Tag Archives: Fediverse Apps

Fedilab for Android

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Third party Mastodon, PeerTube & Fediverse app, free open source software, available from Google Play (free) ⧉ & F-Droid (free) ⧉

Screenshot of a Mastodon post viewed in Fedilab, it looks pretty standard.
Screenshot of a translated post in a thread in Fedilab. The post is in German and there's a translation of it immediately below in a separate box.
Screenshot of the LibreOffice profile page viewed through Fedilab. The metadata section looks slightly messy.
Account switcher and options menu on Fedilab, there are lots of options in the menu to select from.
The settings sub-menu in Fedilab, an even wider range of categories to choose from such as interface, theming, timelines, account, compose etc.
The Extra Features settings page on Fedilab which allows additional features on Mastodon forks and non-Mastodon servers to be accessed through Fedilab's interface.
The filter editing page on Fedilab, the options are similar to those on the web interface of Mastodon.
Screenshot of a PeerTube video viewed through Fedilab, it includes the standard PeerTube options including thumbs up and thumbs down etc.
Privacy options page on Fedilab offering to open YouTube, Twitter, Instagram etc links within privacy-friendly alternative front ends.
Screenshot of a post on Mastodon with a slightly different visual theme with a greyer colour.
The theme options page on Fedilab.
Searching PeerTube through Fedilab, it brings up results for a search for Nintendo.
Browsing videos on PeerTube through Fedilab, there is a dedicated Fedilab set of buttons at the bottom of the screen which mirror the options on the Fedilab web interface.
The manage timelines page on Fedilab, allows reordering of timelines in the graphical interface.
Interactions menu on Fedilab, with various categories including bookmarks, muted users, home muted users, blocked users, favourites etc.
Recently added PeerTube videos viewed through Fedilab, with colourful thumbnails in contrast with the dark app theme.
Screenshots from Fedilab v3.24.1

General impressions

At first glance appears to be pretty standard, but once you start going through the options and settings there is so much more under the surface. Many, many useful features and good support for non-Mastodon Fediverse servers. It’s not the best-looking app, but that doesn’t matter because it does lots of things other apps cannot do.

Nice stuff

  • All the standard extras available the web interface such as post editing, pinned posts, hashtag follows, lists, filters, trending tags, trending posts etc.
  • All the timelines (Home, Local, Federated, Explore) are there, as are all the visibilities (Public, Unlisted, Followers-Only, Mentions-Only and Local-Only (for servers that support local-only posts))
  • Free open source software
  • Allows users to be muted just on home timeline while still appearing on lists, which is great for creating multiple separate timelines from the same account. (Also, you can set lists to automatically include home muted users.)
  • Scheduled posts and scheduled boosts, including boosts of own or others’ posts
  • Post drafts, automatically asks you if you close a message without posting it
  • Built-in translation, built-in dictionary and spell checker
  • Good support for non-Mastodon Fediverse server types including Pixelfed, PeerTube, Friendica etc. Also includes support for extra features on Mastodon forks such as Glitch and Hometown.
  • PeerTube interface is particularly good, allows all the options from the web interface including uploads, and Fedilab can easily be used as a dedicated PeerTube app
  • Customisable timeline and interface options, colour themes, adjustable text and icon sizes.
  • Conversation thread maps
  • Lets you fetch data from remote servers which allows conversations and profiles to be updated with information that hasn’t federated to your server yet.
  • Optional privacy features for links such as UTM stripping, and using alternative frontends for links to popular services (for example Nitter to view Twitter links, Invidious to view YouTube links etc).
  • Lots more options such as automatic cache clearance.

Potential drawbacks

  • Some of the formatting could be slicker and neater, for example metadata tables on profiles look a bit messy
  • Some English translations slightly odd, such as “trending messages” when it means trending posts
  • Occasional weird bugs, for example the Manage Timelines page brings up a “No timelines was found on this instance” error message

Hints & Tips

  • Polls can be added to posts by clicking the attachment button (the paperclip) and selecting the poll icon
  • You can jump to the top of a timeline by double-tapping the timeline’s icon

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