Elon Musk @elonmusk
The thing I find most surprising is how few people understand first principles thinking.
GPL-3.0-or-later · open source No cost · no subscription · no ads No platform account required View source →
See who you are
really
reading
Think of XTagger like Reddit Enhancement Suite's user tagger — but for X.com. RES let Reddit users annotate other users privately; XTagger does the same for X, and adds shareable collections on top.
X.com has no tagging system. Your mental model of who's trustworthy, who's a troll, who's brilliant — that knowledge lives only in your head. XTagger externalises it, keeps it on your device, and lets you share curated collections with friends.
Add to Chrome
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Brave · Chrome · Edge · Opera · Privacy by Design →
-
- Donald J. Trump @DonaldTrump
AMERICA IS BACK AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!
- Rupert Lowe @RupertLowe10
We need serious people making serious decisions. The current state of British politics demands accountability.
↑ Live demo — hover a name, click 🏷️ to tag
£0
cost, forever
0
bytes sent to any server
16
tag colours
100%
open source · GPL-3.0
The problem
X has no memory. You do.
X.com deliberately gives you no way to annotate accounts. There is no user-tagging, no personal notes, no way to record "this person was wrong about that prediction" or "great source on climate science." That knowledge stays locked in your head.
This isn't accidental. Platforms profit from you re-evaluating people from scratch each time. They have no incentive to let you build a persistent, personal model of who to trust.
More importantly: your annotations shouldn't live on a platform you don't control. If X changes its terms, gets acquired, or is blocked in your country, you should still have your tagging history. With XTagger, you always do — it's in your browser, not their database.
The same principle applies to any social platform. XTagger is built to support others beyond X.com in future.
XTagger vs the alternative
Your annotations ✓Your browser, locally ✗Nowhere — not supported
Data portability ✓XTAG: open format ✗Locked in, if it existed
Privacy ✓Nobody else can read it ✗Platform has full access
Cost ✓Free as in Freedom + beer ✗N/A
If platform closes ✓Your tags still exist ✗Everything gone
Everything you need, nothing you don't
Invisible until you need it, then immediately obvious.
🏷️
Tag anyone on X
Hover any username and click the tag icon. Name it, colour it, done. Tags appear next to that person everywhere they post — timeline, replies, search, profiles.
🔒
Stays on your device
All data lives in your browser's IndexedDB. No account. No server. No tracking. Uninstalling removes everything.
📤
Shareable collections
Mark tags as public, curate them into a named collection, and share the whole thing as one XTAG: string. Your friends import it in one click.
🎨
16-colour palette
Assign colours to build visual categories — journalists in sky blue, politicians in coral, friends in emerald. Spot patterns at a glance.
📊
Tag intensity
(Coming in v0.2.) Re-tag someone with the same label to increase intensity. Tags will grow deeper and gain a stronger border the more you reinforce them.
🔍
Right-click to tag
Right-click any username for instant context-menu tagging — no hover needed. Works on every page of X.com.
Sharing
Who do you think is funny?
Tags are private by default — your mental model, nobody else's. But when you're ready, mark individual tags as public and share them. Let your friends automatically try assigning those same tags. Let them disagree. Build your view of who's funny from several people's lists — not just your own.
Your tags are yours. Imported tags are clearly provenance-marked as someone else's opinion. You keep full control over what you accept, edit, or ignore.
🔐
Private by default
Every tag starts private — stored locally, never transmitted. Your opinions about public figures stay yours until you decide otherwise.
family 🔒 only you see this
journalist 🌐 public — shareable
📚
Combine collections
Import collections from multiple people and merge them. If Alice tags X, Y, Z as funny and Bob tags P, Q, R — you can build your own funny list from both, keeping only the accounts you agree belong there.
Alice @x@y@z
Bob @p@q@r
You @x@y@p@q @z
🔗
Provenance chain
Published collections carry a signed record linking them to their author's identity — a cryptographic token only they can produce. You know who curated what you're importing and can verify it without trusting any server.
Imported tags always show their source. Your tags and someone else's opinions are always clearly distinguished.
Coming in v0.2
Not yet built Tag intensity
Not all tags are equal.
Encountering the same behaviour again? Re-tag the account with the same label to increase intensity. The tag will become more visually prominent — the fill will darken and saturate, and the border will grow stronger — so your most-reinforced opinions stand out at a glance.
The border colour is a universal intensity indicator consistent across all colour categories, letting you compare conviction levels regardless of which hue you chose.
Coming in v0.2
Intensity scale — funny tag
funny 1
Seen once
funny 2
Seen again
funny 3
Seen often
funny 4
Consistently
Fill lightness and saturation shift across the scale; the outer border acts as a universal intensity ring visible regardless of background colour.
Four ways in
The right interface for the right task
XTagger has four distinct interfaces. Each one is optimised for a different kind of work. Knowing which to reach for makes everything faster.
