Posts in Mastodon can be set to automatically self-destruct after a certain time period, with exceptions made for posts you want to keep. Here’s how to do it:

1. Log in through your server’s website
2. Go to Preferences > Automated post deletion (on mobile you may need to click ☰ first)
3. Choose the Age threshold to set how long posts are around before they’re deleted
4. Set the exceptions for posts you want to keep
5. Tick the box at the top marked Automatically delete old posts
6. Click the Save changes button

If you want to stop deleting posts automatically, UN-tick the box and click the Save changes button.

I activated this but it hasn’t deleted posts that are way past the threshold. What’s going on?

If servers are busy, they create queues of tasks to work through. Automated deletion tends to go at the back of the queue, so it may take longer to happen than other tasks. If the settings are correct and it’s way past the deadline for the deletions to happen, ask your server’s admin for advice.

How does this affect server running costs?

When this feature is discussed, the issue of server running costs is often raised.

On the one hand, automated stuff always adds extra tasks for the server to carry out. On the other hand though, it would mean the server doesn’t have to store as much data so it would save money on storage costs, especially if the deleted posts have media attachments. It would also reduce storage for any servers that have federated the posts being deleted.

You would have to speak to your server’s admin to find out exactly how it affects their setup, as different servers may have different resources available.

I asked a couple of very large server admins for their thoughts on how this balances out. Both of them said the added tasks were insignificant compared to everything else the servers have to do. Both of them also said deleting posts (especially posts with media attachments) saves storage, but one of them added that there may be fees to be paid if the deletions happen for very recent posts. On their server, it would be cheaper to only delete posts more than 90 days old, and leave any newer posts intact.

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At the moment, most Fediverse groups work like this:

1. Join a group by following its account address
2. Posts from that group will start appearing in your Home timeline
3. If you want to post something to the group, just include its account address in a public post
4. If you want to leave a group, unfollow it

It’s somewhat similar to following hashtags, and people who have used email discussion lists will also find this structure very familiar.

The two main Fediverse group providers at the moment are Guppe ⧉ and Chirp ⧉. They are platform-neutral, and their groups can be followed from all kinds of Fediverse servers including Mastodon, GoToSocial, Friendica etc.

Where can I discover existing groups?

I’ve compiled a curated list of interesting Fediverse groups on fedi.directory ⧉. I’ve tried to only list active groups with a respectful atmosphere.

Guppe has a list of their top 50 active groups at the bottom of their website at a.gup.pe ⧉. Chirp has its own directory at chirp.social ⧉.

How can I create a group? Are the groups moderated? What if I see something unsuitable?

Guppe groups don’t require any kind of registration, you can create a group simply by mentioning the group name in the form “@YourGroupNameHere@a.gup.pe”. However, because there’s no registration there is no group moderator either. Guppe groups rely on members reporting bad group posts the same way they would report bad non-group posts.

Chirp groups require you to create an admin account on the chirp.social ⧉ website. Because groups have a registered admin, it means the admin can moderate the group themselves instead of relying on server admins doing general moderation.

What do I do if I see spam or something unsuitable in a group?

Do exactly the same thing you would do if you saw spam/abuse outside the group on ordinary posts. Whatever kind of group you are following, you can report, mute and block just like you can with ordinary non-group posts.

When you report bad posts, the admins on your server (and possibly also the server of the spammer/troll) can take action to block it and remove it.

What if a group is really busy? How do I stop it overwhelming my timeline?

You can use Mastodon’s Lists feature to set up lists for groups, and then set those lists to hide posts from your Home timeline. This will let you keep groups in their own mini-timelines you can dip into whenever you want, without causing any posts to appear in your main timeline.

Groups federate content more effectively than hashtags

Hashtag follows and groups have some overlap, and appear to work in a similar way on the surface, but there are significant differences behind the scenes.

The biggest advantage of groups is you automatically see all of the group’s posts, even if they’re from accounts that haven’t federated to your server before. Because all the group’s posts are shared to all the members’ servers, you never miss a thing.

With hashtag follows, this mass federation doesn’t happen. Hashtag following means you will only see posts from accounts that already federate with your server. Hashtags are essentially passive filters for your server’s Federated timeline and do not actively draw in any new content.

What about Mastodon’s own built-in groups feature?

Mastodon has been developing a built-in groups feature for some time now, but it hasn’t been released yet. From the screenshots posted so far, it seems it will be more of a Facebook Groups type forum rather than a public discussion list. (You can see highly technical details and screenshots of this upcoming Groups feature on their github page ⧉).

However, it is unclear if Mastodon groups will work across the Fediverse or only on Mastodon. Chirp and Guppe are platform-neutral, and will work on any kind of Fediverse server that supports microblogging including Mastodon, Friendica and others.

Can I set up my own Guppe or Chirp servers?

Guppe is free open source software, and if you have the necessary technical knowledge and resources, you can install your own Guppe server by following the instructions on the Guppe Github site ⧉.

Chirp is not currently installable by other people.

Groups on Friendica

The Fediverse server type Friendica includes built-in group support, which works in a similar way to Chirp and Guppe. Creating a Friendica group requires a Friendica account, but anyone can join the group from other Fediverse server types including Mastodon servers.

A Friendica group can be moderated by the person who created it, and they can also add additional moderators to the same group.

Is there anything like Reddit on the Fediverse?

Yes! There’s a Reddit-style link aggregation and discussion platform called Kbin.

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On Mastodon, if you want to see pictures, videos or audio posted by someone, and you don’t want to see their text posts or boosts, try clicking the Media tab on their profile page.

This is especially useful if you’re browsing for works on an artist’s profile, for example.

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If you’re posting a photo on Mastodon through your server’s website, click Edit on the photo before you actually post it. This will allow you to add a text description for blind people, and it will also let you adjust how the photo is cropped in the compact version of the post which is visible in people’s timelines.

Photos that have a 16:9 aspect ratio will not be cropped on the timeline, so you don’t need to adjust them at all (but do still remember to add a text description to keep them accessible!).

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Some third party Mastodon apps have a built-in draft posts feature.

There is no official drafts feature in the Mastodon website interface, but unofficially you can use the Delete & re-draft option combined with DMs to create drafts:

1. Log on through your server’s website and create your draft post, but don’t publish yet.
2. Set visibility to mentioned people only, and don’t mention anyone.
3. When you’re ready to save it, publish it.
4. When you want to edit it, go to your Direct Messages tab and find the draft.
5. Click the draft open, click ⋯ and select Delete & re-draft, the draft will open in the message editing window
6. When you’re ready to publish for real, set the visibility to the correct setting and add any mentions you want, then press the Publish button.

…but, as many people have pointed out, it might be easier to just use a notepad app and copy and paste drafts from a text file on your computer or phone 😁

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On the Fediverse, and especially on Mastodon, if you try to follow an account it sometimes says you’ve followed them but then it turns into a “follow request sent” message.

Usually, this means you’ve tried to follow an account that needs manual approval of followers, and you have to wait for the owner to approve your request. You can tell if an account requires approval as it will have a padlock icon 🔒 on its profile next to the username.

They don’t have follow requests switched on, so why does it say they do?

Sometimes this message appears even when the account you’re trying to follow doesn’t have manual approval mode switched on. In this case, the message may be caused by several other things:

• A software bug which has prevented the follow going through properly. This kind of bug is especially common if you’re trying to follow an account on a new or experimental type of Fediverse server.
• A server is overwhelmed with new members signing up all at once, and struggling to keep up with all the requests it is receiving.
• The server of the person you’re trying to follow has silenced your server. This restricts communications between the two servers.

If you see that an attempted follow has turned into a follow request but the other account doesn’t have requests switched on, try leaving it for a while as it may just be a temporary glitch. If that doesn’t help, try cancelling the follow completely, wait for a while and then try clicking follow again, which sometimes helps the follow to go through properly. If it still doesn’t work, contact your own server admin, and if they can’t help try contacting the admin of the server for the account you’re trying to follow.

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Due to the way the Fediverse currently works, if you publish a post while you still have zero followers, that post will probably not be visible to anyone except people on your server. When people follow you, they will see your posts from that moment onwards, but there’s generally no backfilling to show them your previous posts.

On Mastodon, you can make everyone see past posts by pinning them to your profile. Pinned posts are backfilled and will become visible to anyone who follows you. You can pin up to five posts at once, and they will all be backfilled. Unpinned posts will not be backfilled though.

In general it’s a good idea to wait until you have at least some followers from other servers before you publish your most interesting stuff. Even a handful of followers will give your posts much more visibility across the Fediverse, as you only need one follower from a server to make your posts visible to that entire server.

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If a profile looks blank, it may not actually be blank!

