Mastodon lets you edit your posts after they have been published. It lets you edit the text itself, add attachments, add text descriptions to the attachments, add polls, or change the post’s language setting. Here’s how it works:
- Go to one of your posts that you want to edit
- Click the ⋯ icon at the bottom of the post
- Select Edit
- Make the changes you want
- When you’ve finished editing, click Save Changes
This works on your server’s website, the official apps and third party apps. Third party apps may have a slightly different interface depending on which app you use.
(There was a bug in the first version of editing which meant you couldn’t edit image descriptions. However, version 4.1.0 of the Mastodon server software fixed this.)
What’s to stop someone abusing this feature by changing a post’s contents after it’s shared?
There are several features to prevent abuse of editing:
- When a post is edited, everyone who has shared it will receive a notification in case they want to un-share it.
- Edited posts are labelled as edited.
- Clicking on the edited label displays the full contents of all previous versions of that post, so that others can see all the changes that have been made to it.
These measures together reduce the chance of anyone abusing the editing feature.
Can I edit my post’s visibility setting?
No. For technical reasons you cannot change a post’s visibility after it has been published.
If you absolutely have to change the visibility anyway, use the Delete & redraft option instead, which deletes the post and breaks any links etc, but puts a copy of it into the editing box so you don’t have to retype it all.
⚠️ Warning about editing polls
You can edit polls too, but if you edit the options on the poll it will reset the votes to zero, even if people have already voted. This vote reset happens without warning, so be really sure you want to reset the poll before you edit its options!
You can edit the main text of a poll post without problems though, it’s only editing the options that people vote for that causes a reset.
If I edit a post to mention someone’s account, do they get a notification about it?
No. If you publish a post, then edit it to add a mention of someone’s account, they don’t get notified. Mentions only generate a notification if they’re included when the post is first published.
Also, they may not be able to see the post if the post has restricted visibility and the mention has been added later. However, this is a reported bug and it may be fixed in the future ⧉, so don’t rely on this bug to keep a post hidden from a mentioned account.