🏷️
Hover trigger
Tagging on the fly, without leaving the feed
Rest your mouse over any username on X.com — a small gold 🏷️ tag button appears. Click it to create a tag, quick-assign one you have used before, or edit an existing tag. The whole interaction takes two clicks and keeps you in the feed.
Want to tag someone while scrolling? → hover trigger
🧩
The popup
Your tag library and control panel
Click the 🏷️ icon in your browser toolbar. Here you can search your full tag library, import a collection from someone else, export your tags (all or a filtered collection), and change display settings. Command central for everything outside the feed.
Want to search, export, or import? → popup (toolbar icon)
🖱️
Context menu
Right-click to tag without hovering
Right-click anywhere on X.com and choose Tag this user with XTagger. Useful when the hover trigger is hard to hit — unusual layouts, profile pages, or when you prefer keyboard navigation over mousing to a small target.
Hover trigger not cooperating? → right-click menu
⚙️
Extension manager
Install, reload, set keyboard shortcuts
Open brave://extensions or
chrome://extensions.
Use this after updating XTagger to reload the extension, or to assign a keyboard shortcut
for opening the popup. Not needed for day-to-day tagging.
Just updated and nothing changed? → reload in extensions page
Portable format
Share tags like a link.
Every export is a single XTAG: string —
a base64-encoded JSON manifest you can paste anywhere. No file attachments,
no hosting required.
The format is open and documented. Any tool can implement it. Your tags are not locked to XTagger — if better software comes along, your data moves with you.
Read the XTAG: format specification →Portable share format
XTAG:XTAG:eyJzY2hlbWFWZXJzaW9uIjoxLCJwbGF0Zm9… Paste anywhere — email, message, tweet — to share your tags
Privacy by Design.
XTagger has no backend. No signup, no telemetry, no analytics, no ads — ever. Tags live in IndexedDB inside your browser. They leave your device only when you explicitly export and share them.
The extension requests only four permissions:
activeTab,
storage,
contextMenus, and
tabs.
No host-wide access. No identity. Nothing phoning home.
Fits your workflow
Works with the tools you already trust
XTagger is local-first and open — it plays nicely with decentralised identity and self-hosted infrastructure.
Not yet built
⚡
Nostr identity
Self-sovereign provenance
Nostr is a decentralised protocol built on keypairs — the same cryptographic primitive XTagger will use to sign collections. If you already have a Nostr identity (npub), you'll be able to sign your tag collections with it. Anyone importing your collection will be able to verify it came from you — without any central authority, account, or server.
- →Sign a collection with your nsec — share the npub publicly
- →Publish collections as Nostr events — subscribers get updates automatically
- →Anyone can verify authenticity without trusting XTagger's servers
- →No account required — your keypair is your identity
npub1abc… → signs "British Journalists" collection → you import → ✓ verified
Nostr signing is coming in a future release. Learn about Nostr →
☁️
Nextcloud
Self-hosted sharing
If your household, team, or community runs Nextcloud, XTagger collections are just files —
export a .xtag file, drop it in a
shared Nextcloud folder, and everyone with access can import it. Nextcloud's existing
access controls, versioning, and activity log become your collection management layer.
- →Export a collection → save to your Nextcloud Files
- →Share the folder with specific users — Nextcloud handles permissions
- →Recipients import the
.xtagfile directly into XTagger - →Version history in Nextcloud shows when collections were updated
/Nextcloud/shared/xtagger/british-journalists.xtag
Works today — export any collection and share the file however you like. About Nextcloud →
🔗
Use them together
Sign a collection with your Nostr key, store it in Nextcloud, share the folder with your community. Recipients get cryptographic proof the collection is yours, delivered through infrastructure you control. No platform, no middleman, no account required on either end.
Support XTagger
Help it grow — or just spread the word
XTagger is built by people who are tired of losing context on social media. It will always be Free as in Freedom and free as in beer. If it is useful to you, here is how to help.
📢
Share tags — and opinions
The best advertisement for XTagger is a well-curated collection. Share your funny list with friends. Post your actually correct predictions list. Argue about it.
Someone will ask "wait, how did you make that?" — and that is the pitch. Your tags speak louder than any banner ad.
🛠️
Report bugs · suggest ideas
You do not need to be technical to help. If something does not work the way you expected, or you have an idea — that is valuable feedback. Non-technical reports are just as useful as code contributions.
Use the issue templates on Forgejo — plain-language questions, no jargon required.
🪙
Donate — keep the lights on
XTagger costs nothing to use and always will. If it saves you time or makes X.com more bearable, a small donation keeps development moving. Even if it is just the crypto you forgot you had.
ETH
Ethereum · also via PayPal Crypto
XMR
Monero (private by design)
BTC
Bitcoin
LTC
Litecoin · also via PayPal Crypto
BCH
Bitcoin Cash · also via PayPal Crypto
Start tagging in 30 seconds.
Install, open X.com, hover any username. Free forever.
Free as in Freedom · free as in beer · GPL-3.0-or-later
Add to Chrome
Chrome Web Store · Free · No account needed
Or read the quick-start tutorial first.