Fediverse servers work like this: servers only notice accounts from other servers if someone follows or interacts with them. If no one on your server follows a particular account, and that account is on another server, then that account may appear blank to you.

The reason servers work like this because of resources. If servers had to keep a copy of every post from every user on all the thousands of Fediverse servers in the world, their running costs would become prohibitively expensive (and most of those posts would probably never be read anyway).

The idea of the Fediverse is to let anyone start their own server if they want to, and this process of servers “noticing” accounts helps make that possible.

Viewing the latest and most complete version of an account

To check what the profile really looks like, log in to your account through the website, go to the profile, click on ︙ and then “Open original page”. This should open the profile in a new tab on its home server, which will show all the public posts the account has ever made.

Unfortunately, original pages on other servers are more difficult to interact with. By default your have to enter your username and password each time, though there are ways to make it much easier.

How to prevent your own profile from ever looking blank

If you pin some of your posts to your profile, for various technical reasons your profile will never appear blank to anyone as these posts will always be visible. You can pin up to five posts on a profile, and these can include attached photos, video and audio, so they’re a great way of introducing your account to potential followers from any server. Click here to find out how to pin posts.

Backfilling to the rescue?

There’s there may be a possible solution to blank profiles on the way called “backfilling”. This would mean as soon as you follow someone your server would automatically check the account for past posts and display some or all of them on your server. With backfilling there would be much less need to fiddle around with original pages etc. At time of writing backfilling is the most popular suggestion on the Mastodon github site, and if you’re comfortable using github you can go and give it a thumbs up ⧉.

Update buttons to the rescue?

The official Mastodon roadmap ⧉ has an item labelled “Explicit controls to fetch more data from origin server”, which seems to mean they would introduce some kind of update button to fetch the latest version of a profile on demand. It’s in the “Planned” section of the roadmap which means they’re working on it. These would be practically very similar to the backfilling mentioned above.

Accounts with restricted post visibility

An alternative reason why an active account might look blank is this: if the account has follower requests on (indicated by a padlock 🔒 next to their name), and all its posts are followers-only, then you will not see any posts on their profile until you follow them and your follow request is accepted.

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There are tens of thousands of Fediverse servers with millions of users in total, and this amount is growing all the time. There are hundreds of millions of posts going back almost a decade.

It would be horrifically expensive for every independent server to keep a complete, up-to-date record of every post ever made by every user on every other server. The only people who could afford such a system would be megacorporations like Facebook, Google, Twitter etc.

The whole point of the Fediverse is to allow small independent servers to exist as part of a larger network, so that the network is as spread out as possible (click here to find out why this is a good idea). The smallest Fedi server starts from about US$10 a month to run, and this low cost is possible because the server only needs to display posts and shares from people its users follow. Even the largest Fediverse servers are able to operate on a fraction of the budget of a commercial social network because they are only showing posts their users have to see. (If you’re interested, there’s a complete list of what a server can see here.)

Couldn’t Mastodon at least show a few old posts instead of blank profiles?

Having said all of the above, there are definitely ways that the current system of federation could be improved. One feature currently missing from the Fediverse is “backfilling”, where an account’s old posts are automatically loaded to a server when someone on that server follows an account. At the moment you only see posts made by an account after at least one person on your server has followed it, but with backfilling their past posts would become visible too. (Incidentally, Mastodon does already backfill pinned posts.)

The main thing preventing backfilling from being used has been concern about stress on servers, especially if an account has thousands of past posts to backfill. A possible compromise might be letting servers decide for themselves if they will allow backfilling, and how many posts they are willing to backfill. Perhaps smaller servers could allow at least a few posts to be backfilled in order to avoid possible blank profiles.

If you’re comfortable using Github, you can let the developers of Mastodon know you want some kind of backfilling to be possible by giving a thumbs up on the relevant issue ⧉, and if you have your own ideas you can contribute to the thread.

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If you are searching for something on Mastodon and the Fediverse, you will get different search results depending on which server your account is on. This is because each server sees a slightly different view of the Fediverse.

Your server can see the following content:

• All accounts on your server
• All posts made by accounts on your server
• All posts shared by at least one account on your server
• All accounts that at least one account on your server follows
• All posts made by accounts that at least one account on your server follows
• All posts shared by an account that least one account on your server follows
• All posts from groups which have at least one follower on your server
• All posts that have been searched for by their original page’s web address
• All accounts that have been searched for by their account address
• All posts pushed to your server by a relay server (if your server uses relays)

How do I make my server notice more posts and accounts?

