💖 What it does
Adds buttons for Mark for Later, Subscribe, Bookmark, and Download anywhere on AO3 where works or bookmarks are listed.
🪴 How to use it
You won't always see all four buttons:
- If you're not logged in, all you can do is download works.
- In lists of bookmarks, there's already a "Save" button (or "Saved" if you already have that work bookmarked, or "Edit" on your own bookmarks page), so there's no "Bookmark" button added.
- Your own works can only be bookmarked and downloaded.
- Series can only be subscribed to or bookmarked (and downloaded when Advanced Downloads are enabled).
- External works can only be downloaded.
- Mystery Works (in unrevealed collections) can't be downloaded.
- On your Marked For Later page, you have instead the option to "Mark as Read".
Bookmark, Mark for Later, and Subscribe
"Bookmark" will open the bookmark form, so you can add tags, notes, etc as usual. Creating bookmarks, "Mark for Later" and "Subscribe" all happen in the background, and the page doesn't reload so you won't lose your place in the list.
You can click each button only once, then they're disabled. The icon on the button reports the status:
- ✓ = success
- ⓘ = the work or series was already bookmarked, and no changes were made to your old bookmark
- ✗ = error (e.g. AO3 is down or you're rate-limited), try again by opening the work and use the standard AO3 buttons there
Download (AO3 standard)
"Download" will, like on a work, open a submenu so you can choose the download file format.
Advanced Download
The "Advanced Download" feature allows you to do three things that regular downloads can't:
- set your preferred file format, so you don't have to pick each time;
- configure the file name, so it's more than just the work title;
- download an entire series at once.
The "Advanced Download" feature replaces the regular Download button and will only state the file format that you'll download in, e.g. "PDF".
Advanced Downloads are available on Series as well. They'll schedule downloads of all works within the series, and the button will tell you how many there are, e.g. "6 PDF".
- Downloading many files will take a while. The script pauses a couple of seconds between each file; this avoids being rate-limited.
- Each file might open in a new tab. See Known Limitations below.
- While downloading, the button will show a little animation. Other download buttons are disabled while a series is being downloaded.
- While downloading, a "Cancel" button is added. If you change your mind and don't want the files, you can abort the downloads.
- Once the downloads completed, the button shows a checkmark icon. If anything failed along the way, it shows a warning triangle instead.
Advanced Downloads have configurable filenames. You can choose any order of the
- work's creator°
- work title
- series title° (if there is one) including the part number of the work
- fandom° (as tagged)
- pairing° (as tagged)
- and rating (the first letter: N, G, T, M, E).
°) will use only the first billed if there are multiple
The script removes all spaces and cuts each element off after 20 letters, to keep the total filenames under 150 characters.
🎨 How to configure it
To enable and configure Advanced Downloads:
- Open a page with a list of works or bookmarks.
- You'll have a new "Userscripts" option in the main menu bar. Select "Safekeeping Buttons" from it. This opens the GUI.
- Toggle the "Use Advanced Downloads" slider on.
- Select the file format you'd like to use for all downloads from the list.
- Define your preferred file name, by dragging&dropping items from the bottom list to the top list.
- The top list can never be empty; you can't pull the last item down. Instead drag a different item up first, before removing the one you don't want.
- Drag the items into the order you want them to appear in.
- Select "Save".
"Reset" deletes all configuration and disables the feature.
Every change to the configuration (Save or Reset) will automatically refresh the page, so you can see the changes take effect immediately.
🐞 Known limitations
The script doesn't know if you've previously marked something for later or subscribed to it. You won't get an error for clicking them again. Note that AO3 can double-subscribe you to the same work, which might result in multiple notification emails.
The submenu for "Download" is finicky, because AO3 didn't design it with the intention of showing it in work lists. I've added CSS tweaks for the Default and Reversi skins, but it might still be cut off. If you have a custom skin, you might need to adjust that to make the submenu display where it should.
Downloaded files might immediately open in a new tab. That's driven by a browser setting, and happens commonly with PDF downloads. You can change this setting, but it will affect all files of this type that you download, not just the ones from AO3.
- In Firefox, you can change this by navigating to Settings > General > scroll down to Applications > on the line for PDFs, set that they shouldn't "Open in Firefox" but instead "Save File" only.
- In Chrome, you can change this by navigating to Settings > Privacy & Security > Site settings > expand Additional site settings > PDF documents > under Default behavior select to only "Download PDFs"
If you have a script for automatically populating some info into the bookmark notes, it probably won't do anything in the work lists where this script added the "Bookmark" button. Nothing I can do about it, unfortunately.
🏛️ History
- v3 - added Advanced Downloads
- v2 - added Bookmark button
- v1 - initial version with MFL, Subscribe, Download
🏅 Credit
There have been several scripts (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) to provide these buttons before, but those for MFL and Subscribe have broken after a recent (Sep 2025) change by AO3, which is why I created my own version. Those scripts also jump to the top of the page after a button is clicked, which I was able to circumvent.
