It’s really easy:
- Log in through your server’s website or web app or any other app
- Start a new post
- Click the poll icon, this usually looks like a bar chart 📊 (on some apps there may be no poll icon visible, but you can click the attachment icon and then select poll as an attachment)
- Write your question in the main part of the post
- Add up to four responses, and describe each option (you can use emoji too). Some servers running customised code may allow more than four responses.
- Set the duration, between 5 mins and 7 days
- Click Publish to post the poll!
Allowing multiple responses on polls
You can optionally allow people to chose more than one response in polls. The exact way you activate this option depends on which version of Mastodon your server is running or which app you’re using.
- Log in through your server’s website or the web app or a third party app
- Create the poll via the web interface as described above, but don’t post it yet
- On most server websites click on a circle next to one of the options, the circles will all change into rounded squares, and the poll will now allow multiple responses. Alternatively, some websites might have an option that says “Style: Pick One”, click this and choose “multiple choice” if you want to allow multiple responses. Third party apps will have various different ways of allowing multiple responses.
If you want to go back to single response on most websites, click on a square to change it back to circles before you post.
The “Style” option is due to replace the circle/square thing in the next version of Mastodon, but the next version hasn’t been officially released yet. Some servers are running the next version early while it is still in its testing phase, and that’s why they already have the “Style” option instead of the circles and squares.
⚠️ Warning about editing polls
You can edit polls the same way you edit posts, just go to ⋯ on the post and select Edit. However, when you edit the poll’s options or change its response type, it will automatically reset the poll’s results back to zero without any warning! (Editing the main text above the poll doesn’t reset it though.)
This behaviour is presumably to prevent abuse of the poll system, but the lack of warning can really catch people out (it certainly caught me out! 😅 ). For those comfortable using Github, there’s an open issue about this here ⧉.
I can’t find the poll button on my app!
Some third party apps have the poll button hidden away under the attachment button. Click attach, and then instead of choosing an image or video or audio file, choose a poll.
Some people have more than four options on their polls! How is this possible?
Mastodon is just one kind of server on the wider Fediverse. This means that many of the accounts you see on your timeline are on servers that have tweaked their Mastodon software to allow additional featured (such as more poll options), or are on totally different kinds of server altogether. You can escape the limits of standard Mastodon servers by moving to a different kind of Fediverse server.