Over the past few days I have seen various people debate the API changes, blackouts and all sorts of things related to that subject. As such, I have also seen various people bring toolbox to the conversation.

The Context

Reddit recently announced changes to their API which ultimately ends in Reddit's API moving to a paid model. This would mean 3rd Party developers would have to pay Reddit for continued and sustained access to their API on pricing that could be considered similar to Twitter's new pricing. The dev of Apollo did a good breakdown of this here and here.

^{Yes, stolen from the RES} ^^announcement ^{because they did a nice job of writing it.}

The impact on toolbox

There are two ways to look at the impact these changes have on toolbox:

1. The immediate technical impact on toolbox.

2. The other side of the coin.

The immediate technical impact on toolbox

This one is simple. Toolbox only uses the reddit API, so isn't impacted by things like pushshift not being accessible. The API policy in general also isn't likely to impact toolbox in the foreseeable future. Simply due to the nature of it being a browser extension and effectively making use of the reddit session.

This also has been said as much by reddit themselves.

The other side of the coin

Toolbox is currently not directly impacted. Hooray! That doesn't mean there is no impact on toolbox. In fact, these API changes are part of a downward spiral where reddit as a platform is closing up more and more. Reddit is gone from a platform where the code was open (I even still have the badge to prove it) to one where a once vibrant third party developer community has been dealt blow after blow. This clear signal reddit is sending to the world also impacts any future toolbox might still have.

Toolbox development already has slowed down to a crawl over the past few years. The two of us still maintaining it still do it out of a sense of obligation and a bit of pride.

In an ideal situation, there would be plenty of people ready to step in and help out. In the past this actually was the case as we have had dozens of people contribute with varying levels of activity. But, that simply isn't the case anymore. The same is true for similar projects like RES.

For a bit more thought on the matter, you can also see my comments in the modnews announcement thread.

Closing words

I felt like I should make this post as I have seen people use toolbox in their discussions about whether they should join protests or not. This post isn't here to make that decision for anyone. I just felt that instead of selectively being quoted from various posts and comments, I'd just provide the information in a single place here.

State of toolbox

Before we get into what is changed, there is something else that needs attention. As you might have noticed the rate of toolbox releases has slown down and within each release the number of changes has also been fairly low. This, while there is still plenty to be done to make toolbox a better project. The issue however is that currently toolbox is mostly maintained by two people, /u/eritbh and me. Both of us have been struggling to find time and maybe more importantly neither of us are currently active anymore as moderator in any meaningful way. While we are still committed to maintaining toolbox (as this release shows) it does make the future of toolbox somewhat uncertain.

The good news is that one of the changes in this release is one that should make maintaining and contributing to toolbox much easier. In short, there is a great foundation but not enough people to build on it. So if you do find yourself in a position where you can contribute to Toolbox we highly encourage you to do so! Have a look at our contributing document, see if there are issues you might be able to pick up and hop on Discord to brainstorm and discuss contributions!

Release highlights

With that out of the way, these are the biggest changes in this release:

• The core of toolbox has been rewritten to take advantage of so called ES6 modules. It is the main reason why decided to bump the version number up to 6. The newly created foundation should be helping with maintainability and provide a slight performance improvement on page load. This has been a major effort spearheaded by /u/eritbh who put in countless hours in both designing and implementing this new approach.

• [Beta] Native mod notes can be viewed and edited from Toolbox via the new “Mod Notes” module. Progress on this functionality has been slow, mainly because of the reasons mentioned above. But, it is in a state that we feel comfortable including it as a beta feature. This means that in your personal toolbox settings, you need to enable the “beta features” checkbox. As it is still in beta, a few things are still missing or work in progress:

  • Styling and layout of the popup might be subject to change.

  • Context links currently are not added to notes.

  • It is not possible yet to select labels when creating notes.

• The admins said there is no API endpoint, a little birdy told us there actually is. So naturally we trusted the birdy. Removal reason comments can now be sent via the recent “Remove as subreddit” functionality by checking the new “Send as /u/subreddit-ModTeam” box in the removal reasons popup.

The full technical changelog can be found here on GitHub

6.0.1

A hotfix release has been prepared addressing some things found in 6.0.0:

• Modnotes should now show up properly.

• In the user hover menu on new reddit the historybutton is properly aligned now.

• A few other fixes.

The full technical changelog can be found here on GitHub

Hi everyone!

We have some exciting news today in the form of toolbox version 5!

Before we start, we can use help with the project.

Toolbox is an open source project, over the years we have had a variety of people contributing. At the moment the main people contributing are /u/geo1088 and I. Both of us work on it as much as we can, but there are times where simply little work is done as we are both busy outside of the internet as well (shocking, I know). So toolbox can use more people contributing. This can be in the form of code but also documentation. If you have the time and want to contribute we would very much appreciate that! You can have a look at the contributing document to get started.

With that out of the way we can continue with the rest of the release post!

Wait?! What happened to toolbox v4?

Toolbox v4 is the alpha/beta version we developed most of the Reddit redesign features on. Work on this version started almost two years ago. Meanwhile toolbox v3 was maintained for old Reddit. Somewhere around last December we decided to start combining both versions into one that supports both old and new Reddit. This is the version we are releasing today as version 5!

This also means that everyone who has been using toolbox on Reddit redesign should now switch back to the regular version of toolbox. You can find instruction on how to remove the alpha version on this wiki page and in case you need to reinstall regular toolbox you can find the correct installation link on this wiki page.

Why can't I keep using toolbox v4 alpha?

It is already in the name, this is a test version. All the functionality of v4 and more can now be found in toolbox v5. Keeping both version around is a recipe for compatibility issues, not to mention that we will no longer update the v4 version as there is no need. To make sure this does not happen the v4 version will automatically disable itself as well with a message explaining this and how to switch.

So what's new?

A lot of stuff actually! A full changelog can be found here. We will highlight some of the bigger features in below.