If a post isn’t visible from your server but you know it exists, you can manually force your server to notice it by copying and pasting the post’s URL from its original page on its home server into the search box on your server. This will make the post appear within your server so you can interact with it and search for it just like any other post. Click here for more details about original pages.

If you want your server to notice a lot more posts and accounts, ask your server admin if they have considered using a relay service. Modern relay services can be for specific topics, and scripts can be used to backfill missing posts from profiles and conversations.

Why doesn’t my server just notice all posts and accounts from all servers?

Fediverse servers are selective about what they see, because keeping a complete copy of all posts from all other servers regardless of whether they’re needed would be incredibly expensive and wasteful.

Can a server stop noticing posts and accounts?

Yes, if the server’s admin decides to defederate from another server. When a server defederates from another server, it can no longer see posts or accounts from the defederated server.

Alternatively, a server admin may instead decide to suspend a specific account on another server, which will make that account and its posts no longer visible on the admin’s server.

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On Mastodon, if you have posted in a thread or been tagged in it, but you don’t want to take part any more, you can mute the conversation so that you won’t get notifications from it. No one will know you’ve done this, and it will only affect that thread:

1. Log in through your server’s website (and some apps also include this feature)
2. Go to one of your posts in the thread you want to mute
3. Click ⋯ and select Mute conversation
4. If you haven’t posted in the thread, go to a post in the thread where you were tagged, then select ⋯ and Mute conversation
5. If you still can’t find this option, go to your Notifications section, then click ⋯ and Mute conversation on one of the conversation’s posts there

If you change your mind, just do the same thing again but select Unmute conversation.

What if I want notifications about that conversation, but there are just one or two people in the thread who are causing problems?

If the problems in a thread are limited to a small number of people, you might want to try muting their accounts instead. You can mute people indefinitely or temporarily.

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On Mastodon, if you follow someone and you want to see their posts but not their boosts, you can hide just their boosts without blocking or muting them. This doesn’t affect their normal posts, and they have no way of knowing you’re doing it.

Log in on your server’s website, and go to the profile of the person whose boosts you want to hide. Click on the ︙ button and select Hide boosts from. If you change your mind, go back to their profile and select Show boosts from.

This only works on accounts you follow.

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You can optionally have Mastodon ask you for confirmation when unfollowing someone, boosting a post or deleting a post.

You can switch these confirmations on or off by logging in through your server’s website, then going to Preferences > Confirmation dialogs, tick the boxes for what you want confirmation for, then click Save changes.

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If you add a poll to your post on Mastodon, by default it only allows people to select one option.

However, if you use the website or certain third party apps, you can customise the poll so that it allows people to vote for several options at once.

Changing poll type on the web interface

If you’re using Mastodon through your server’s website, you can choose a poll type by doing the following:

1. Log in through your server’s website
2. Write your post and create the poll as normal, but don’t actually publish it yet
3. Click on one of the circles next to the options, the circles will all change into squares, and the poll will now allow multiple option selection
4. If you want to go back to single selection, click the squares again and they will change back into circles
5. When you’re happy with your choice, post the poll

If you change your mind, click on a square to change it back to a circle, which means single option selection.

Changing poll type on apps

The official apps don’t yet support creating multiple poll types, but you can choose poll types on some third party apps.

Third party app interfaces are very varied, but for example Ice Cubes for iPhone/iPad has a menu when you’re creating a poll that lets you choose between “One Vote” or “Multiple Votes”.

⚠️ Editing poll types resets the vote numbers

You can also edit the poll type after you have posted the poll, but this will reset all of the votes to zero (without any warning) when you publish the edit. Also, editing any of the poll texts causes this same reset to zero.

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Most people on the Fediverse are on a standard Mastodon server, which has a 500 character limit for posts and a four option limit for polls.

However, a lot of people are on servers running customised versions of Mastodon where the admin has altered the character limit, or they are on non-standard “forked” versions of Mastodon such as Glitch ⧉ and Hometown ⧉, or perhaps on completely different Fediverse server types that aren’t Mastodon at all. These other servers may have totally different limits to standard Mastodon (also known as “vanilla Mastodon”).

Despite their differences, these servers are all part of the Fediverse and you will see posts from all kinds of servers appear on your timelines. If it is a particularly long post, you may see it truncated on your timeline with a “Read more” link you can click on to show the full text.

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By default, Mastodon servers’ websites use a simple single column interface.

