.
  5. Copy the Client key and Client secret into knitted, then press Connect TikTok. While the app is in TikTok's sandbox, add your own account as a target user first.

Until TikTok has audited your app for posting, what it posts is visible only to you, and your account has to be private at the time it posts. Once it is audited, you choose who sees each post. Each time, the Post dialog asks who can see it, with nothing chosen for you, and comments, duets and stitches are off until you turn them on. Those are TikTok's rules for apps that post.

YouTube

Posts videos, and Shorts when they are upright and up to 3 minutes. Scheduled posts are published by YouTube itself.

  1. At console.cloud.google.com, make a project.
  2. In APIs and Services, Library, turn on YouTube Data API v3 (and YouTube Analytics API, for later).
  3. In Google Auth Platform, set it up for external users, with your own address as the support email, and add yourself as a test user. Then, in Audience, press Publish app. While it is in testing, Google ends its sign-ins after 7 days. Published, it shows a warning that Google has not verified it, which is about your own app: press Advanced, then go on.
  4. In Clients, make an OAuth client of the type Desktop app. It needs no redirect.
  5. Copy the Client ID and Client secret into knitted, then press Connect YouTube.

Uploads count against your project's daily YouTube allowance, which is about 100 videos a day.

Media host

Instagram and Threads do not take a file sent to them: they fetch it from a public web address. So knitted puts each file in storage of yours just before posting, and removes it straight after. The other platforms do not need one.

In Settings, Social, Media host, pick one, fill it in, and press Test: it puts a small file there, reads it back from its public address, and removes it.

A bucket that speaks S3: Cloudflare R2, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, DigitalOcean Spaces, MinIO. Its files have to be readable by anyone at their public address.

  • On Cloudflare R2: make a bucket, turn on public access in its settings (its r2.dev address, or a domain of yours), and make an API token with object read and write for that bucket. The address is https://<your account id>.r2.cloudflarestorage.com, the region is auto, and the public address is the bucket's public URL.
  • On Amazon S3: leave the address empty, give the bucket's region, let anyone read the knitted/ folder in the bucket's policy, and use a key that may put and delete objects there. The public address is https://<bucket>.s3.<region>.amazonaws.com.

FileFreak: a folder in your FileFreak account, with an app's API key. Your FileFreak public page has to be on, because each file is made public while the platform fetches it.

What knitted keeps

Each account's sign-in, each app's secret and the media host's key are in your computer's secret store, never in knitted's library or its backups. Disconnect forgets the sign-in and cancels that account's posts still to go out; posts already out stay where they are. To take away an app's access on the platform too, remove it in the platform's own settings.

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