This is an unofficial non-technical guide to using Mastodon and the wider Fediverse. You can search or browse the guide below.
♿ Accessibility Notice: The links below lead to individual pages answering specific questions. Individual pages have links at the bottom that lead back to this front page.
Mastodon and the Fediverse: Beginners Start Here
- What is Mastodon? What is the Fediverse?
- How do I join?
- Do I need multiple accounts? Do I need to join lots of servers?
- Who owns the Fediverse? Is it owned by a corporation or venture capital firm? Can it be bought out by Google/Facebook/Elon Musk?
- Who sets the rules on the Fediverse? How do I find out what the rules are on my server?
- Who gets to start their own server?
- Why is the Fediverse on so many separate servers?
- What if a server misbehaves? What if it allows its members to do something really bad?
- Does Mastodon or the Fediverse use ads or trackers or algorithms or blockchain/cryptocurrency or anything annoying like that?
- What other kinds of servers are on the Fediverse?
- What’s that rainbow pentagon thing that everyone seems to use on the Fediverse?
- What do I do next? Are there any other guides to Mastodon and the Fediverse?
How to use Mastodon and the Fediverse: Basic Tips
- Which server should I join? How do I find out more about a server?
- What if a server closes down? What happens to my account?
- It’s a really bad idea to join a big server!
- Which apps can I use? Should I use the official app or a third party app?
- How do I log in through the website? Help, my password doesn’t work!
- What’s my account’s address? How do I follow other people’s addresses? How can people follow my address?
- Can I use my account to log in on other servers?
- How do I customise my profile? How do I upload a profile banner? How do I verify my account?
- How do I search for stuff?
- What about Likes and Re-Tweets? How do I do those in Mastodon?
- Who do I follow? How do I find interesting accounts to follow? How do I find my friends?
- Why does it say “Pending” when I try to follow someone on Mastodon?
- How do I follow hashtags? What does hashtag following mean?
- What kind of accounts can I follow from Mastodon?
- How do I get more followers?
- How to be notified when someone posts
- Where are the trending posts and hashtags?
- Setting your language preferences and filtering out posts in other languages
- Is there a built-in language translation system on Mastodon?
- Who can see my posts? How do I send DMs?
- How do I post images, videos or audio? What can I attach to a post? How do I post GIFs?
- What are custom emoji? How do I access them? Can I add new ones?
- How do I share posts?
- How do I edit my posts?
- How do I pin my posts to my profile?
- Why can’t I quote other posts in Mastodon?
- Favourites vs. Bookmarks in Mastodon
- Customising your Mastodon interface colours
- Inviting people onto the Fediverse
- What are toots? What are boosts? What are CWs? What are instances? What is birdsite?
- What is the Local timeline? What is the Federated timeline?
- How do I browse the Local timelines of other servers? Can I follow other servers’ Local timelines on my account?
- Transferring your Mastodon account to another server
- Logging out of your account
- How to delete your account
Staying Safe
- Do I need to use my real name or real photo?
- How do I report a post? How do I report a person?
- How do I contact the person who runs my server? How do I find out what the rules are on my server?
- Blocking and muting on the Fediverse
- Restricting who can see your posts
- If you @ someone in a Mastodon DM, they will be able to see it
- Restricting who can follow you
- How to hide your follows and followers
- Hiding posts from search engines
- Using Content Warnings (CWs)
- How do I add a CW to a post I want to share?
- Filtering your timeline
- How to prevent your account being suggested to others
- Verification works very differently on the Fediverse
- Using Two Factor Authentication (2FA) on Mastodon
- Is Mastodon end-to-end encrypted?
- Authorized Fetch
- Creating an isolated server
Accessibility
- How do I use Mastodon through a screen reader?
- How do I make posts more accessible to blind people?
- How do I make posts more accessible to deaf people?
- How do I remember to add text descriptions?
- How do I add a text description through Mastodon’s edit feature? I forgot, and edit won’t let me add it afterwards!
- How can Mastodon server administrators automatically remind their users to add text descriptions?
How to use Mastodon and the Fediverse: Advanced Tips
- Following hashtags
- How do I verify my account?
- My website verfication doesn’t work! The address won’t turn green!
- Using multiple accounts
- Using the Lists feature on Mastodon
- What does the padlock 🔒 mean next to people’s names on Mastodon?
- Choosing a good username for the Fediverse
- I’ve written a link but it isn’t clickable. How do I make it clickable?
- Customising your notifications
- Crossposting between Mastodon and Twitter
- What are “original pages”? Why are they so useful?
- It keeps asking me to log in again and again! What is “remote following” on the Fediverse? How do I avoid it being so cumbersome?
- How do I see a post on its home server?
- How do I interact with posts that haven’t federated to my server?
- Browsing the Media tab
- How do I mute notifications from a thread that I don’t want to take part in?
- Hiding someone’s boosts without blocking or muting them
- How to avoid accidentally unfollowing, boosting or deleting in Mastodon
- Adjusting photo previews on Mastodon so they look nice
- Customising Mastodon polls to allow multiple selections
- Creating draft posts
- Some people seem to have much bigger character limits than me? What’s going on?
- How do I browse the Local timeline on another server?
- Switching off automatic timeline scrolling
- Don’t use dots / full stops / periods in usernames
- When I visited an account the profile was blank with no posts. Is it really blank? I’m sure there are posts there but I can’t see them.
- It’s a good idea to have at least some followers before posting your best content
- Which posts and accounts can I see from my server? How do I make my server notice posts and accounts that it can’t currently see?
- Why doesn’t every Fediverse server show all posts ever made by all users from all other servers?
- Using Mastodon through a keyboard
- Typing emoji through the keyboard on Mastodon
- How to activate the Mastodon Advanced Web Interface
- What is a bot account, and how do I mark my account as one?
- Embedding posts on your website
- Following accounts through RSS
- Why does it say “Follow request sent” when the account I want to follow doesn’t have follow requests switched on?
- Seeing the first ever posts by a Mastodon account
The Fediverse beyond Mastodon
- Mastodon API: Using Mastodon apps with non-Mastodon accounts
- BookWyrm: A social network for people who enjoy reading
- Friendica: A flexible Fediverse server type with long posts
- GoToSocial: Safe and lightweight
- microblog.pub: Fediverse servers for individual users
- Mobilizon: Event organisation and discovery
- OwnCast: Live streaming and chat on the Fediverse
- PeerTube: Video hosting on the Fediverse
- PixelFed: Photo sharing on the Fediverse
- WordPress: Turning your blog into a Fediverse server
- Write Freely: Long-form writing platform for the Fediverse
Running your own server on Mastodon and the Fediverse
- How do I create my own server?
- What do I call my server? What kind of domain name or subdomain should I use?
- Customising your Mastodon server’s appearance
- Using custom emoji on your server
- Recommending accounts to new users on your server
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