Tag Archives: Mastodon

Which Mastodon apps can I use? Should I use the official app or a third party app?

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Most people tend to start on Mastodon through the official app, which is simply called “Mastodon” and available on the Apple App Store, Google Play and F-Droid.

However, you don’t need to do this! In fact, you will probably enjoy Mastodon a lot more if you sign up on a server through JoinMastodon.org ⧉ or Fedi.Garden ⧉ and then sign into your account using one of the third party apps listed below, or if you prefer you can use your server’s web app or website.

Official Mastodon apps

Mastodon was originally launched in 2016 and all of its apps were third party. The official app (for Android and iPhone/iPad) was only introduced in 2022 as new people were expecting there to be an official app. However, it was intended just as a beginner’s app and was not meant to replace the third party apps. Third party apps tend to have more and better features than the official app, and most people who try them prefer them.

Because Mastodon uses open technical standards, all apps have equal access to all of Mastodon’s features. The official app has no special advantages or privileges compared to third party apps.

Third party Mastodon apps

There are lots and lots of Mastodon and Fediverse apps out there. The official Mastodon website has a very long list ⧉, but if you just want a few quick simple suggestions here they are:

ANDROIDTusky
Fedilab
Tooot ⧉
iPHONE/iPADToot!
Ice Cubes
Ivory ⧉

Mastodon websites and web apps

Mastodon’s web interface is excellent and well-developed. You can use Mastodon entirely through your server’s website and you can also install your server’s website as a web app on your phone or tablet. The web app works very much like a normal app, including notifications.

The Mastodon web interface is excellent and generally gets the latest features first. It can be used on computer, tablet or phone, and automatically changes to a mobile layout when used on a small screen.

What about safety? How safe are third party apps compared to official apps?

The third party apps listed on this page are as safe as the official apps.

Obviously it’s a bad idea to ever install random apps from sources you don’t trust, but the apps listed on this page are all well-established and are also recommended on the official Mastodon website’s apps page ⧉ (scroll down past the official apps section).

Also, most of the apps listed are open source so their workings are visible to anyone in the outside world. Any shenanigans in what a widely-used open source app does would be noticed fairly soon by outside observers.

How do apps handle my account password? Do the apps find out what my password is?

The security of your Mastodon account works like this:

  • The sign-in process on all apps (including official, third party and web apps) happens through your server’s website, which the app opens in a built-in web browser window. That’s why the sign-in page on apps looks like your server’s website, because it is your server’s website.
  • None of the apps listed on this page ever find out your password, all they know is that your server confirmed the password is correct and the server gave the app a special access token so it could work with your account. (Tokens are just a special code that lets apps and servers talk to each other.) That’s why the sign-in process always includes asking you about permissions, it is your server asking if you want to give that app an access token.
  • If you don’t want an app to work with your account any more, you can cancel its access token by logging in on your server’s website and going to Preferences > Account > Authorised Apps, then click the Revoke button for the app you want to remove permission from. Revoking will stop that app having any access to your account. (On the mobile website, you may need to click the cog icon ⚙️ and then ☰ in the top right corner to get to the Account section.)
  • You can make your account even more secure by enabling two-factor authentication, an extra layer of security which means even if someone found out your password they would still be unable to log into your account.

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Don’t join a big server on Mastodon!

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When new people sign up on Mastodon and the Fediverse, they often assume that they must join the biggest server to have the best experience.

This isn’t true at all, for a number of reasons:

  • Servers of all sizes talk to each other to form a single giant network, and people can follow each other regardless of which server they are on. You don’t need to be on a large server to get lots of follows and followers.
  • The experience of following an account is absolutely identical, whether you’re on the same server or not. You don’t need to be on the same server as people you follow.
  • Larger servers usually have a much lower staff-to-member ratio, which means the moderation will be worse than on a smaller server. Also, because there are fewer staff per member, if something breaks it will be a lot harder to get hold of anyone who can fix it.
  • Smaller servers usually have a friendlier community atmosphere on their Local timelines, while the Local timeline on large servers is an unreadable firehose.
  • Large servers are much easier for nasty billionaires to buy out, which puts the network as a whole at risk. By staying on medium and small servers, you are helping to protect the network from anyone taking it over.

Mastodon.social is not anything special

A lot of the media still thinks that the “default” server is mastodon.social, but this just isn’t true. Mastodon.social became a very big server mainly because it was the first Mastodon server, but it has no advantages or privileges over any other server. It would be like expecting the first station on a rail network to be somehow better than the other stations.

If you want your server to be busier

If a server is very new, it perhaps can’t see the rest of the Fediverse yet, and this may mean the server seems very quiet and empty. As more people sign up on your server, and as your server’s members follow accounts from other servers, it will gradually start noticing more of the Fediverse and start to feel busier.

However, if you want to speed up this process of discovery, there are ways of doing this:

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What if a server closes down? What happens to my account?

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Servers do sometimes decide to close down. However, all of the servers listed at JoinMastodon.org ⧉ and Fedi.Garden ⧉ are required to give at least three months notice if this happens. This gives the server’s members time to transfer their accounts to other servers. The transfer process lets people keep their followers and follows.

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Which Mastodon server should I join? How do I find out more about a server?

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If you’re totally new to Mastodon and the Fediverse, the safest and easiest way to join is probably to go to JoinMastodon.org ⧉ or Fedi.Garden ⧉ and pick one of the listed servers. After you’ve signed up, you can use your account on the server’s website, or use the same account on an app if you prefer, or use both web and app.

Many of the servers are themed or intended for particular kinds of people, but many of them are just general. If you can’t make up your mind, just pick one of the general servers from those lists.