However, if you’re using the website through a computer (or a tablet/phone in horizontal mode) there is also an optional multicolumn interface you can use instead. Here’s how to activate it:

1. Log in through your server’s website as usual
2. Click ⚙️ Preferences
3. Tick the box marked Enable Advanced Web Interface and click the Save Changes button
4. Click the Back to Mastodon link at the left of the screen

If you’re already in multicolumn and you want to go back to the normal single column interface, here’s how to do it:

1. Click on the ⚙️ cog gear icon
2. UN-tick the box marked Enable Advanced Web Interface and click the Save Changes button
3. Click the Back to Mastodon link

If you prefer the normal control method using the mouse, that works fine too.

How to add more columns by using the pin feature

When you first use it, the advanced web interface only contains four columns with one of these columns dedicated to whatever you last selected. Every time you select something, it replaces the contents of this fourth column.

However, if you want to keep a column permanently visible you can pin it, and the pinned column will be added to your previous columns.

• To pin a column, click on the slider icon in the top right corner of the column and select Pin
• To unpin a column, click the slider same slider icon and select Unpin

When you pin a column, it expands the interface sideways, and some people have lots of pinned columns. Pinning is well suited to widescreen monitors, and you can scroll the interface sideways to see any columns that don’t fit on the screen.

How to change the order of the columns

You can move a column left or right by clicking the slider icon in its top right corner and then clicking one of the < or > buttons to move the column. These buttons are next to the Unpin option.

What kind of columns can I add?

Any column with a slider icon in the top right can be pinned or un-pinned, which includes hashtag searches, all types of timeline, private mentions (DMs), Lists, Bookmarks, Favourites etc.

Advanced hashtag searches with pinned columns

If you pin a hashtag search and then click the pinned column’s slider icon again, you will see some additional options which let you combine hashtag searches into the same column with special filters:

• Any means it will show posts that contain one or more of those hashtags
• All means it will show posts that contain all of those tags
• None means it will hide posts containing those tags

Pinning accounts as new columns using Lists

You can’t pin an account’s profile page directly, but you can pin particular accounts (or combinations of accounts) as new columns by using Mastodon’s Lists feature:

1. Click Lists on the Getting Started menu on the right (or click ☰ on the left if you can’t see Getting Started)
2. Create a new list and add the account(s) you want to that list (see the guide to using lists if you haven’t created one before)
3. Click the list you want to pin to bring it up as a new column
4. Click the slider icon in the top right corner
5. Select Pin

Using Advanced mode through your keyboard

If you prefer using just your keyboard, the Mastodon web interface can optionally be controlled almost entirely through key commands, click here to see the section on hotkeys for a complete list. These hotkeys also include some commands that only work in Advanced mode.

Why are there two official interfaces on Mastodon?

The original website version of Mastodon from 2016 used the multicolumn interface, but while some enjoyed it others found it confusing and overwhelming. Eventually a simpler single column interface was introduced, and single column became the default. The multicolumn interface was renamed “advanced” and made available as an optional mode in settings.

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If you’re running a Mastodon account that isn’t monitored by a human, it’s considered polite to mark it as an automated account (also known as a bot).

How to add the “Automated” label to an account:

1. Sign in through your server’s website or web app
2. Click on your profile image to go to your profile page, then click Edit profile
3. Scroll down to the box marked This is an automated account, tick the box
4. Click Save changes

I thought bots were bad? Why is Mastodon encouraging them?

Bad bots are discouraged and blocked, good bots are encouraged and followed.

Good bot accounts can be extremely useful. For example, some bots post sports results or weather alerts, which are exactly the kind of thing people might appreciate seeing in their feeds at any time of day or night. This kind of account would be difficult for a human to maintain 24 hours a day.

Bots can also be entertaining, with some bots running games or posting amusing content.

Can bots interact with people?

Some bots can interact, yes. When there is interaction, it is usually automated, hence the “Automated” label. Vote Chess ⧉ is a nice interactive account, it lets people play chess against a computer by voting for the next move (you can follow it at the address @VoteChess@botsin.space).

Also, sometimes the bot’s human maintainer will post via the bot’s account and reply as well. However, on automated accounts this is rare, and the assumption should be that there is no one monitoring the account.

Where can I find a list of good bots to follow?

Have a look at the Bots category over on Fedi.Directory ⧉.

So why do bots have a bad reputation?

The bad bots you sometimes hear about are where someone has automated an account to do something nasty or anti-social such as posting spam. Bad bots tend to be rare on the Fediverse, and would usually be blocked pretty quickly once the nastiness is reported.

