Help & FAQ

It's a social-media aggregator. Connect your accounts (or share posts in by hand), and Petals collects them onto one public profile at petals.blog/u/yourname. Friends get a combined feed, and you can share any post back out to your networks.

Petals is invite-only right now — open an invite link from someone already in, or sign up with an invite code. You can sign in with email, username, or phone, or with a social login.

From your Friends page you get a personal invite link plus single-use codes you can email. When someone you invited joins (and the email/phone matches what you entered), they're marked as invited by you.

Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit, RSS feeds, Telegram channels, YouTube, and Facebook Pages connect live and keep syncing new posts. For everything else (or one-off posts), use the browser extension or the share page. See the full connector reference for every source, how hard each is, and what you'll need — or use the connector wizard to add one step by step.

Connected accounts are polled on a schedule; new public posts appear on your garden automatically. You can also paste a link any time on the share page.

Yes — see Importing below.

It adds a small 🌸 to posts on X, Bluesky, Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook. Click it to add that post to your garden. On Facebook a single flower follows your cursor to the post you're pointing at (Facebook tears its own page apart constantly, so this is the reliable approach).

Download it from the extension page and load it as an unpacked extension. It isn't in the Chrome/Firefox stores yet, so it can't auto-update — when a new version ships it badges the toolbar icon with a ↑; re-download and reload to update.

Only when you click to share: it sends that post's link and details (title, image, author) to Petals. It doesn't track your browsing. The optional “diagnostic mode” copies a post's structure to your clipboard for troubleshooting — nothing is sent.

Petals installs as a web app — see the setup guide. On Android, once installed, “Petals” shows up in the share sheet, so you can share a link to it from any app like you'd text it to a friend. On iPhone, the guide gives you a Shortcut that does the same.

Yes — every public post has its own page with a “Share this” panel: a native share button (mobile) plus links for X, Facebook, Bluesky, Reddit, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Telegram, email, and copy-link. The link points back to your Petals page, so it brings people home.

Yes — your public posts are an Atom feed at petals.blog/u/yourname/feed.atom, so anyone can follow you in a feed reader.

Anyone signed in can comment on your public posts, unless you turn comments off for a post. Open a post's page to see and add comments.

Comments from members who haven't verified their account are hidden by default (behind a “show more” link) to cut down on drive-by spam. You decide whether to show them — per post, or as a site-wide default in Settings. A “verified commenter” has a confirmed email plus a second factor (2FA/passkey) or a verified connected account.

As the post owner you can turn commenting on or off, delete any comment, and “cheer” (highlight) the good ones — cheered comments float to the top. Commenters can delete their own.

That's your own note on the post — your take, shown above it (and collapsed past 80 characters). Edit it from the post's Settings. You can also add a margin note that sits beside the post.

It proves the account is really yours. The strongest way is to connect it via the network's official sign-in (OAuth). Otherwise, place a short verification code in the account's public bio (or post it), then run the check — Petals fetches the public page and confirms the code. For Facebook specifically, only the official sign-in earns the badge.

Yes — set up a second factor (authenticator app, SMS, or a passkey/security key) before starting verification. It confirms it's really you doing the verifying.

Send a friend request from someone's profile. Once accepted, their posts join your feed and you can message each other. You can also block people.

Direct messages are friends-only. Click someone's @username on a post to start a message (once you're friends).

Each post is Public (anyone, including your public page and search engines), Friends-only, or Hidden. Only public posts get a shareable permalink and appear in your feed/sitemap.

Yes — turn it on in Settings to serve your garden at yourname.petals.blog in addition to the /u/yourname path.

An authenticator app (TOTP), SMS codes, and passkeys. A hardware security key like a YubiKey registers as a passkey and works as your second factor. Recovery codes are available if you lose your device.

Petals keeps an audit trail of account activity (posts, comments, connections, friendships, logins) for safety and abuse detection. Admins can review it.

Yes. Download your data export from Facebook, Reddit, X/Twitter, Instagram, or Mastodon, then upload the archive on the Import page in Settings. Petals reads your posts out of it and adds them to your garden. Re-uploading the same file won't create duplicates.

We never sell your data and don't track you around the web. Passwords are hashed and connection tokens are encrypted at rest; your private notes are encrypted with a key derived from your password, so only you can read them. Full details are in the Privacy Policy.

Alt-click anything (with the extension) to copy what you were trying to share and open a prefilled suggestion form — or just visit Improve Petals!. If your idea makes it in, a bouquet blooms on your profile, and a different one each time.

Yes — Petals follows your device's light/dark setting automatically.

Reach out to the person who invited you, or your Petals admin. If a Facebook post shares with the wrong title or no flower, turning on the extension's diagnostic mode and Alt-clicking the post copies the details needed to fix it.