Throwback Bot Free Throwback Bot brings back one good post or comment from your subreddit's own past, on the days you choose. Throwback Thursday, Flashback Friday, Way Back Wednesday: pick the days, and it finds the best thing your community posted on that same date a year ago and posts it again.
A Reddit app built with Devvit. Installed on a subreddit by a moderator, no browser extension and nothing to run.
Came back from lunch and he was just sitting there, tail going, staring at the empty spot where a 27 inch monitor used to be. No remorse whatsoever.
u/alex_r · 18 September 2025One post, on the days you pick, from your own archive.
Illustration only. The real post looks a little different: Reddit renders it as plain markdown, so the layout follows what its post formatting allows.
For every day you enable, you choose what gets resurfaced. An old photo or link is crossposted, so it still looks like the original. A text post or a comment is quoted in a new post with a link back. You can force either style if you prefer.
The highest voted post from that same calendar day, a year ago or further back. The default, and the one that reliably restarts a conversation.
The highest voted comment of that day, quoted in a new post with a link back to the thread it came from. Reddit cannot crosspost a comment, so these always go out as text.
The post that divided the community: heavily voted in both directions. A different kind of throwback, and usually the one that pulls the most replies.
The post that drew the most comments, which is very often not the post that scored highest. Good for communities where the conversation matters more than the score.
Picks whichever of the above has the strongest entry for that day. Useful when you want the app to make the call rather than tune it yourself.
One section per day of the week, each with its own content type, title and hour. Thursday is the only one enabled out of the box, because an app that posts seven days a week the moment it is installed is spam.
Write the title once per day and the placeholders are filled in when the post goes out. Throwback Thursday: {{title}} becomes "Throwback Thursday: My cat knocked the monitor off my desk". Plain text works too.
{{title}} The original post's title {{author}} Who posted it {{score}} Its score at the time {{comments}} Its comment count at the time {{year}} The year, for example 2025 {{yearsAgo}} How long ago in words, for example "a year ago" {{date}} The original date {{subreddit}} Your community name Throwback Thursday works because it is familiar and it comes back every week. It stops working the moment it depends on a moderator remembering to dig through old threads on a Thursday morning. This posts it on schedule, whether anyone is around or not.
A post from a year ago is effectively gone: nothing in Reddit's interface leads anyone back to it. New members have never seen the thing your community still quotes. A throwback puts it back in the feed, where it can be read and replied to again.
A day with nothing on the front page is a day people stop checking. A throwback is real content from your own community, so it fills the gap without importing anything from outside or posting filler.
The obvious assumption is that a throwback app has to watch your community for a year before it has anything to show. It does not. Your old posts are already on Reddit.
Reddit's API cannot be asked for "the posts from 18 September 2025": it only offers fixed windows such as this year or all time, never a specific date. Every post does carry its creation date, so on install Throwback Bot reads your community's history through the windows Reddit does offer and files what it finds by calendar day. Looking up a date is then instant, and the first throwback can go out the same week.
It keeps the highlights of each day, not every post. That is what you want for a throwback, but it does mean a very quiet day may have nothing worth posting. When that happens the app posts nothing rather than posting filler.
On any subreddit you moderate. Thursday is already scheduled.
One run from the mod menu reads your community's history and files it by day.
See exactly what would be posted, in your Reddit inbox. Nothing is published.
It posts on schedule from then on, and re-checks the original is still live before every post.
Four actions live in your subreddit's mod menu, and nothing is published that you could not see first. Excluded users, recurring megathreads, removed posts and NSFW content are all filtered before anything is considered.
The throwback is posted by the app account, not by your moderator account.
Sends what would be posted to your Reddit inbox. Nothing is published and nothing is marked as used, so you can run it as often as you like. Start here.
Finds and publishes a throwback immediately, without waiting for the schedule. Useful for a first run the day you install it.
Re-scans your community's history and refiles it by calendar day. Run it once after installing, and again if you change the exclusions.
Re-reads your settings and reschedules the throwbacks. Run it after you change which days are on, or the hour they go out.
Install it and it works with no configuration. These are the knobs if you want them.
| Setting | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| How far back to look | 1 year ago | 1, 2, 3, 5 years, or the oldest content available |
| Day window | 3 | How many days either side it may look when the exact day has nothing. 0 means that exact day only |
| Minimum score | 5 | Skips anything that scored below this. Set it relative to your community size |
| How the throwback is posted | Automatic | Crossposts images and links, writes a text post for everything else |
| Post flair | Empty | Must match a post flair that already exists in your subreddit |
| Include the original stats | On | Adds a line such as "4,200 upvotes and 312 comments at the time" |
| Lock the throwback post | Off | A throwback is meant to restart the conversation, not close it |
| Excluded authors | AutoModerator | One username per line. AutoModerator stays excluded even if you remove it |
| Excluded title patterns | Megathreads, weekly threads | One pattern per line, * stands for anything. Keeps recurring threads out |
| Skip removed or deleted posts | On | Re-checked at posting time, not only when archiving |
| Skip NSFW posts | Off | Turn on if your community allows NSFW but you do not want it resurfaced |
| Never resurface the same item twice | On | Remembers what went out and picks the next best candidate instead |
| Throwback days | Thursday only | One section per day, each with its own content type, title and hour (UTC) |
Throwback Bot reads only the community it is installed in, through the official Reddit API, with the moderator permissions you grant on install. Its archive lives in that community's own app storage, is never shared with another community, and is removed if you uninstall the app.
It stores summaries rather than copies of your content: a title, an author, a score, a link, a date and a trimmed excerpt. Ten years of history comes to about 30 MB.
Open the app listing on developers.reddit.com and install it on a subreddit you moderate. Thursday is enabled by default, so it schedules a weekly Throwback Thursday straight away. Run "Rebuild the archive" once after installing, then use "Preview throwback" to see what it would post before anything goes out.
No. This is the most common assumption and it is wrong. Your old posts are already on Reddit, so on install the app reads your community's history and files it by calendar day. The first throwback can go out the same week you install it. The nightly job only improves coverage over time.
Choose "Oldest available" under how far back to look. Instead of aiming at a date before your community existed, it aims at the oldest content there actually is. That makes the app usable on a young or small subreddit from day one.
Yes. There is a section for each day of the week, and each one has its own content type, title template and hour. Thursday is on by default and every other day is off, so it never posts more than you asked for. You could run Throwback Thursday and Flashback Friday with different content types on each.
It posts nothing rather than posting filler. The archive keeps the highlights of each day, not every single post, so a very quiet day can come up empty. If that happens more often than you would like, widen the day window so it looks at nearby dates too, or lower the minimum score.
No. Skipping removed and deleted posts is on by default, and the check is repeated at posting time, not only when the post was archived. A post your mod team removed six months ago will not come back. The same re-check covers posts that were marked NSFW in the meantime.
Not unless you want it to. The app remembers everything it has already posted and picks the next best candidate instead. You can turn that off if you have a small community and would rather see favourites repeat.
It stores summaries, not copies: title, author, score, link, date and a trimmed excerpt. Ten years of history is about 30 MB. The archive lives in your community's own app storage, is never shared with another community, and is removed if you uninstall the app. The app makes no external network requests at all.
It is free. There is no paid tier, no account to create beyond your Reddit one, and no upsell inside the app.
Free, scheduled, and silent on a day with nothing to say. Install it on a subreddit you moderate.
Install from Reddit AppsAlso for moderators: Community Recap, an automatic weekly recap of your subreddit.