Support for both old and new Reddit

We put a lot of effort in making it as easy as possible for us to support both version of Reddit with a minimal amount of extra code. This means that in the future we should be able to keep supporting both version of Reddit instead of having to focus on one.

UI/UX updates

We also put a lot of effort in updating the UI/UX, the main look and feel should be mostly the same but we took care to give some elements a bit more breathing room and we also updated the icons to be a bit more consistent and less busy.

Context menu

A specific part of what has changed as far as the UI goes is the context menu. This is a new menu found on the left side of your screen just above the modbar. It will be visible when in the context of the page a toolbox action is visible. For example:

• Comment flat view.

• Toolbox subreddit configuration.

• Managing usernotes.

• Opening the new toolbox profile functionality from a user profile page.

Here is how it looks in idle state and here is how it looks when you hover over it (contents varies of course).

Toolbox user profiles

A lot of people aren't the biggest fans of how profiles work on Reddit these days, and the classic overview sort of works, but we figured thinks could be better. So we decided to recreate user profiles in a toolbox overlay! Here is how my profile looks in it, as you can see it is heavily inspired by the classic Reddit profiles but has some extra features:

• Hide unmoddable content.

• Hide mod actions.

• Enhanced profile searching.

• Options to automatically open this overlay when visiting profiles.

• Profile button next to usernames on subreddits you mod.

Action history

Toolbox already offered an option to show automod action reasons under removed content. You will now also see a button called "show recent actions" that on expansion will show a table with all mod actions recently taken on an item by any mod. Note: This is done by looking at the last 500 items in the modlog, so it will only work on recently modded content.

Improved RES nightmode support

RES nightmode support is now done through some clever CSS filters. This means that we no longer have to maintain a separate theme for nightmode and any future new functionality automatically will work in nightmode. Similarly, if RES nightmode changes, things this should not effect toolbox too much.

Better notification handling

There are two types of notifications you can get from a browser, those send from the context of a website and those send from an extension specifically. Due to legacy reasons, toolbox used the website notifications, however this meant that you had to give Reddit permission to send notifications. This also meant that sometimes people started to get notifications from Reddit (trending). So we reworked notifications to make proper use of the extension mechanism. This also means that you can now block Reddit from sending notifications but still get them from toolbox!

Technical: Personal toolbox settings storage no longer makes use of localstorage as intermediary messenger

Those of you who have been around long enough might remember that toolbox started out as a collection of userscripts. Because of that, it initially used localstorage to store settings. When toolbox became an extension it also started using the webextension storage method but still with localstorage in between. This had a few drawbacks as localstorage is tied to a subdomain but as people generally didn't browse Reddit from different subdomains that was hardly an issue. That started to change when new modmail rolled out on the mod. subdomain and recently has gotten worse with people actively using old. and new. subdomains for browsing Reddit.

So to make things easier we reworked storage to make just use of the webextension storage method. Most people should not notice anything, the main difference is that it is no longer possibly to look at stored settings in the browser console.

Security enhancements

We always try to make toolbox as secure as possible. One possible attack vector for software are attacks where executable code is included in regular data input. We wanted to secure toolbox further and have added DOMpurify which is used to purify all outside data from potential risks when it enters toolbox.

We also made some changes to the internal debug console to act in a more passive manner and no longer have an active debug functionality that allowed for execution of arbitrary code in toolbox's scope.

A ton of code improvements

While not very visible, we did a a lot of refactoring of old code to improve the code base and stability of toolbox. We also made sure to include more technical documentation on the Github repository, so it should be easier for people to contribute to the project.

Release status per browser

Firefox

Toolbox has been reviewed and is available on AMO and should be automatically updated.

You might need to re-enable toolbox as some permissions have been changed to be more specific.

Edge

After some deliberation we decided a while ago to not develop this version of toolbox for the current version of Edge after Microsoft announced chromium based Edge. Our reasoning for this comes down to these points:

• Microsoft already released version of the new Edge and is rapidly developing it. So it is likely that it will replace current Edge fairly soon.

• The current version of Edge while following the webextension standard still required specific code fixes and a separate building infrastructure.

• One of the goals of this release has been cleaning up code.

• The current userbase for Edge toolbox users is fairly small.

• The toolbox userbase for Edge has been shrinking rapidly since the Microsoft announcement.

So if possible we suggest you switch to the developer version of Edge and use the Chrome version of toolbox.

Chrome & Chromium based browsers

Toolbox has been published to the Chrome store and should be automatically updated.

You might need to re-enable toolbox as some permissions have been changed to be more specific.

Opera

Opera now supports installing extensions from the chrome store. If you downloaded toolbox from the Opera store you should:

1. Optional: Backup your settings.

2. Uninstall your current version of toolbox

3. Make sure your Opera allows installing extension from the chrome store by installing their official chrome store extension.

4. Install toolbox from the chrome store.

   • You will get a warning about a not supported api, feel free to ignore that.

   • You will then either prompted to or automatically go to the extensions settings where you need to confirm installation again.

5. Optional: Restore your settings.

Hi everyone!

We are happy to announce a new release of toolbox! This release brings a nice variety of new additions to make moderations of your subreddits even more convenient as well as many fixes for existing functionality.

For this release we specifically want to thank /u/Blank-Cheque, /u/justcool393 for their contributions. And welcome /u/kenman who joined our team as a permanent member!!

Changelog

Additions

• You can now select queue items that have had reports ignored on them with Queue Tools

• Banning a user through the mod button or a macro now sends ban context to Reddit, which lets you see the post or comment the user was banned for in the bans page on new Reddit

• You can now select queue items that are above or below a certain score with Queue Tools (thanks /u/Blank-Cheque and /u/justcool393!)

• Syntax highlighter now adds a Ctrl-/ shortcut for commenting lines of code in CSS or Yaml.

• You can now preview messages before you send them in new modmail

• Removal reasons can now be set up to apply to submissions, comments, or both

• Removal reasons now has per-subreddit removal options, such as sticky removal, lock removed thread

  • Locked removal reason response for post only removal

  • Locked removal reason response for comment only removal

• There is now a setting to include NSFW results in the search links provided by the history button (thanks /u/Blank-Cheque!)

