Casual Tumblr users know that the popular blogging platform is charactertized by three major social activities: posting, liking and reblogging (along with a few more like asking, replying, submitting and messaging). The power users of Tumblr, on the other hand, have mastered the art of Tumblr blog management, and they're using a tool called XKit to help them do it.

What Is XKit?

XKit is a free web browser extension built exclusively for Tumblr, and is available to download for Chrome, Firefox and Safari.


It's activated only when you go to Tumblr.com and sign in to your account.

XKit gives users a lot more functionality and extra features that Tumblr currently doesn't offer on its own. For people who spend a lot of time on the site posting content, reblogging content, customizing what they want to see in their feed and interacting with their followers, XKit is  a powerful tool that just offers more customizable choices and makes interaction so much easier.

All of the Amazing Features XKit Brings to Tumblr

If you don't consider yourself to be a Tumblr power user, downloading XKit and seeing what you can get out of it is worth it even if you sign in and blog on an occasional basis. XKit comes with loads of features (called extensions) that you can add to your account.

Since there are so many, I'm not going to list them all out here, but I'll share a few of the good ones to give you a taste of what you can get.

Timestamps: Browsing the Tumblr Dashboard without XKit doesn't give you any info on what day or time a post was made.

With Timestamps, you see exactly how long ago something was posted, with the full date and time given and when that was in relation to the current time.

XInbox: For users who get a ton of messages, XKit is a must. Add tags to posts before they're posted, see all messages at the same time and use the Mass Editor function to delete multiple messages in one go.

Reblog Yourself: Ever wanted to reblog something you blogged a while back? You can't do that on Tumblr alone. With XKit, this becomes possible. Reblog posts on your own blog from yesterday, last week, last month, last year or whenever.

PostBlock: This lets you block a particular post you don't like, including all reblogs of it. If you follow a lot of users who reblog the same posts, this can save you a lot of time an frustration from scrolling past the same post from different users fifty times in a day.

Quick Tags: Some Tumblr users like to get a little crazy with their tagging. If you love to use tags, you can use this feature to create tag bundles and add tags directly through the Dashboard.

CleanFeed: Tumblr is well known for its NSFW content. If you're browsing Tumblr in public, this can be a problem. Adding the CleanFeed extension will hide photo posts until you hover your mouse over them, and you can switch it on or off any time from the sidebar.

These are just some of my favorites, and new ones are added all the time, but you can check out the complete list of XKit features on this page. Click the gray icon on each of them for a more detailed explanation of what they do.

Suggested reading:10 different ways you can use Tumblr

How to Start Using XKit Right Now

Now that you've seen the amazing potential of what XKit can give you on Tumblr, you can go ahead and download the extension for the web browser you use. Once you have it installed and access your Tumblr account, you'll be able to use XKit any time by clicking the new XKit button that should appear in the menu at the top of your Dashboard, between your messages and account settings.

You can click the XKit button in the top menu to pull up all your XKit stuff, the list of extensions to install, news updates from the developer and your XCloud stuff if you're using it. From the Get Extensions tab, you can browse through all the available features and start adding them. Once they're added, they'll show up in your My XKit tab.

What If You Use Tumblr from a Mobile Device?

Tumblr is huge on mobile, but XKit was made for desktop browsers. Lucky for us mobile bloggers, the XKit Mobile app for iOS was recently released -- bringing you all the same features and functionality of your XKit on the desktop.

XKit Mobile isn't free like its desktop versions, but for just about $2 from the App Store it's definitely worth it. It even supports the iPad.

Next recommended reading:Tips on getting more Tumblr followers