If you're someone who wants to be able to find (or avoid) ships while reading on AO3, odds are good that a fan coder out there has created a user script that could help you out.
User scripts are similar to extensions. You add them to your browser to automatically adjust web pages for you. User scripts allow you the opportunity to personalize them, however, which is wonderful for things like AO3 filters.
Here are a few that might be worth a look:
AO3 multishipper saviour - if you want to read about a particular character in a relationship without specifying any other person. The relationships can be specified to be romantic or platonic or both.
AO3: Reorder Ship Tags - Automatically reorders relationship tags on work blurbs so romantic ships (/) always appear before platonic ships (&).
AO3 Relationship/Character Highlighter - highlights the ship/character you’re looking for if they appear in the first two relationship/character tags.
AO3 romantic relationship savior - hides all romantic relationships in sort & filter page that has "/"
AO3 First Relationship Tag Filter - toggle on the script if you're browsing a relationship tag and all the works that don't have that tag as their first tag will be hidden. Works on both romantic (/) and platonic (&) relationships.
AO3 relationship savior - hides works that have too many relationships in them.
AO3 Only Show Primary Pairing - will hide fics that don't have the designated pairing listed first in the tags.
AO3 Only Show Primary Pairing (Auto) - The difference between this and Neeve's script is that it automatically detects the primary pairing, little to no configuration needed.
AO3 Show every pairing except THAT one - Remove relationship tags from script which you do not want to read.
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Bookmarked fics that have been deleted or put in a private collection that you just don't know what that fic was. There's just a note you've left about how amazing it was.
Lack of comments / difficulty coming up with comments?
Can only kudos once?
Unable to remember if you've already read a story before and can only figure it out after re-reading the whole thing?
Unsure if you private'd all your bookmarks?
What if I told you I had a 1 stop solution for all of these issues?
I have (with a little help from friends) written some code that you can download and use fairly easy. It even works on mobile! (Though you may have to download a different browser).
What it does:
"Rekudos Machine" that turns any additional clicks of the kudos button into a random "additional kudos" comment. (You can also edit and customize this list yourself!)
Bookmark note helper: automatically adds fic info (title, author, workID, and summary) in a collapsible element to bookmark notes (workID can be used to recreate the url for a wayback machine). This is also compatible with any existing bookmark notes you have as all the fic info is just added in front of any existing notes. If the fic info is already in the notes (determined by the presence of the workID), no changes are made to the bookmark notes. (Though for a WIP you can have it automatically add the last chapter up as an indicator as to how far you got before any future updates are made, and you can also get a read date added to the bottom of the notes each time the bookmark is updated.)
Bookmark auto tags: automatically adds tags for the wordcount range [for <1K words, 1-5K words, 5-10K words, 10-20K words, 20-40K words, 40-60K words, and >100K words] and tags unfinished works with "WIP" and a "Read up to chap X" tag.
Bookmark auto privacy: sets all new bookmarks to default to private, but keeps the existing privacy setting for any existing bookmarks.
This script also clones the subscribe button and the "Marked for later/Marked as read" button at the end of the fic. This is convenient to subscribe to an in progress fic or mark a previously marked for later as read.
Please note that as of right now, only seems to work for works, not series. Additionally, doesn't work if there is no summary. I am working on it though!
You can also see and edit the code yourself for everything! Get your fingers in there and customize it to your system and needs!
How to get it:
First you will need to have a user script manager. I personally downloaded Tampermonkey which I use with Firefox on desktop and the Kiwi browser on mobile. I also have the info from greasyfork as to what script managers are recommended for which browsers:
You will also need to download the script. I have uploaded the script to a website called "Greasyfork" (link here: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/470448). You will need an account I think but I don't remember exactly. Greasyfork is where I got the idea to create this, inspired by some of the scripts for AO3 that were up there (which I would highly recommend going through any of the scripts that come up when you search AO3, there's so much cool stuff out there). If you are not comfortable downloading from this website, feel free to dm me directly and we can figure out a different way. But I have downloaded many scripts from greasyfork and trust it personally.
Lastly, how I use this:
I personally bookmark every fic I read and (with the bookmark private'd) assigned it a 1-5 star rating on how likely I would recommend or re-read the story. (Though I do have the top tier bookmarks public)
Having every single fic in a bookmark collection allows me to see a better idea of my reading history than simply going to the history page as I can filter based on fandom, word count, pairings, etc.
I currently have around 7000 bookmarks, and it took me about 6 days to get all of my bookmarked works updated to this new system. This includes the time it took for me to tweak and de-bug the code and the fact that I was also sleeping, going to work everyday, etc. So even if you have A LOT of bookmarks, it's possible to convert all of them! Honestly after de-bugging the code, what was slowing me down the most was going so fast AO3 gave me the "retry later" error and my own finger cramps.
If you have any issues or ideas let me know!! I'm definitely a hobbyist and not a professional coder, so I'm open to improvements and learning! Just trying to spread the word since I spent so much time developing and testing it and have found it super helpful.