• Queuetools select-all now shows as indeterminate if only some things are selected

• The toolbox profile overlay is now available in new modmail

Fixes

• When clicking the notifier modmail icon, don't open a new tab if you're already in modmail (thanks /u/kenman!)

• Using the mod button from the comments flat view no longer closes the comments window (thanks /u/kenman!)

• The profile overlay now handles suspended, deleted, and shadowbanned accounts without infinitely loading

• With Queue Tools, bracketed phrases in Automoderator reports are now highlighted in text posts and post titles in addition to comments

• Leaving removal reasons should no longer leave duplicate entries in the moderation log

• Toolbox should now behave properly with privacy.firstparty.isolate set to true in Firefox

• When adding a new note to a user, note types now wrap to a new line when there are too many instead of breaking styling

More technical and internal details on GitHub

The toolbox project can use your help!

As toolbox is a volunteer run open source project we are always looking for people to help out. This can be in the form of code but also documentation. If you have the time and want to contribute we would very much appreciate that! You can have a look at the contributing document to get started.

Hi everyone!

We are happy to announce a new release of toolbox! This release brings a nice variety of new additions to make moderations of your subreddits even more convenient as well as a bunch of fixes for existing functionality.

For this release we specifically want to thank /u/molenzwiebel and /u/Xeoth for their first contributions!

Additions

• Ban and mute reasons in new modmail can now be made clickable via a setting.

  • What this means is that when someone includes a link in a ban or mute reason you will now be able to click it instead of having to copy and then paste it.

• Added the ability to automatically archive removal reasons sent via modmail.

  • No more modmail clutter! (Unless you use reddit removal reasons, we can't help you with that)

• [select...] button in queuetools now opens a popup for making more complex selections.

  • Isn't this pretty?!

• Swapped position of title and body fields when editing mod macros (thanks /u/Xeoth!)

• Removal reasons window can now be skipped by holding Shift when removing a post or comment (/u/molenzwiebel!)

• Mod macros can now be specific to posts/comments/modmail.

• New Mod Mail Pro now has a feature that checks for new activity in modmail threads before sending your reply (thanks /u/molenzwiebel!)

  • This allows you to see to review this activity and decide if you still want to send your reply

• Custom text inputs in removal reasons now accept placeholder, label, and value HTML attributes (thanks /u/molenzwiebel!)

• The "Moderated subreddits" popup now has a usernotes button for each subreddit

• New modmail now has a shiny source button. (/u/Xeoth!)

• Toolbox now checks for queue content when building custom comments and posts resulting in filtered items being properly shown in flatview, toolbox profile view and the context popup.

Fixes

• More efficiently search modlog for AutoModerator's removal reasons (thanks /u/Blank-Cheque!)

• Fixed modqueue sorting for non-English interface languages

• Fixed issues with the {body} removal reason token (thanks /u/Blank-Cheque!)

• Fixes to new modmail preview rendering

• Post/comment-only removal reasons now behave correctly in new Reddit

• Ban reasons are now trimmed to 300 characters (the actual API limit) rather than 99

• Removal reasons is now triggered when removing things in a context popup or other toolbox-generated interface

• Removed Toolbox from more popup pages it shouldn't be in

• Links to self-posts in the profile overlay will no longer change your subdomain

• url_* tokens will now be generated by toolbox if not present in the API

Hi,

Today we pushed a new release to the browser extension stores. This release contains mostly bugfixes and a few additions to the modnotes module. If anyone is wondering why it took us 5 months, the state of toolbox outlined 9 months ago hasn't changed.

Additions

• The modnotes module now has a setting to change the default label for creating new notes (#702)

• The modnotes module now saves note context when creating new notes (#746)

Fixes

• Performing actions in the modnotes window now uses standard success/error feedback instead of intrusive browser alerts (#696)

• Pressing enter when typing a mod note now submits the note (#696)

• Some information (such as user karma) which was missing from the history button has been restored (#698)

• Automoderator match highlighting no longer highlights text all the way to the end of the paragraph (#710)

• Automoderator match highlighting now works with non-English Reddit UI languages (#711)

• Buttons on users are once again displayed in a consistent order (#707)

• Setting up personal notes to save to a subreddit with capital letters in its name works again (#697)

• When using the user profile view from modmail, links within posts displayed in the profile view now work properly when clicked (#692)

• Deleting a mod note no longer scrolls you back to the top of the page (#734)

• Cache is now stored per user based on the session cookie. This should prevent issues with switching between users. (#745)

Hello everyone!

Today we released toolbox V3.7 "Cleaning Cockroach"!

This is a release that has a few new features, improvements and various bugfixes. A lot of the work done in this release isn't directly visible as it concerns cleaning up of code in preparation of converting toolbox for the reddit redesign.

New features

• New modmail mail counter with breakdown tooltip on hover. No notifications unfortunately as there is no way to do this without excessive api calls or missing notifications.

• Removal reason sorting, took a bit longer than we'd like to admit but it is finally here!

• Option in queuetools that will make links to user profiles redirect to the user overview so you can skip the redesigned profiles.

• Queuetools queuepiggy thanks to /u/ShaneH7646's insistent lobbying.

Fixes & Improvements

• The html notifications will now play nice with reddit chat.

• Performance improvements in how toolbox handles new things on page.

• Clearing the toolbox cache does now do so for all tabs making extra sure it is actually cleared.

• Modbar counters are now updated across all open tabs.

Some notes on toolbox and reddit redesign.

Work has been started behind the scenes to make toolbox work in the redesigned version of reddit. This also means that the current release will likely be the last major release on "old" reddit as we want to devote our sparse time and resources fully to that. Once the situation allows it we will show our progress in that area, we can however say that we have made good progress and that features like usernotes, historybutton, the modbar and modbutton already have been ported.

Release status per browser

• Chrome: published on store. (can take a while to show and update)

• Firefox: published on AMO.

• Edge: awaiting review.

• Opera: awaiting review.

For context, the admins made this post yesterday announcing they will start pruning subreddits based on a variety of activity metrics. This also means that if you backup your toolbox settings or use the "personal notes" feature to a subreddit that doesn't meet the criteria laid out there you will lose your backup and personal notes.

To be clear anyone who uses a subreddit that matches their exact username should be in the clear. However if that is not the case you should take action if:

• Phase 1: Your personal subreddit has had zero posts prior to 6/15/2021 and is over a year old.

• Phase 2: You are not the creator of your personal subreddit but got it through other means (like inherited it from someone or got it through reddit request).

Others already pointed out to the admins that toolbox backups are a thing and I just mentioned the personal notes use case to them as well but frankly I am not sure how much they will actually do with that information.

So just in case you might want to double check if any of the toolbox information might be in jeopardy or any other information you might have stored in a personal subreddit for that matter.

The old.reddit.com subdoman breaks notifications, mod counters, and backup/restore of settings. As a work around, you can still use www.reddit.com and get the old site by unckecking this option in your preferences: Use the redesign as my default experience. This should continue to work as long as the admins leave that option.

[Note: This doesn't apply to the TB 4.x series, which is designed to work with the redesign.]

As always, old.toolbox still loves you.

Hi!

It's been a while, and we wanted to release most of this sooner (the state of toolbox outlined in the previous release post still applies) but now is better than never! Today we present you with toolbox V6.1.0 "Delaying Donkey".

Release highlights

A more detailed changelog can be found on GitHub.

• Lots and lots of work to enable Manifest V3 so toolbox will keep functioning in the next year. For those not in the known, Manifest V3 is the new format for webextensions in Chromium based browsers and eventually Firefox as well. Somewhere next year it will also be mandatory for Chrome extensions.

• A bunch of new additions:

  • Queue tools "recent actions" display now shows action descriptions.

  • You can now configure mod macros to remove items as spam (thanks LMBishop!)

  • User flair is now available in mod macros (thanks rysie!)

  • When new reddit dark mode is enabled toolbox will now also automatically turn on dark mode

  • Queue tools: Ignore reports is now available for selected item actions and as keyboard shortcut G (thanks Endercheif!)

  • Option to unban with modmacros (thanks Endercheif!)

  • Improvements to the beta mod notes module

    • Paged note display and tabs for displaying just notes or just mod actions

    • Setting to configure which tab is shown by default

    • Labels can be selected when leaving new notes

• Fixes:

  • A lot of cache and startup related fixes should make various toolbox elements show up now more consistently.

  • On new reddit the issue where text was white on a white background due to some odd reddit CSS implementation has been fixed.

  • Modules in settings are once again sorted properly, links to settings in modules will now also open the module setting tab.

  • A bunch more, see the detailed changelog for all fixes.

Logo - Now 100% different!

So a while ago the policies regarding third party reddit tools changed. One of these policies was the name change (why we are now effectively called "toolbox" except for the stores where we changed the order around and are now named "moderator toolbox for reddit), one other thing was the logo. Third party tools are no longer allowed to use the reddit logo without a proper licensing agreement. Because of this reason toolbox now features a NEW 100% changed logo! Even better it employs our newly developed HolyShitItIsRED™ filter!

UserNotes - Now with 50% MORE storage!

Thanks to the work of our brilliant engineering staff we can now make use of our NEW Compressalot™ technology! The best part?! You our dedicated customers get to enjoy this amazing technology for *FREE*!

AutoModerator filter action - Now with 30% more sense factor!

Ever had automod remove things that didn't make sense? Had to digg through the automod configuration to find the possible rule? Rummage through the modlog hoping to find the action reason?

Despair NO MORE! Thanks to it's advanced LookyTheUppity™^* processors toolbox is now able to find the action reasons from the modlog and place them on the QueuetoolsEnabled™ page, automod will make sense again! Still doesn't make sense? Worry not! This feature includes a PlsHelp™ function that will allow you to quickly ask your fellow mods for feedback!

^{* limitations due to items being off the first modlog page not included.}

HistoryButton - Now with 75% more spam catching!

Everyone is familiar with the all time champion of spam catching HistoryButton™! This release adds an extra SpamNoMore™ infiltration package that allows it to deeply venture in the land of media websites^*, including youtube! This advanced technology allows it to not only display the domains but also the channels submitted! But wait, there is more! Thanks to our newly applied ColorIT™ filter you now won't be able to miss any potential spam!

^{* limited by what the reddit embed service offers.}

BetterButtons™ - No more beta!

Every had to go through the motions of posting a comment and then go the effort of distinguishing it? Well no longer you have to go through these tedious motions! Thanks to our PlsNoClick™ technology we are able to offer the following amazing features!

• Mod-save button: adds a save button that automatically distinguishes the comment when created.

• Distinguish toggle: turns the distinguish button into a toggle rather than a yes-or-no question.

• Remove remove/approve confirmation: removes the "are you sure?" confirmation on normal remove, spam, and approve buttons.

• Auto-ignore reports when approving

• Auto-approve when ignoring reports: prevents n00b mods from forgetting to also approve.

Queuetools - 50% more fun factor!

Ever felt a bit depressed by doing queue work? Ever wished you had something to cheer you up near the end? Not cat person? Despair no more! This release includes a 100% increase in puppies! As if that is not enough, we have teamed up with the experts at /r/babyelephantgifs and have just the thing for you!

In addition to this we no offer our brand new SensibleSort™ function for the queue sidebar, allowing you easily sort your subreddits by item count!

Backup & Restore - Now also for absent minded people!

Are you that person that always forgets to make backups? Forget no more! With our brand new indication system you will be alerted when backups are getting stale!

Released on FOUR different platforms!

• Chrome is pushed to the store NOW! Updates should arrive shortly!

• Firefox is currently being reviewed, expect updates SHORTLY NOW!