So “Automated” isn’t a bad sign?

If you see an account labelled “Automated”, that is actually the sign of a good bot, because it’s the owner of the bot who chose to label it as such. Another good sign is if the bot’s creator has included a link to their own account on the bot’s profile page.

Bad bots usually try to disguise the fact they are bots, and don’t use the “Automated” label.

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It’s really simple:

1. Log in through your server’s website
2. Go to the post you want to embed
3. Click ⋯ at the bottom of the post, then select Embed
4. Copy and paste the HTML code into your website’s page code

This works on any site, blog, or other service that accepts HTML code in posts. For example, news website The Verge embedded a post from Mastodon in this story ⧉.

Embedding on WordPress sites

If you’re using WordPress, don’t use WordPress’s “Embed” block. Instead, use WordPress’s “Custom HTML” block and paste Mastodon’s HTML embedding code there.

If you want to embed a Mastodon account’s public feed on a WordPress site, you can use WordPress’s “RSS” block and insert the Mastodon account’s RSS feed address.

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If you’re using Mastodon through your server’s website on a computer, you can control it almost entirely through your keyboard. Particular keys will carry out particular functions, and you can type emoji too.

Hotkeys on Mastodon

Hotkeys are always on, press shift + ? (or just ? on some keyboard layouts) to see a complete guide to which keys do what.

Note that some of these keys are only useful in the advanced web interface (multicolumn) mode, but most of them can be used with the default single column mode.

For your convenience, here’s the complete list:

Typing emoji through a keyboard on Mastodon

If you’re using Mastodon on a computer, you can type emoji directly with your keyboard.

Just type : (colon) and a keyword without a space. A dropdown menu will appear with the top five matching emoji, and you can pick one with the arrow keys. For example :sun will bring up the top five emoji matching the keyword “sun”.

If there are more than five matches for a keyword, they will not all appear on the dropdown. If so, you’ll need to search for them from the picker icon 😂 in the top right corner of the editing box.

The keywords are based on the alt text of an emoji. If you’re wondering how to search for a particular emoji in future, find it in the picker and then hover your mouse over it. The alt text will appear, and you will be able to use this keyword to bring the emoji up using your keyboard.

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This tip no longer works, I’m leaving this page here in case anyone follows a link to it, but it’s no longer listed on the front page.

On older versions of Mastodon you could see an account’s first page of posts by adding ?min_id=0 to the end of its profile URL. This no longer seems to work on current versions of Mastodon.

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Remote following is where you go to an original page which is not on your own server, and click the Follow or Subscribe button there. By default, it will ask you to sign in again, because it’s asking your own server who you are.

This method is obviously pretty cumbersome, but there are a couple of ways you can avoid having to sign in again:

• If you have Firefox on a computer you can install the Simplified Federation add-on ⧉ which automatically signs you in when you’re doing a remote follow.
• If you don’t want to install any extensions but you don’t want to have to sign in again and again, go to your own server’s website or your app, sign into your account as normal, then copy and paste the web address or Fediverse address of the account’s original page into the search box. This will bring up the same account profile but within your own server’s interface, where you can just click Follow. This method avoids having to do remote following at all, and you won’t have to keep signing in. After you’ve done this once, your server will remember the account and you will be able to find it again by just searching within your own server.

Remote following is meant more as a method of last resort, and you’ll find it a lot easier to follow people from other servers within your own server’s interface.

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Every account and post on the Fediverse has an original version of itself on the server it comes from called an “original page”. This page shows the latest and most complete version of a profile or post. As well as letting you see an up-to-date version of itself, original pages can be really useful for many other purposes too.

Finding a profile or post’s original page

On Mastodon, here’s how you can see these “original pages”:

1. Log in through your server’s website (and this may also work on your Mastodon app, if it supports original page links)
2. Go to a profile or post and click on ⋯ or ︙
3. Select “open original page”, which will open the original page in a new browser tab

Once the page is open, the original page’s web address will be visible in the browser’s address bar at the top.

Checking if a blank profile really is blank

If no one on your server has interacted with a profile before, it may appear blank. You can open the profile’s original page to check if it really is blank.

Browsing a profile’s followers and follows lists

Sometimes a profile’s follows and followers may not be visible to your server, or it may be incomplete. If you go to the original page and click on the follows and follower lists there, you will see their complete versions. (However, note that some people deliberately keep their follows and followers lists hidden for privacy reasons.)

