There is a saying in the developer community that getting followers on GitHub is super hard. There are in fact memes about it.
I am a Computer Science student who mostly works with JavaScript and builds open-source tools. These tools are mostly Node.js based Command-Line Interfaces (CLIs) to automate stuff. You can check them out on my GitHub.
Two months back, I tweeted that I'm 14 people short of reaching 100 followers on my GitHub. This tweet got viral and more people followed me in two days than in two years.
😠 Who Unfollowed Me
Yesterday, I launched a CLI that lets you know who recently unfollowed you on GitHub. There is a small story behind why I build this CLI.
Actually, it happened to me more than twice that when I was about to reach 200, someone unfollowed me. GitHub does not provide any feature to let you know who did that. So I blended GitHub REST API and a little bit of creativity and voila! who-unfollowed-me came to life.
👨🏻💻 How It Works
Copy-paste the following command in your Terminal. If you're a Windows user, first run your Command Prompt or Terminal as Administrator. If you're using macOS, make sure to add sudo before the following command.
npm i -g who-unfollowed-me
Now run the CLI by writing the following command on your terminal.
unfollow
When you run the CLI for the first time, it will ask for your GitHub username. It will save it for later use.
After this, whenever you run the CLI by writing unfollow in your terminal, the CLI will show you who recently unfollowed you.
If no one has unfollowed you, it will also let you know this.
If you are a Windows user, make sure that whenever you run the CLI, first run your Terminal or Command Prompt as Administrator.
🙌 Wrap Up
Whenever you lose some followers on GitHub, you can use this CLI to know who unfollowed you. It would not be wrong to say that getting followers on GitHub is a different kind of happiness and at the same time losing them is an entirely different kind of pain.
The CLI is also on Product Hunt. Kindly, show some love and check it out.
Cheerios 🤞
Top comments (3)
Thanks. It works really well.
There is a downside to it. You would have to run the CLI every time someone follows you so it can update your followers data. I can't seem to find any work around for this.
Which terminal application are you using (I'm guessing it's hyper)? It looks minimal and clean. Also can Github REST API be used for seeing who un-starred my repos?