tumblr-backup-js

Script to archive a Tumblr blog's photos and videos, generating a file structure like so:

tumblr_backup/
  ├── 1234567890/
  │   ├── caption.txt
  │   ├── image1.jpg
  │   ├── image2.jpg
  ├── 2345678901/
  │   ├── caption.txt
  │   ├── video.mp4

Progress is written to progress.json for resuming in case of interruption.

Requirements

• Node.js 20.6+ for --env-file support
• A Tumblr application and OAuth 1.0a tokens
• Access to the private or password-protected blog you want to archive

Setup

1. Create a Tumblr application at https://www.tumblr.com/oauth/apps.
2. Generate credentials for the account that can access the target blog.
3. Copy .env.example to .env.
4. Fill in .env with your Tumblr API key, API secret, OAuth token, OAuth token secret, and blog name.
5. Install dependencies with npm install.

Configuration

Set these values in .env:

• API_KEY: your Tumblr consumer key
• API_SECRET: your Tumblr consumer secret
• OAUTH_TOKEN: your OAuth access token
• OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET: your OAuth access token secret
• BLOG_NAME: the blog hostname, for example example.tumblr.com

The script uses OAuth because private and password-protected blogs are not safely handled by an API-key-only flow.

Usage

Run:

npm run backup

The script will:

• create tumblr_backup/ if needed
• fetch posts from the configured blog in batches
• write each post into its own directory
• save progress to progress.json after every post so interrupted runs can resume

Notes

• Existing downloaded files are skipped.
• YouTube URLs are still downloaded through @distube/ytdl-core.
• If you change BLOG_NAME, remove or rename progress.json unless you want to reuse the old progress state.