• Opera (20+) is also in the process of being reviewed, expect updates SOON!

• Safari also is underway! Expect your updates in the near FUTURE!

But that is not everything!

more changes here!

As always, toolbox loves you 100%!

Hi everyone!

We are happy to announce toolbox V5.5.0 "Witty Wildebeest"!

Features

• A new token, {permalink_newmodmail}, is available to reference the mod.reddit.com permalink to new modmail conversations. The {permalink} token now refers to the conversation URL visible to the user. Usernotes left in modmail will still use the mod-accessible link. (#371, #384)

• You can now specify additional wiki page names where the syntax highlighter should activate. (#92, #394, thanks @itskieranp!)

• You can now have Toolbox open the profile view and search for content on a user's profile by using URL parameters. (#388, #397)

• Flair templates can now be selected directly when setting up removal reasons and when changing a user's flair via the mod button. (#296, #418, thanks @Xeoth!)

• Debug console output can now be filtered using browser filtering tools. (#96, #430)

Fixes

• Mod buttons on old Reddit should no longer duplicate themselves in some scenarios. (#330, #385)

• The usernotes management interface now loads in a reasonable amount of time for subreddits with lots of notes by displaying a paged interface rather than loading all notes at once. (#221, #223)

• Page change detection was optimized. (#387, thanks @larsjohnsen!)

• Fixed some link interactions on old Reddit. (#366)

• Toolbox now behaves itself on subreddits whose names are entirely numeric. (#422, #424)

• Deleted users are now handled more consistently in the context popup and some other locations. (#429, #431)

• When sending PMs, content is now truncated to 10k characters to avoid unhandled API errors. (#432, #438)

• The "show settings" button in the personal settings window works again. (#298, #433)

• The mod button no longer fails to open when you don't have certain permissions in the current subreddit. (#309, #443)

• Date formatting no longer creates incorrect duration display in certain circumstances. (#440)

• Removal reasons can now lock threads even if the reason is sent as a PM rather than a reply. (#444, #446)

• Subreddit-forced removal reasons settings now apply properly. (#445, #447)

Other

• Reordered the mod action buttons in context popups to match the native order of buttons in the modqueue. (#382)

• Minor visual corrections to modbutton interface. (#392)

• Specific error information is displayed if you try to ban someone from mod button with a reason or duration that is too large. (#383)

• Context popup will show an error message if the item being opened has become inaccessible. (#252, #393)

• Toolbox windows, popups, overlays, and in-page notifications now share much of the same style information, resulting in some minor visual changes. (#240, #380)

• The way Toolbox detects changes to the current URL has changed (#395)

• Other misc. bugfixes. (#426)

Hi!

Todays release is a relatively small one with one added feature and mostly bug fixes and enhancements. Other things are in the works but are mostly of a structural nature. For example /u/eritbh is making good progress on restructuring toolbox to make use of modern javascript features. However another factor is decreased developer availability, so as always if you have the skills or have been meaning to brush up on them we do welcome code contributions!

Features

• Added message preview functionality to the macro popup

Fixes

• Show old/ignored reports works properly again

• Adjusted new modmail functionality to work more easily with additions of new directories like the recent "join request" directory and the currently being trialed "filtered" director

• Make context popup work for user profile links

• Fix an issue with overflowing in removal reasons

• Fix an issue where sorting by age in the queue gave inconsistent results

Other

• Manifest updates

• Improvements to web request interface

• New ratelimit handler

Github changelog with links to PRs/Commits

Before we start, we can use help with the project.

Toolbox is an open-source project, over the years we have had a variety of people contributing. Currently, the team mostly consists of /u/geo1088, with recent contributions from both /u/SpyTec13 and /u/adzm (thank you both!).

While it looks like SpyTec will be a regular contributor it still means we can use more structural help! As it is we are a small team with limited time with an ever-growing list of issues and feature requests for which we don't have nearly as much time as we'd like.

So toolbox can use more people contributing. This can be in the form of code but also documentation. If you have the time and want to contribute we would very much appreciate that! You can have a look at the contributing document to get started.

As a note, the past few releases internally have also been about code cleanup, project restructuring and code documentation (generated internal jsdoc documentation can be found here to also make it easier for people to contribute. If you still have no clue where to start but would like to just hop on discord and the people there will be happy to discuss the possibilities with you!

Changelog

The full changelog can be found here

New module: Queue Overlay

This module is mainly intended for those people that use redesigned reddit (but can also be used on old reddit). Frankly speaking, queues on redesign aren't that good (yet) information isn't as clearly presented (filtered posts for example), simply cut off (comments) and for toolbox feature implementations it also is currently missing some information in the underlying jsAPI extension are supposed to use.

It is also annoying to have to switch to old reddit just to work your queue and/or unmoderated listing. So we decided to gives you access to the old reddit queue listings through overlays!

When activated the counters in the modbar and queue/unmod links in the "moderated subreddits" settings will open an overlay and display the listing in there. As it is really old reddit displayed there it offers the following functionality:

• All old reddit queue features (obviously).

• Full toolbox old reddit queue features!

• All other toolbox functionality.

• All RES functionality (with a small tweak to RES to get it working.

A small note

Just after we pushed this release we discovered that the Queue Overlay module has a problem with the me/f/mod notifier setting. A fix has been pushed to the stores (v5.2.1) but might not be available at the time of this announcement.

A variety of new locking functionality

• Removal reasons: Lock as reply action has been added

  • Lock reply toggle can be changed in settings through actionLockComment

• Modmacros: Lock reply action has been added

• Comment nuke: In addition to mass remove this module can now also lock an entire comment chain

  • Default nuke type can be changed in settings through executionType

Various other enhancements

• Old reddit Queuetools: Improvements to queue tools behavior with RES's Never Ending Reddit functionality

• Old reddit Queuetools: Hide some irrelevant queue tools filters from /about/spam pages

• "Add removal reason" button now shows up on comments

• Betterbuttons: "sticky" button lets you specify a sticky position

• Comment nuke: Button is now placed consistently with other buttons when set to appear next to author usernames

• Comment nuke: Window closes automatically on success

• Modmacros: The various actions have been categorized in the configuration window

• Modmacros: The macro button in new modmail has been moved to avoid jumping around when selecting "reply as"

• New Modmail Pro: An advanced option has been added to automatically switch "reply as myself" to "reply as subreddit". Advanced because it is a tad hacky and might not work 100% reliable..

