If you want to use Mastodon through a command line interface (CLI) or text-based user interface (TUI), there’s a free open source tool you can install called “toot” ⧉.
It can be installed on a variety of Linux distributions and Mac too.
(By the way, despite the similar name, it has no connection to the mobile apps Toot! or Tooot.)
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:
If you want to stop deleting posts automatically, UN-tick the box and click the Save changes button.
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.
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.
At the moment, most Fediverse groups work like this:
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 Chirp ⧉ and Guppe ⧉. They are platform-neutral, and their groups can be followed from all kinds of Fediverse servers including Mastodon, GoToSocial, Friendica etc.
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.
Chirp has its own directory at chirp.social ⧉, and Guppe has a list of their top 50 active groups at the bottom of their website at a.gup.pe ⧉.
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 way to moderate the group directly, and they rely on members reporting bad posts to their server admin.
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.
Whatever kind of group you are following, you can report, mute and block just like you would with 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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes! There’s a Reddit-style link aggregation and discussion platform called Kbin.
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.
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!).
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:
…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 😁
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.
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:
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.
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.
It may or may not 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 has ever followed an account on another server, the 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). This means people on very new or very small servers may sometimes see blank profiles even for popular accounts that have been around a while.
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.
Fortunately there may be a possible solution 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 never be blank profiles, and there would be much less need to fiddle around with original pages. 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 ⧉.
If you pin some of your posts to your profile, these will automatically be backfilled, and your profile will never appear blank to anyone. 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. Click here to find out how to pin posts.
An alternative reason why a profile might be 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.
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.)
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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:
If you change your mind, just do the same thing again but select Unmute conversation.
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.
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.
The default poll on Mastodon allows people to select just one option. However, you can customise the poll so that it allows multiple options to be selected.
Log in through your server’s website, and create the poll as normal, but don’t post it yet. Click on one of the circles next to the options. The circle will change into a square, and the poll will now allow multiple option selection.
If you change your mind, click on a square to change it back to a circle, which means single option selection.
Most people on the Fediverse are on a standard Mastodon server, which has a 500 character limit for posts.
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 kinds of servers may have totally different character limits, sometimes in the thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands.
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.
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:
If you’re already in multicolumn and you want to go back to the normal single column interface, here’s how to do it:
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:
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.
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:
The Mastodon web interface can be controlled almost entirely through your keyboard, click here to see the section on hotkeys for more details. These hotkeys also include some commands that only work in Advanced mode.
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.
On Mastodon, if you’re running an account that isn’t monitored by a human, it’s considered polite to mark it as a bot.
You can add the “bot” label to an account by signing in through the website and going to Edit profile > This is a bot account, then tick the box and click Save changes.
It’s not a pejorative term, it’s just used as a neutral label for accounts that post regularly but don’t have a human being replying.
Bot accounts can be very useful or entertaining, for example the How To Do Anything bot ⧉ is entirely automated but many people enjoy following it. Some bot accounts do interact, such as the Text Adventure bot ⧉, but there is no human being doing the interaction so they use a bot label.
Some types of Fediverse servers let you follow their accounts through RSS newsreader apps.
On Mastodon, you can follow any account through RSS by going to the account’s original page and adding .rss to the end of it. For example, the RSS feed for the FediTips account is https://mstdn.social/@feditips.rss ⧉. Note that this only shows public posts, you will not see replies or followers-only posts on the feed.
On PeerTube, you can follow any account or channel through RSS by going to its page and clicking the Subscribe button, there will be an RSS subscription option at the bottom of the menu. You may also see RSS logos next to various features that give you RSS feeds for those features.
It’s really simple:
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 ⧉.
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.
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 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:
| r | Reply to post |
| m | Mention author |
| p | Open author’s profile |
| f | Favourite post |
| b | Boost post |
| enter, o | Open post |
| e | Open media |
| x | Show/hide text behind CW |
| h | Show/hide media |
| up, k | Move up in the list |
| down, j | Move down in the list |
| 1-9 | Focus column |
| n | Focus compose textarea |
| alt+n | Start a new post |
| alt+x | Show/hide CW field |
| backspace | Navigate back |
| s | Focus search bar |
| esc | Unfocus compose textarea/search |
| g+h | Open home timeline |
| g+n | Open notifications column |
| g+l | Open local timeline |
| g+t | Open federated timeline |
| g+d | Open direct messages column |
| g+s | Open get started column |
| g+f | Open favourites list |
| g+p | Open pinned posts list |
| g+u | Open your profile |
| g+b | Open blocked users list |
| g+m | Open muted users list |
| g+r | Open follow requests list |
| ? | Display hotkeys list |
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.
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.
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 several ways you can avoid having to sign in again:
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.
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.
On Mastodon, here’s how you can see these “original pages”:
Once the page is open, the original page’s web address will be visible in the browser’s address bar at the top.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
Professional paid crossposting services such as Buffer ⧉ are still working.
However, most free crossposting services have shut down due to Elon Musk’s shutdown of Twitter’s free API.
On Mastodon, you can customise your notifications to adjust what they tell you about and how they tell you.
On your server’s website, go to your Notifications column and click on the slider icon in the top right corner. This provides lots of options to customise, and there are even more options if you scroll the menu down a bit.