Using original page addresses to interact with posts and profiles

If there’s a profile or post that you can’t find by searching on your server, you can use original pages to force your server to notice people and posts it hadn’t noticed before, including pages from other types of Fediverse server. Just copy and paste the original page’s address into the search box on Mastodon, and it will make that post or profile appear within your own server, where you will be able to interact with it directly.

The process is cross-platform and works for any Fediverse server type. For example if you know the web address of a PeerTube video or Pixelfed photo, you can paste it into the search box on Mastodon and the video or photo will appear within Mastodon. You will then be able to interact with it as if it was a Mastodon post.

This process works in a very similar way to account addresses.

Sharing Fediverse content using original page addresses

Original pages are also useful if you want to share a profile or post with people outside the Fediverse, as you don’t have to be logged in to see them. Just give people the original page’s web address and it will open in any browser.

You can copy a link to an original page directly to your clipboard by going to a post, clicking ⋯ and then “Copy link to post”. This link goes to the post’s original page.

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You can automatically crosspost between Mastodon and Twitter in either direction using third party services. Crossposting means when you post on Mastodon the same content will also be posted on Twitter (or vice versa).

This can be controversial if you’re just mirroring your Twitter account to Mastodon without interacting on Mastodon at all. Some servers specifically ban such “zombie accounts”.

Going in the other direction, if you’re active on Mastodon and mirroring it to Twitter, there’s no controversy at all.

Which crossposting services are available?

Professional paid crossposting services such as Buffer ⧉ and Publer ⧉ are still working.

However, most free crossposting services have shut down due to Elon Musk’s shutdown of Twitter’s free API.

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On Mastodon, you can customise your notifications to adjust what triggers a notification to appear and what kind of notification it provides. The notification options you have depend on what you are using to access Mastodon:

• On your server’s website, go to your Notifications column and click on the slider icon in the top right corner to open the notification settings. Note that there are even more options available if you scroll this settings menu down a bit.
• On the official app, go to the main timeline and click on the cog icon ⚙️ in the top right corner, then click on Notifications.
• Third party apps will have various different interfaces for customising notifications, but they’ll usually be in their settings sections.

Different ways of accessing Mastodon will give you different options for customising notifications, for example the website lets you adjust which notifications cause a sound.

What about email notifications?

Email notifications on Mastodon are a totally separate system that happens to have a similar name. To adjust your email notifications:

1. Log in through your server’s website
2. Click ⚙️ Preferences
3. If you’re on the desktop website, click Notifications on the left of the screen. If you’re on the mobile website click ☰ in the top right and then Notifications.
4. Choose your email notification settings. If you don’t want to receive any emails, untick all the boxes.
5. Click the Save Changes button in the top right corner of the screen

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If you want a clickable website link within a post or on a profile on Mastodon, remember to include https:// at the beginning when you’re writing it. This tells the server that you want the link to be clickable.

Twitter automatically changes anything with a dot in the middle into a clickable link, but this doesn’t happen on the Fediverse because some people want to include dots without making clickable links.

As well as website links, you can also use many other kinds of links. All of these will work as clickable links on Mastodon: https://, http://, gemini://, dat://, dweb://, gopher://, ipfs:// and ssb://

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Fediverse addresses have two parts, the username and the server name. However, by default Mastodon and some other Fedi server types hide the server part of the address within posts to avoid looking too messy. This means that it’s a good idea to choose something distinctive for a username, so that when people see your account mentioned in a post it is clear that you are being talked about.

For example, if there was an account with the address @MarvellousWidgets@example.com, only @MarvellousWidgets would be visible on posts, though clicking on it would lead to a profile page where the full address appears. This is a good distinctive username because people can refer to it in discussions easily, and a post might say “Have you seen the latest release from @MarvellousWidgets? It’s very useful.”

On the other hand, if there was an account that had a much more generic username such as @software@example.com, all that people would see of its address in posts would be @software which would be very unclear and unmemorable. A discussion would look like this: “Have you seen the latest release from @software? It’s very useful.”. People would have to click through the username each time to know who you are talking about.

Those users on their own servers may think their custom domain gives them enough distinctiveness. However, as people don’t see the domain part of Fedi addresses most of the time, even people on their own domain need to think about distinctive usernames.

Don’t use dots / full stops / periods in usernames

Some Fediverse platforms allow you to use . in usernames while others don’t.

