TUMBLR TIPS – GOING BACK IN TIME (ON YOUR DASHBOARD)
Say you've been scrolling your dashboard on Tumblr, and stop at a particular point. You go to bed, and the next day you want to get back to scrolling from where you left off.
If you copied the URL, you can just paste it back in your address bar, and you will be taken to the same spot in the chronology.
But what if you forgot to copy the URL? Well there's a way to go back in time.
If you click on the Home icon, you'll be taken to the latest post on the dashboard. The URL in the address bar is always:
https: //www.tumblr.com/dashboard
Hit the right arrow on your keyboard. This is the shortcut to take you to the previous page. (For a handy list of this and other keyboard shortcuts, make sure you're in Dashboard View – the usual view when you open Tumblr – and then click on the keyboard icon at the bottom right of the webpage.) Alternatively, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the button that says 'Next' to go to the previous page.
The URL should look like some version of this:
https: //www.tumblr.com/dashboard?max_post_id=731568565951643648
On my dashboard, this URL is for a webpage with the latest post timestamped 9:15AM 19 October 2023. (If you cut and paste this URL into the address bar in another window or tab, Tumblr will bring you back to the same webpage showing that post on the dashboard.)
The long number at the end of the URL (731568565951643648) indicates that webpage's place in your dashboard chronology. (Google reads this number out to me as "731 quadrillion 468 trillion 565 billion 951 million six hundred and forty-three thousand six hundred and forty-eight.") The bigger the number, the later the date.
If you make this number smaller, Tumblr will take you back to an earlier point on the dashboard.
Changing the digits toward the end of the number doesn't do much. You need to change the first few digits to make things really move.
Using the above URL as an example, if I type directly into the address bar and change:
731568565951643648
to
731468565951643648
Tumblr brings me to an earlier point in the chronology (more than 24 hours back), to a webpage whose latest post is timestamped 6:45AM on 18 October 2023. (In case you can't see the difference in the numbers above – I changed the fourth digit to a smaller one, replacing the '5' with '4' so '7315…..etc.' becomes '7314…..etc.')
Making the number even smaller takes you further back. For example, changing '7315…..etc.' to '6315…..etc.' takes me to a webpage with the latest post timestamped 2:18PM 10 October 2020.
And so on and so forth. You can actually jump backwards decades this way (I tried).
So if you can remember the approximate time you stopped scrolling the night before, change one of the first few digits in the number of the URL and Tumblr will show you a view of the dashboard closer to the last post you read. Once you get close, use the right arrow to move backward page by page.
One drawback though, is that you can't scroll forward after you've located the post you want. If you want to scroll forward from the located post, this is what I do:
First find the webpage of your dashboard containing the post you want (i.e., the last post you viewed) by following the instructions above and jumping back in time.
Then open a duplicate of this webpage on a second tab (right-click the mouse, and select 'Duplicate').
On this duplicate webpage, make the URL number larger to jump forward in time (say to post 'X').
Still on the second tab, use the right arrow (or the 'Next' button at the bottom of the page) to scroll backward to the last post that you viewed.
You can now scroll forward (on this second tab) as far as post 'X'.
Repeat the process to scroll forward beyond post 'X'.
Hope this information is useful!
(N.B. This is only for Tumblr on desktop – no idea if any of this has relevance to the app, because I don't use it. And Tumblr is constantly updating itself, so this info is only current as at 19 October 2023, and may change moving forward beyond that.)
