Lemmy Go is a browser extension that adds a new search keyword (lg) for more easily navigating to Lemmy communities.
Type lg followed by a space (some browsers also accept tab instead), and then type the name of the community you're looking for.
Example: lg linux
Lemmy Go will search its database for any community that has the text linux in its name (e.g. linux_gaming) or title (Linux Gaming).
If you just type a community name and press enter, Lemmy Go will take you to the most popular community from that list.
If you don't press enter right away, you will be shown a list of communities that match that query. You can then select the specific one you want.
Clicking the extension's icon will show a popup with some settings that can be adjusted, including the user's preferred instance, and a toggle for NSFW communities.
If you set your preferred instance in the user settings, Lemmy Go will try its best to navigate to that community in your preferred instance, although this isn't always possible (in which case Lemmy Go will just navigate to the remote instance instead).
For instance, if your preferred instance is set to lemmy.ml and you select firefox@lemmy.world, Lemmy Go will take you to lemmy.ml/c/firefox@lemmy.world.
But if lemmy.ml blocks the lemmy.world instance, then Lemmy Go will take you to lemmy.world/c/firefox instead.
If you include a @ in your query, you're able to filter by instance too. For instance lg firefox@lemmy.world.
On Reddit, I had a simple search keyword for navigating directly to subreddits, where I could just type r firefox and be taken to reddit.com/r/firefox.
I wanted to have the same behaviour for Lemmy, but the Fediverse makes this a lot more complicated. Even if you're constantly writing the full community name@instance pair, there's still the problem of errors when navigating to blocked instances, or instance links that are broken for whatever reason.
So I made this extension to try and make it as simple as possible to jump to a community, or even find new ones more easily.
The Fediverse SUCKS. No but yeah it sucks. If you select a preferred instance in Lemmy Go, everything will be a bit slower.
- I have to make some API calls to check whether it's possible to stay in your preferred instance, instead of navigating to a separate instance.
- If you try to navigate to a community that hasn't been linked to your preferred instance, then Lemmy Go opens a background tab that triggers the link (I know), before finally taking you there.
I tried to keep permissions to a minimum. Unfortunately, some instances have misconfigured CORS policies on their API endpoints, which means I need to ask for permission to access those domains, which makes the browser show a spooky "I will steal everything from this domain" prompt.
The only reason I need to make API calls to your preferred instance is for fetching the list of blocked instances (so I can navigate directly to that blocked instance instead).