Fixes

• Comment nuke: Fix handling of deep chains when nuking comments

• Correct OP author styling in toolbox popups

• Queue tools report threshold now defaults to 0 instead of 1 to prevent empty queues by default

• New modmail count no longer includes highlighted conversations

• Keep "Open in old Reddit" button synced with URL in new Reddit

Release status

Firefox

Toolbox has been reviewed and is available on AMO and should be automatically updated.

Chrome & Chromium based browsers

Toolbox has been published to the Chrome store and should be automatically updated.

Edge

Get it from the chrome store for chromium Edge. Unfortunately, we don't support the older version of Edge anymore.

You might need to re-enable toolbox as some permissions have been changed to be more specific.

Opera

Opera now supports installing extensions from the chrome store. If you downloaded toolbox from the Opera store you should:

1. Optional: Backup your settings.

2. Uninstall your current version of toolbox

3. Make sure your Opera allows installing extension from the chrome store by installing their official chrome store extension.

4. Install toolbox from the chrome store.

   • You will get a warning about a not supported api, feel free to ignore that.

   • You will then either prompted to or automatically go to the extensions settings where you need to confirm installation again.

5. Optional: Restore your settings.

Hello everyone! Today we proudly present toolbox v3.4 "Modmailing Mallard"!

This release has a ton of bugfixes and also plenty of new shiny stuff as well as some other exciting stuff. Oh before I forget, we also have a new guy on the team who helped out with a bunch of bugfixes. /u/geo1088 welcome to the team! On that note, toolbox is open source and we welcome all contributions :)

Alright then, on with what has changed!

General

Queue tools

• Added the ability to highlight words in comments reported, removed or filtered by automoderator making it easier to see where the word is that triggered automoderator. This works by including the matches in automod action/report_reasons enclosed in [].

• Added the ability to highlight 0-scored posts in the queue.

Syntax highlighter

The entire library behind syntax highlighter has been replaced with a different one. This has several effects:

• The syntax theme setting has been reset.

• Search works differently.

• You can now make the syntax highlighter fullscreen by hitting F11.

History button

• Percentage for "account website history" is now properly based on the amount of submissions.

Better buttons

• Distinguish works once more.

Usernotes

• Per-subreddit custom types/colors
  New types will show as no type in old TB versions

• Significantly increased load speed of usernotes manager

• Fixed inability to delete a note directly after its creation

• Prune by last account activity

• Usernote tag type on UN manager page (mostly)

Domain tagger

• Added color chooser to allow custom color selections

• Calculates best contrasting text color with domain background

• Fixed colors not visibly updating until the page is refreshed

Removal reasons

• added a placeholder for {body}: the body of the removed content.

• added a placeholder for {uri_body} and {uri_title}. This allows one to insert the content's title and body into a link like

https://www.reddit.com/r/underconstruction/submit?selftext=true&title={uri_title}&text={uri_body}

If you use this in Removal Reasons for a bad title, you can pre-populate a submit link with their post body. Same if they use the wrong subreddit, you can recreate the entire post for them and dump it in the submit link.

General UI

• Cleanup of UI elements.

Modmail beta

We have added preliminary support for the new modmail beta. Expect bugs! We have implemented:

• User notes.

• History Button.

• Mod Button.

We are not going to implement new features specifically for the new modmail until it is out of beta. The reddit development team is still very busy implementing new stuff so toolbox simply doesn't have a role there just yet.

Firefox specific

The entire addon has been rebased around the new webextension module Firefox is moving towards. Everything should work as it did before and we thoroughly tested it, it is still possible that we overlooked some tiny things.

Edge

Nope, not yet. We have started work on edge support but it isn't there yet. We are working on it though.

Availability

• Chrome is published and should automatically update

• Firefox is submitted and awaiting review.

• Opera is submitted and awaiting review.

Ho, Ho... Here's what we're not going to do: Christmas themed release notes. So, you're welcome.

The paragraphs about important new stuff you should probably really read. Let's do this shit.

New coat of paint

You will notice that all toolbox buttons now have consistent and unique styling. There are two reasons we did this:

1. To make sure people know what is a toolbox feature and what is native reddit or RES. (In other words: death to the dank "I didn't even know that was toolbox" maymay.)

2. Some themes really jack up toolbox buttons and it makes us sad.

Mod Macro... action

Mod Macros are a great feature that we don't think many use. The main reason is a lot of people already use RES for this. So we've sweetened the deal. Instead of just sharing macros between mods, the macros can now perform common mod actions!

You can configure mod macros from the 'toolbox configuration' link in the sidebar of your subreddit.

Links to settings!

This may not seem like a big deal, but it is a huge help when trying to assist co-mods with toolbox settings. To link to a setting click the link icon next to the setting. You will be presented with two links. The top one for posting on reddit and looks like this: betamode. The bottom one if for posting on IRC and other non-reddit sites.

New Module: Trouble Shooter.

Trouble Shooter aims to highlight potential 'bad faith' participation. Specifically, it highlights controversial and downvoted (to a set threshold) comments, as well as the parent comments in such a way as to help you, the moderator, more easily locate and distinguish them. More about its use can be found here.

Trouble Shooter is a beta module. Meaning it's new and might will have some issues still. You will need to enable betamode to enable this module. Once enabled, you will see the 'Trouble Shoot' button at the top of the comments thread.

The loneliest Domain Tagger of them all.

This is another second run at a good feature that we think is under used. It was a really old module that needed re-written, so while we were in there we created the best domain indicator we ever have. Meet: 'little dot'.