On the official app, go to the main timeline and click on the cog / gear icon ⚙️, then scroll down to the notifications section. The official app’s options are more limited though, you will see a lot more options on the website version.
Third party apps will have various different interfaces for customising notifications, but they’ll usually be in their settings section.
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://
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.
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.
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:
…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.
Yes! Starting on Mastodon version 4.2.0, you can hide posts by accounts on your lists from appearing on your Home timeline:
This means you can have lists that are entirely separate from your Home timeline.
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.
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:
This is a bit technical, but there’s a little-known feature on Mastodon called “Authorized Fetch”, aka “Secure Mode”. By default it is switched off as it uses more resources and can cause compatibility problems with servers running older software.
However, if it is switched on it makes user blocks more effective, as it makes it harder for blocked people on other servers to interact with public posts from people who blocked them. (It only really helps with public posts, private posts are already protected against trolls.)
It can only be activated by your server’s administrator. It might be worth asking them if they have Authorized Fetch switched on in order to better protect their users. There’s a technical description of Authorized Fetch here ⧉ which they might find useful.
Authorized Fetch cannot be switched on from the graphical interface, it requires manually editing a certain file on the server. If a server is on a managed hosting service, the server admin can ask the managed hosting company to switch it on for them.
No. Mastodon isn’t E2EE yet.
If you’re needing to send sensitive information, use an E2EE messaging system instead.
In theory, the owner of your server could read at your DMs in the server’s database, and you’ll often hear people say “The admin can read your DMs”. This is not quite the whole story. An admin would need a certain level of technical skill, as there is no way to view DMs in Mastodon’s admin interface. The server owner would have to look directly at the database itself to read a DM, and ignore Mastodon’s interface completely.
To keep your Mastodon account extra safe, you can activate 2FA by logging in through your server’s website, then going to ⚙️ Preferences > Account > Two Factor Auth, then follow the instructions.
Activating 2FA means that even if someone finds out your password they still cannot log into your account, as logins will also require the code from your 2FA app or physical security key. The 2FA code from an app will change each time you log in, so only someone with access to your 2FA app or key can log into your account. 2FA apps are available for all types of phones and computers.
You only need to use a 2FA app when you log in, so if you stay logged in it won’t ask for your 2FA.
Setting up 2FA is slightly tricky, and it will require you to keep a permanent copy of a special code in a safe place, preferably printed out and kept at home with your other important documents. This special code lets you access your account if you lose access to your 2FA app or key. If you’re not technically minded, you might want to get help from a trusted friend or relative in setting it up. Make sure they are people you trust, as the backup code would allow them access to your account.
Once it has been set up, 2FA is extremely easy to use: the 2FA app displays a code and you simply type this in when you log in with your normal password.
There are many, many apps that work with 2FA on Mastodon. For example Raivo and Aegis are popular. Apple’s keychain also includes built-in 2FA support. The technical name for these kinds of apps is “TOTP” or “Authenticator”, and you may see them listed under these keywords in your favourite app store.
Also, just to make clear, 2FA apps do not know what you are doing with them. They just passively display a list of security codes based on a particular timestamp and account keys. 2FA apps are essentially elaborate clocks, but instead of displaying the time they display ever-changing access codes. Your account’s server also knows what time it is, and that’s how it knows whether your 2FA access code is correct at the moment you log in.
If you have an official website, the most straightforward way to verify your identity on Mastodon is to link to your Mastodon profile from that official website. If you include a special piece of HTML code in this link, it will make your website address turn green on your Mastdon profile and people will instantly know that you are the owner of (or professionally connected to) that website. If people already trust your website to be official, then by extension they can trust your account to be who it says it is.
Alternatively, if you’re really keen, you can also create an official Fediverse server based on the web address of your official website. This is, for example, how the European Union has verified all its official accounts on the Fediverse.
On Mastodon, you can create a special verified website link on your profile which turns green. This means anyone browsing your profile will immediately know you’re verified as the owner of the website:
After you’ve done all this in the correct order, you will see a link to your official website on your Mastodon profile which has will turn green with a green tick next to it, to verify you are the site’s owner. If you have any problems, see the troubleshooting section below.
This can also be used to verify specific pages on a website, for example if you’re listed as a staff member on an organisation’s website. As long as the creator of the website is willing to add the special verification code, you can verify the link.
If you’re really keen, the most watertight way to verify your identity is to make your own Fediverse server as a subdomain of your official website. This is what the European Union did when they made their own Mastodon server ⧉ and their own PeerTube server ⧉. Because the European Union’s official website is well known as being at europa.eu, and their servers are all subdomains of europa.eu, it means all the accounts on their servers can be trusted as being official EU Fediverse accounts. Making your own server on a subdomain is much easier and cheaper than you think.
Don’t panic, there are things you can do:
Also, note that each server on the Fedi verfies addresses independently and at their own pace. It is possible that people on other servers may see your address turn green before you do.
If you can’t get the normal link code to work for verification, you can instead insert this code into your site’s front page’s header:
<link href="https://yourserver/@yourusername" rel="me">Substitute your profile page’s URL for the example in the code, but leave it otherwise intact.