Reddit is following in Twitter’s footsteps and charging third-party apps for entry to their APIs. The outcome: Apollo, some of the in style Reddit apps for iPhone, is shutting down entirely after figuring out that the brand new pricing would value it $2 million a month. RIF, one other in style app, is calling it quits for a similar cause. After the API information, a number of main Reddit communities are blacked out this week in protest.

Reddit has each proper to cost for its API, legally talking, and it stands to achieve if extra individuals use the (horrible) official app. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman argued in an AMA that the modifications are being overblown. Comments in that thread are, let’s assume, lower than pleasant to the corporate line.

If all of this leaves you questioning what may occur to the posts and feedback you’ve made on Reddit through the years, you’re not alone. David Brownman, a programmer primarily based in San Mateo, California, was questioning precisely that.

“I have put so much into Reddit over the years, and I didn’t like the idea of it being inaccessible to me,” he tells me. “It’s my content, and I’ll need to be a steward of it if Reddit won’t. I also reference old posts of mine a lot, so having full text search was important to me.”

With these considerations in thoughts, Brownman wished an offline archive of his posts. Here’s how one can get one too, both by asking Reddit or through the use of a device Brownman constructed to obtain it your self.

Ask Reddit for Your Data

Reddit has a kind the place you’ll be able to request a copy of your data. The course of can take as much as 30 days, after which you’re going to get a personal message in your Reddit account with a obtain hyperlink. The knowledge comes within the type of CSV information that you could open utilizing Microsoft Excel or any textual content editor. There are separate information in your feedback, your posts, your voting historical past, and your chats, amongst different issues.

This methodology has a number of downsides. First, CSV information could be a little unwieldy, particularly if you wish to search. Second, there’s a delay, which is annoying when you simply wish to obtain the information and transfer on together with your life. Still, it’s simple, and for most individuals, that is most likely the easiest way to again up their Reddit content material.

Download Your Reddit Data Yourself

If you’d fairly not look forward to Reddit to ship your knowledge, or would favor to maintain your knowledge in a searchable archive, you should utilize Brownman’s device, reddit-user-to-sqlite. This command line software can obtain the whole public archive of any Reddit consumer and compile it in an SQLite database file. Just remember the fact that this methodology will cease engaged on July 1, 2023, when the API change happens.

Brownman affords a blog post outlining the tool with a number of directions—when you’re comfy with the command line, I like to recommend following the directions there. For everybody else, don’t fear: It’s not as onerous because it sounds.

First you will have to install Python. For Windows customers, that is greatest carried out by downloading and operating the installer in your laptop. After putting in Python, you will have to install pipx. On Windows, that is greatest carried out with the next instructions, which you’ll run within the Command Prompt or PowerShell: