Pinterest Setup

Convert to a Business account

Pinterest's API v5 rejects Personal accounts outright. Switching is free, reversible, and doesn't affect your existing pins.

1. Log in at pinterest.com.
2. Click your profile picture (top right), then the small caret, Convert to business, Upgrade.
3. Answer the short business survey (business name, type, website).

Shortcut: pinterest.com/business/convert/.

Create an app at developers.pinterest.com

1. Open developers.pinterest.com and log in with your new Business account.
2. Click Connect app. (It's called "Connect app," not "Create app." Don't go looking for the wrong button.)
3. Fill in the form: app name, short description, intended use, your website, and at least one redirect URI (any HTTPS URL works for a personal-use app, even something like https://getartdrop.com/).
4. Submit.

Pinterest reviews app requests during business hours. You'll get an approval (or rejection) email the same business day in most cases.

Copy your App ID and App secret

1. Once approved, open My apps in the developer dashboard.
2. Click Manage on your app.
3. Copy the App ID.
4. Next to App secret key, click Show key, reveal, copy. It's only shown when you click, store it now.

Know which permissions to grant

ArtDrop needs these four scopes:

• boards:read, list your boards so you can pick the right Board ID.
• pins:read, read pin state (duplicate detection, scheduling).
• pins:write, create new pins. This is the core requirement.
• user_accounts:read, verify identity on token use.

You don't enter them anywhere yet. They get passed to Pinterest in Step 5 when you mint a token.

Use the dashboard's "Generate access token" helper

Easiest path for a single-user setup:

1. On your app's Manage page, click Generate access token.
2. Check the boxes for all four scopes from Step 4.
3. Click generate. Pinterest returns an access token for your own account, no OAuth redirect dance.
4. Copy the access token.

There's a catch, read Step 6 before pasting.

Trial Access vs Standard Access (important)

New apps default to Trial Access. Pins you create under Trial Access are only visible to you. Anyone else hitting your board will see nothing new. That's a feature, not a bug, Pinterest uses it to sandbox new developers.

For real traffic, you need Standard Access, which requires a short video demo of the OAuth flow:

1. On your app's dashboard, look for Apply for Standard Access (or similar).
2. Record a quick screen capture showing the Pinterest OAuth consent page granting your app access. ~30 seconds is enough.
3. Upload and submit.
4. Pinterest reviews manually. Timelines vary from 2 days to 2 weeks.

If you skip this step, ArtDrop will look like it's working, pins go up without errors, but nobody except you can see them. Approve and test with a second logged-out browser after you upgrade.

Find the Board ID you want pins sent to

Pinterest web URLs don't contain the numeric Board ID, they show the slug (/mike/my-art-board/). Fastest way to get the real ID is a one-line API call.

Run this in a browser or with curl, substituting your token:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer {ACCESS_TOKEN}" \
     https://api.pinterest.com/v5/boards

Response:

{
  "items": [
    { "id": "987654321098765432", "name": "My Art Board", ... },
    { "id": "987654321098765431", "name": "Seasonal Drops", ... }
  ]
}

Copy the id of the board you want, that's the Board ID.

If you have more than 25 boards, the response is paginated with a bookmark field. Add ?bookmark={value} to keep going.