To follow someone on Mastodon, click on their name or picture to be taken to their profile page. Then click the “Follow” button to follow them.
You can unfollow them by clicking the same button again. The button may have a different label after you’ve followed them (Unfollow, Following etc), but it will be in the same place on the screen.
I know someone has an account on Mastodon etc and I’ve tried searching for their account, but it doesn’t show up in the search results. How do I follow them?
If you’re trying to get someone’s profile page to appear and nothing else works, you can use their account address to make their profile appear. Copy and paste their account address into the search box, and this will force your server to show you their profile page.
If you don’t know their account address but you have some other means to communicate with them, try asking them directly. They can find their account address on their profile page, it’s just below their display name. There’s more info on the account addresses page.
If you’re just wanting to discover new accounts that you haven’t heard of before, try using the suggestions in this guide to discovering interesting accounts.
I tried to follow someone but it doesn’t seem to have worked? I can’t see them on my list of follows?
Some people have following restricted, you may need to wait for them to accept your follow request manually.
However, sometimes the follow fails due to bugs either on their server or your server. See the guide to this topic for more info on what to do.
Is there a limit on how many accounts I can follow on Mastodon?
Yes and no.
If you have fewer than 7500 followers, you can only follow up to 7500 accounts.
If you have more than 7500 followers, you can follow accounts equal to that amount. For example, if you had 10,000 followers you could follow 10,000 accounts.
The technical reasons for these limits are discussed in this issue on Github ⧉.