Domain tags can be a huge help when speeding through a large mod queue. The can be added, removed or changed by clicking the [T] next to a domain

And all the rest

Here's the full change log. The short list follows:

• Comments

  • Hide Old out of beta, various improvements.

  • 'Hide mod comments' now refires after RES's never ending reddit.

  • Flatview now has live filtering, allowing to filter comments by username and content.

• Mod Button

  • Option to move it to username area.

• Usernotes

  • Deprecated schema v4.

  • Added ability to add usernotes on the ban page.

• Domain Tagger

  • Reworked how domains are stored, preventing conflicts with self posts and new top-level domains (commit). Previously tagged self domains (ex. "self.toolbox") are not backwards compatible and must be re-tagged.

  • Added "title color" tag style.

• History button

  • /u/kenman added support for more website accounts.

• Queue Tools

  • Expand/collapse reports is now a toggle button.

  • Added subreddit selector.

  • /r/spiderbros Queue Creature!

• Mod Mail Pro

  • Override sub color if you are using TB's sub coloring.

  • Option open links in modmail comments in a new tab.

• Modmatrix

  • All moderators now show up in the mod matrix all the time.

  • ... even when you're not speaking American.

• Notifier

  • Option to use custom modmail icon.

  • You've got mail sound option.

• Better Buttons

  • Made detection of new comment text areas smarter.

  • Added options to show the "spam" button on removed posts and the "remove" button on spammed posts.

  • Disabled 'toggle distinguish' by default.

Availability

• Chrome: should be live now.

• Firefox: should be live now.

• Safari: will need to be reviewed, so expect delays.

• Opera: has been submitted for review, but it will take a bit.

• Edge: ask MS.

As always, toolbox loves you!

Hello everyone!

This post is a combination of various things we wanted to update everyone on.

Fixes and new functionality.

Since our last major release we have released various smaller releases that did consist mostly of various fixes but also introduced some new functionality. As they individually did not contain enough to warrant a complete new post we have put them together in this one.

v3.6.6 maintenance & beta modmail archive search

This version has been released today

Current release status

Changes

This is mostly a maintenance release with one bit of added functionality:

• The toolbox cache is now cleared in more instances where this is probably needed like accepting mod invites, switching usersn, etc.

• Mod button: "remember last action" did not remove ban fields if the action was not ban, this has bene fixed.

• The context popup is no longer opened when Ctrl or Cmd are held.

• Comment nuke: The button is no longer duplicated in the presence of deleted comments.

• Personal notes: Textarea is now the full size of the content area.

• Modules in toolbox settings are now alphabetized.

• New BETA: Modmail archive search functionality. This is a very rudimentary search functionality that will search through the preview archive page. It will not search the entire contents of modmail conversations as that is not something we can realistically do due to api constraints. It should however help with the fact that ctrl+f on that page doesn't work. This functionality requires you to have beta functions enabled.

v3.6.5 maintenance release

This is a small maintenance release that fixes some bugs:

• Context popup does work again in firefox.

• Context popup is now better readable with RES nightmode.

• Toolbox functionality is now also triggered on comments in the context popup.

• The fallback notification close button does work properly now.

• When using fallback notifications clicking them for comments will mark those comments unread in your inbox.

• Better checks on the ban api so bans can no longer silently fail in cases where the ban message is too long.

• The report button in the history popup is hidden for now.

• Live filter did stop working, this has been fixed.

• The support module can now handle unexpected useragent strings better.

v3.6.4 security fix and debug module.

• New: Debug module, this module inserts debug information in new posts on /r/toolbox and allows users to insert debug information in comments. This should help us in better supporting people with issues.

• Security fix: There was some potential for a malicious fellow mod to get toolbox to execute injected code when editing removal reasons.

General updates.

Development pace & Future development.

Toolbox is a community open source project. Development of it therefore entirely depends on the amount of free time people have available and are willing to put into toolbox. Over the years we have a lot of different people contribute to toolbox and have had active and less active periods. At the moment it is safe to say that development is in one of those less active periods as many of the original contributors and maintainers (including me) have less time available due to a variety of reasons.

This means that while toolbox most certainly is not abandoned things will just not move as fast. On that note, we do always appreciate contributions to toolbox. If you are a developer who wants to contribute we have our contributing guidelines here. If you are not a developer you can still contribute in various ways, for example by bringing documentation up to date or simply improve on it.

The new user profiles.

We have been getting various questions about the new user profiles. As it is we will not be touching them for now, this has partially to do with the previously discussed item but mostly to do with other factors:

• The new profiles are still changing as they are in beta, making it difficult for us to support them in a stable manner.

• We are waiting for the complete reddit redesign as that will require us to overhaul a lot of the core code of toolbox anyway.

The reddit redesign

Because of the above two points and us waiting for the reddit redesign it also means that current development of bigger features is effectively on hold. New functionality always is a big investment and with the redesign around the corner (relatively speaking) it would be a wasteful to invest a lot of effort in things that will not work in a few months time.

We have been in contact with the admins about the redesign and how they want to facilitate third party extensions like toolbox and RES. So far that contact has been very productive and positive, the admins have put some consideration in a front-end solution that would allow extensions to hook into reddit in a relatively easy manner.

The exact details of the toolbox port to the redesigned reddit are not yet clear as that depends a lot on the initial alpha of that redesign. We have been invited to take part in that alpha so we can take the proper preparations at that time.

As soon as we have more to share we will let you know.

TL;DR

I spent the last 3.5ish months rebuilding a fork of toolbox from the ground up, it's got lots of new quality of life features, and a lot of it works on Shreddit (new new Reddit). It's fully compatible with your existing toolbox configs, writes back to them, and it's ready for beta testing now.

Hi! I'm /u/adhesiveCheese, and I decided I couldn't let toolbox die. Pretty much all of my free time since Toolbox ceased being maintained back in March to rebuilding it. I didn't set out to do a full rebuild, of course - I was just too stubborn to take the warning about the state of the code as a showstopper, and things spiraled to the point that this is less "fork" and more "dirty-room reimplementation". We're a fair bit beyond just reimplementation, though, as Toolbox-NXG supports most modules on both current Reddit platforms (including new new modmail!), has a completely redesigned removal flow (based largely on my work with Modpanel, an off-site Toolbox-compatible moderation tool I built several years back), and lots of other goodies like full Firefox Container support, unlimited usernote space, and training/second opinion flow.

Since this is a fork and not an update-in-place, maintaining compatibility with existing toolbox configs was a top priority. Toolbox-NXG will read and write to your existing Toolbox subreddit configs, in the language they speak, meaning that you can try the new extension out without having to convince your entire team to jump ship at once, while also maintaining its own separate configs for the new schema features introduced by Toolbox-NXG.

• Check out a much more polished, much less off-the-cuff introduction announcement here.

• Grab the extension if you feel like beta testing for Chrome and Chromium-based browsers here or the add-on for Firefox here.

• Check out the source code on Github.

• Read the documentation.

Hello everyone!

Today we bring you toolbox 3.6 "Communicating Cat"!

New modmail specifics

Modmacros

• Modmacros now work in new modmail, the also received the additional functionality of archiving and highlighting. The way macros work is slightly different than on regular reddit, it will now make use of the buttons and inputs on the page so the result of actions like mute and archive are directly visible.

Misc

• Nightmode now also works in firefox thanks to /u/tizorres providing the css for this.

• The mod.* subdomain is now treated the same way as if it were www.* resolving some issues with saving achievements.

• The sidebar user note button now properly says "user notes" instead of just "N".

• The modbar can be shown if it's hidden in new modmail.

• The modbar will no longer overlap content in new modmail.

• Various other fixes.

General

Modbutton

• Ban macro! A simple way to prefill the note and usermessage fields with text and context aware tokens. Configuration can be found in your toolbox config page. A simple example would be filling the ban note with a permalink by using the {permalink} token.

• The global action for banning has been removed. This is a feature build into toolbox before it became so big and always has been controversial. The admins recently made it very clear that global banning is something they do not endorse so we finally decided to cut it out. Global actions for all other actions (approved submitter, making someone a mod, unbanning) are still available.

Removal reasons

• The footer area in the dialogue has been redesigned to be easier to understand and work with.

• The checkboxes in the footer area no longer function as settings. Anything you change will return to how it was the next time you open a removal reason dialogue, it is still possible to change the default actions permantly from the toolbox settings dialogue.

History button

• Implemented a "percentage where user is also OP" counter which displays the percentage of comments that the user did in threads where they are OP. Which is a usefull indicator if you want to know if someone is really only spamming their own stuff or if they are also participating in other threads.

• Tidied up displaying of information.

• Show all information by default instead of just domains and subreddit submitted to. It now also opens up comment percentages and the "account submitted from" percentages which shows things like youtube channels. We hope this helps mods in better fighting spam since it provides more context for them to decide on.

• We added a disclaimer to clarify that historybutton is an indication, not a complete picture.

Modmacros

• Mod macros that are set to sticky their comments will still distinguish if replying to another comment (previously they would not distinguish at all because we didn't check enough things).

Misc

• The subreddit configuration overlay has been overhauled with tabs to the side similar to the personal toolbox settings overlay.

• New "Mod save + sticky" button on top-level comments, which allows you to sticky a comment immediately when replying.

• Searching for comments in a subreddit no longer includes comments on promoted posts.

• We changed some manifest values which should result in a slightly faster loading toolbox in both chrome and firefox.

• You've got mail is working again.

• Mr Postman works again.

Microsoft Edge

We made various improvements in this area, unfortunately there are a few things holding us back from publish toolbox for edge:

• The system is currently based on invites and we are not yet part of the cool kids group.

• Edge still behaves a bit differently in each version and isn't yet as easy to debug for as chrome. This has resulted in toolbox not always working as expected.

As soon as we are invited and feel confident toolbox for Edge is ready we will release it.

Hello everyone!

This is a much smaller release than we usually do. The reason for this is the ongoing new modmail beta. In our last release we added preliminary support for:

• Usernotes.

• Historybutton.

• Modbutton.

Since then we fixed some bugs in this implementation and since more and more subreddits are enrolled in the beta we wanted to make sure these essential toolbox features are available.

changelog

General

Modmail beta

• Fixed: Usernotes don't properly save the context link when saving in new modmail.

• Fixed: Links back to regular reddit don't work as they are relative.

• Fixed: The "Help" and "Terms" links in the left bottom are obscured behind the toolbox modbar.

Removal reasons.

• Allow stickying of removal reason.

• Allow locking of thread after removing something.

Modbutton

• By default the modbutton now no longer is part of the bottom links but moved next to the history and usernote buttons. This can be changed in the settings: showInUsernameArea

Usernotes

• Allow deselecting of usernote types allowing for a "none" type.

Historybutton

• Don't count media subdomains as accounts. Things like tumblr's media subdomains (i.e. 66.media.tumblr.com) are no longer counted as accounts in Account History

Personal Notes

• Various UI tweaks in sizing, alignment and the ability to change the font to a monospace.

UI

• Various interface tweaks to alignments, consistency in styles, etc.

Beta

These features need the beta setting to be enabled in order to work.

New modmail pro

This is a new module that adds things to new modmail. They are basically some small things that could make some things a tad easier. We will not be adding big features until the beta is completely finished as we don't want to influence it too much and also don't want to do work twice because things are changing.

Features:

• Making the link to new modmail default to a different view (I personally like to arrive on the new page).

• Make the link to new modmail open in a new tab.

• Lazy mans nightmode, because RES doesn't work yet. looks somewhat like this This is a last minute addition and might not stick around in the future once RES also supports new modmail.

The Apollo app developer has recently been contacted by reddit in regards to the API cost.

50 million requests will cost $12,000

TBH I use half RIF app and half Toolbox on browser to moderate my subreddits.