toot - A Mastodon CLI client
My main Mastodon client is Bitlbee with the plugin bitlbee-mastodon, it’s nice having both IRC, XMPP and Mastodon under the same roof, but it only comes with the basic features; reading, replying, liking and boosting posts. Which is for the most part enough for me, but I sometimes post and maybe want to check out a profile.
This is where toot comes into the picture. toot is a Mastodon client for the command-line interface and it’s packed with a lot of features that bitlbee-mastodon doesn’t have.
The command toot will list all the commands available for you:
$ toot
toot - a Mastodon CLI client
v0.18.0
Authentication:
toot login Log in from the console, does NOT support two factor authentication
toot login_browser Log in using your browser, supports regular and two factor authentication
toot activate Switch between logged in accounts.
toot logout Log out, delete stored access keys
toot auth Show logged in accounts and instances
Read:
toot whoami Display logged in user details
toot whois Display account details
toot instance Display instance details
toot search Search for users or hashtags
toot timeline Show recent items in your public timeline
toot curses An experimental timeline app (doesn't work on Windows)
Post:
toot post Post a status text to your timeline
toot upload Upload an image or video file
Accounts:
toot follow Follow an account
toot unfollow Unfollow an account
toot mute Mute an account
toot unmute Unmute an account
toot block Block an account
toot unblock Unblock an account
To get help for each command run:
toot <command> --help
It’s fairly straight forward and if you want to know more about a specific command you can show more information by passing the flag --help:
$ toot post --help
usage: toot post [-h] [-m MEDIA] [-v VISIBILITY] [--no-color] [--debug]
[-u USING]
[text]
Post a status text to your timeline
positional arguments:
text The status text to post.
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-m MEDIA, --media MEDIA
path to the media file to attach
-v VISIBILITY, --visibility VISIBILITY
post visibility, one of: public, unlisted, private,
direct
--no-color don't use ANSI colors in output
--debug show debug log in console
-u USING, --using USING
the account to use, overrides active account
https://github.com/ihabunek/toot
Here’s an example of what it looks like when you show your timelime:
$ toot timeline
───────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
F-Droid │ Aurora Store: Download apks from #GooglePlayStore#AuroraStore is a #fork of
@fdroidorg │ #YalpStore by Sergey Yeriomin. It lets you download apps directly from Google
2018-06-17 10:29 │ Play Store as #apk files. It can search for #updates of installed #apps and lets
Reblogged @Aznorth │ you search for other apps.Aurora Store provides a #MaterialUI to #Yalp
│ #Store.https://f-droid.org/app/com.dragons.aurora#fdroidorg #fdroid #libre #app
│ @fdroidorg #altenative
───────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
F-Droid │ This weeks #twif is live:
@fdroidorg │ https://f-droid.org/en/2018/06/14/this-week-in-fdroid-w24.htmlEnjoy!
2018-06-17 08:23 │
───────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
If you want to list the public timeline just add the flag --public and to list the timeline for you instance only you add the flags --public --local.
And here’s what it looks like when you do a search and look up a profile:
$ toot search pixelfed
Accounts:
* @pixelfed@mastodon.social PixelFed
Hashtags:
#pixelfed, #pixelfedlogo, #pixelfed_replaces_instagaram, #pixelfed_replaces_instagram
$ toot whois @pixelfed@mastodon.social
@pixelfed@mastodon.social PixelFed
Federated Image Sharing powered by ActivityPub.Created by @dansupPress
Inquiries: hello@pixelfed.org
ID: 50992
Since: 2018-05-17 @ 21:27:57
Followers: 1239
Following: 0
Statuses: 249
https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed
And why not follow them so we can monitor the progress of the awesome project PixelFed? :)
$ toot follow @pixelfed@mastodon.social
✓ You are now following @pixelfed@mastodon.social
That’s about it. toot is a great little tool if you prefer doing things in the shell like me.
Installation
You need the dependencies python-requests, python-beautifulsoup4 and the make dependency python-setuptools. You can then download the latest version of toot on GitHub here.
Unpack the archive and simply install it with the command python setup.py install.
Configuration
Before you can use toot you need to add your account(s). You can do so by running the command toot login or toot login_browser if you’re using two factor authentication, you will be then directed to your Mastodon instance via your web browser and then asked to authorize toot.
toot supports multiple accounts at the same time, you just have to repeat what you just did for your other instance and you can then view your logged in accounts with the command toot auth. The active account will have the flag ACTIVE next to it. You can then use the command toot activate to switch between your accounts, or just use the flag --using in combination with your command to use an account temporarily.
If you wish to delete your access token you can do so by logging out using the command toot logout.