The servers listed on those sites have all committed to specific standards of technical reliability and responsible content moderation ⧉. (There are also many other much longer server lists, but the longer lists don’t have the same requirements to be listed, so tend to be less safe to use.)

Is there a more direct, in-depth way to find out about a server?

If you know the server you want info about, go to its website and click on the Learn more or ⋯ links, which will take you to that server’s About page. A server’s website address is usually the same as its name, so for example the server laserdisc.party would be at the web address laserdisc.party ⧉

The About page will contain general information about the server, as well as a list of the server’s rules and a link to the server administrator’s page (along with their public email address). It may also show a list of other servers that the server has blocked, which can be a useful indicator of the server’s priorities and how responsibly it is run.

What are the differences between servers?

Each server is totally independent: it is owned by the person or group who maintains it, it makes its own rules of acceptable behaviour and is responsible for moderation, it chooses which other servers it blocks, and all these things together give it a general vibe or atmosphere. The sense of community is usually much stronger and friendlier on medium and smaller servers.

Because Mastodon and the rest of the Fediverse is built on open technical standards, servers are free to offer features that aren’t available on standard Mastodon. For example, some servers allow you to write longer posts.

What’s to stop a server shutting down?

Any kind of internet site can disappear ⧉, but the Fediverse reduces this risk by letting you move your account to another server if the one you’re on is closing.

All of the servers listed on Fedi.Garden and the JoinMastodon.org sites have promised to give three months warning if they intend to shut down, so that users have time to move their accounts to a different server without losing their followers or follows.

Another way of mitigating the risks of shutdowns is to join a server that has been around for a long time. The Fedi.Garden website has a section which lists recommended servers sorted by the year they were founded ⧉. You can also check a server’s age by clicking on the administrator’s profile link on its About page. Because the admin is usually the one who founded the server, their joining date on their profile page usually tells you the server’s age too.

Do I need to join more than one server?

No. You don’t need to join more than one server, because the servers talk to each other seamlessly. If your friend is on another server you can still follow each other, and being on different servers doesn’t affect that at all. (It’s similar to friends being on different phone providers, they can still call each other.)

Should I join the biggest server?

No. Joining the largest server is a bad idea. Medium-sized and small servers are much better both for you and for the safety of the network as a whole. There are really important reasons why being spread out on lots of medium and small servers is the best option.

Medium and small servers also tend to have much better moderation. Their ratio of staff to users is much higher than on large servers, so if there are any problems it’s much easier to reach someone who can help.

Can I move my account if I change my mind about which server to join?

Yes! You can always transfer your account to a different server if you want to be somewhere else instead. The transfer process lets you keep your followers and follows, plus bookmarks, blocks, mutes and lists. Posts from the old account remain on your old server, but when people click on the profile name above old posts they will be redirected to your new account’s profile page.

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Are there any other guides to Mastodon and the Fediverse?

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Yes, there are lots of places you can get more help:

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Transferring your Mastodon account to another server

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(If your account is new and you don’t have any followers yet, don’t bother doing all this! Just sign up on the server you want and delete your old account. These instructions are for people who have followers and want to keep them.)

You can migrate your Mastodon account to another server if you want. Moving lets you keep your followers, follows, bookmarks, mute lists and block lists.

The instructions below might seem a bit complicated as they combine several different procedures together, but you only have to do these things once per migration.

Also, there’s a 30 day “cooldown period” after the transfer is complete when you cannot do another transfer. Be reasonably sure that your destination server is the one you want, because you’ll have to wait 30 days to try again if you want to do another transfer.

The transfer has to happen through the website interfaces of your old server and new server, so make sure you’re logged in through a web browser. The apps don’t support transfers at the moment.

How to choose a new server to move to

Choose a new server from fedi.garden ⧉ or joinmastodon.org ⧉. Both of these sites are human-curated and require all servers listed to promise certain standards of technical reliability and content moderation ⧉.

Do not use the really long automated non-curated server lists, as the automated lists tend to include unreliable servers too.

Before you do the transfer, make a note of your followed hashtags

Followed hashtags aren’t currently transferred, so if you want to keep them you’ll need to make a note of your existing hashtag follows before the transfer, then follow them manually on the new account after the transfer. To see your current followed hashtags, go to your profile, click on ︙ and then Followed hashtags.

How to transfer your account to the new server

  1. Create a new account on the server you want to move to, but DO NOT delete the old account.
  2. Log into your NEW account on the new server’s website, go to Preferences > Account > Moving From A Different Account (at the bottom of the screen), click on Create an account alias and follow the instructions.
  3. After you’ve finished the previous step, wait five minutes. The previous step can take a while for the server to actually carry out, and it’s important that it happens before you continue.
  4. When you’ve finished waiting, log into your OLD account on the old server’s website, go to Preferences > Account > Move To A Different Account (also at the bottom of the screen), click on Configure it here and follow the instructions. This will start transferring your followers to the new account. The accounts won’t transfer all in one go, they will come across in waves depending on how busy their own servers are. Some of your followers will automatically follow your new account straight away, while others may take hours (or in extreme cases even days!). Don’t worry though, you can carry on with the next steps while this is happening in the background.
  5. On your OLD account, go to Preferences > Import And Export > Data Export and download all the CSV files one file at a time by clicking on the CSV icons. However, DO NOT press the archive request button! Archive request has got nothing to do with transfers. (You of course may want to separately request an archive just so you have a personal copy of an account’s contents. This is especially relevant if your old server is closing down.)
  6. On your NEW account, go to Preferences > Import And Export > Import and upload the CSV files one at a time (the files which you just downloaded in the previous step). