Batch edit favorites

Is there a way to batch edit/remove favorites? My son used to use the favoriting system as a way of just indicating he liked something, but now he wants to use it more conservatively, and only for observations he wants to revisit because he liked them so much. I, too, would prefer that method. Problem is, there’s a whopping 17 pages of favorites now of things that I want to remove. I’ve been doing it individually and that’s super time consuming. I was wondering if there’s a way to remove multiple of them at once or to select multiple of them or anything along those lines, because if there is, I haven’t figured it out. Thanks in advance.

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There isn’t a way to batch edit them. Quickest way would be to open a bunch in new tabs.

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the fastest way would be to get a list of observation ids and then run a bunch of DELETE /observations/{id}/unfave API requests.

quickest way for the average iNatter*

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hmmm… i would assume the average iNatter could do it, if motivated enough.

if i were to try to do it on a Windows machine, i would do something like this:

  1. get a list of observation IDs

  2. get a JWT

  3. construct a batch (.bat) file that looks something like this (replacing observation [IDs] and [JWT] appropriately):
    curl "https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/observations/[obsid1]/unfave" -X "DELETE" -H "Authorization: [JWT]" -I
    timeout /t 1
    curl "https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/observations/[obsid2]/unfave" -X "DELETE" -H "Authorization: [JWT]" -I
    timeout /t 1
    curl "https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/observations/[obsid3]/unfave" -X "DELETE" -H "Authorization: [JWT]" -I

  4. save and run the batch file

i’m not motivated enough to go into excruciating detail here on each of the points above, but there are existing forum posts / threads that do provide more detail on the points above.

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right, learning how to do all that as well as collecting the appropriate IDs would likely take more time for the average iNatter than opening a few dozen windows and tapping to unfave

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Thank you!

The iNat users who even know those options exist, let alone how to use them and construct the appropriate lines of code, are in the extreme minority of users.

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you know the option exists because i told you it exists, and i gave you some sample commands to handle the unfaving. whether or not someone can search forum threads and figure out how to use it all without having their hand held through the process, well, i guess that’s the deciding factor.

probably the most difficult part of the process would actually be getting a list of favorited observation ids. that may be something that i could see even a motivated person needing help with, but no one asked for help, and as far as i can tell, the only person who needs to do a bunch of unfaving doesn’t want to bother with it. so i’m not going to force anyone to learn something they don’t want to learn.

I’ve known the options exist for nearly a decade. That doesn’t mean I know how to use them.

We were talking about the average iNat user. Forum participants are not average iNat users.

I’d be completely unsurprised if the average user of of iNat is exclusively accessing the platform via the mobile app. I’ve met a lot of users who don’t even know that there is a website for iNat and that it has more options than the mobile app has, let alone getting into API coding and such, which is, let’s face it, specialized knowledge, no matter how familiar you personally may be with it.

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I’m sorry, but you explained in previous posts the way that’s clear only for those who knows how to use it. Unfaving even hundres of obs is really faster than googling up every term used there.

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Seriously, especially as the first part of the suggesting is:

“get a list of observation ids”

If you already have to do that, then you’re already looking at said observation and you just make the change then and there. Unless you can automate the selection of all the observations you’ve faved.

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