If you use dots in your username, it may make it impossible for you to be followed from some types of servers, including Mastodon servers.

The safest option in this situation is to just completely avoid using dots in usernames.

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Mastodon includes a Lists feature which lets you create mini-timelines based on accounts you follow. For example, you could create a list which just shows posts from artists you follow, or just news accounts, or whatever kind of theme you want. (Note that for safety and privacy reasons, you cannot add accounts you do not follow to lists. However, see the advice below for hiding the contents of Lists from your Home timeline.)

You can create and use lists on the website version of Mastodon, and on third party Mastodon apps like Tusky for Android or Metatext for iPhone/iPad. However, it is not currently possible on the official app.

To create a list on the website interface using a computer:

1. Open your profile page, then click on the section marked Following.
2. Browse through the accounts you follow. When you find an account you want to add to a list, click on their name to open their profile page.
3. On the profile of the person you want to add, click on the ︙ symbol and select Add or remove from lists. This will cause the Lists editor to open.
4. If you want to add the person to new list, type a name for the new list into the white box marked New list title and then click the + sign next to the new list’s name. Alternatively, you can just click + next to an existing list’s name.
5. Click anywhere outside the Lists editor box to close the editor.
6. A link to your list will be visible on the right side of the screen. To see your list’s timeline, just click on its name. Lists start out empty but you will see posts on the list when someone on that list publishes their next post or boosts something.
7. To edit or delete an existing list, click on the list’s name to open it and then click on the slider icon in the top right corner of the list. This editor also includes a search box for searching accounts you follow, if you prefer to add accounts to your list that way.

…and that’s it! You now have all the tools you need to use lists on Mastodon!

By the way, third party apps will have slightly different interfaces for lists, but it’s the same feature.

Can I view accounts on Lists without them appearing on my Home timeline?

Yes! Starting on Mastodon version 4.2.0, you can hide posts by accounts on your lists from appearing on your Home timeline:

1. Log in through your server’s website
2. Go to the Lists section
3. Click on the list you want to hide on Home
4. Click on the slider icon in the top right corner
5. Select Hide these posts from home

This means you can have lists that are entirely separate from your Home timeline.

Why do I have to follow accounts that I add to Lists?

The following requirement is for the sake of safety and privacy.

On some social networks such as Twitter, list features have been misused by trolls and bullies to make lists of victims.

On Mastodon, the follow requirement gives people more control over being listed. If an account has follow requests activated, it lets them control whose lists they may end up on, and if an account blocks someone that also prevents them being added to that person’s lists.

Can I follow hashtags on lists?

No, not at the moment. However, this is a very popular suggestion and if you’re comfortable using Github you can vote for this option by giving a thumbs up on the relevant issue ⧉.

What do all the options mean on the Lists feature?

Edit list – Lets you change the list’s name and add or remove accounts from the list

Delete list – Deletes the list

Hide these posts from home – With this option switched on, posts that appear on your lists will not appear in your Home timeline

Show replies to no one – You will not see any replies in your list, only new posts by the accounts on the list

Show replies to members of the list – You will only see replies by accounts on the list to other accounts on the list, and new posts by accounts on the list

Show replies to any followed user – You will see replies by accounts on the list to accounts that you follow, and new posts by accounts on the list

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First of all, it’s worth saying that most people do not need to use multiple accounts. The Fediverse is designed in such a way that people on different servers can interact seamlessly, as if they were all on one network. For most people, one account is enough, because it lets you interact with people on the whole network.

However, some people may need separate personal and work accounts, or an extra account that focuses on a specialist topic which they wish to keep separate from their main account. Also, some server types are specialised in particular kinds of content, and people may have multiple accounts on multiple server types.

Whatever your reasons, it’s very easy to use multiple accounts on Mastodon and the Fediverse! Here are some tips:

• If you are going to have multiple accounts, it’s strongly recommended that you sign up on a different server for each account. Because the servers are independent, you can use the same email address for all of them and you can be signed into all the accounts simultaneously on the web and on apps. Signing up for accounts on different servers also means that if one server goes down your alternative accounts will still work.
• If you use the Fediverse through the web, you can log into all the accounts at once and switch views by keeping each account open in a separate tab.
• Official and third party apps let you be signed into multiple accounts at once, and switch between them whenever you want. The interface for switching differs from app to app.
• On the official Mastodon app, you can add accounts and switch between them by holding down your profile image in the bottom right corner. A menu will appear which lets you add or switch accounts.

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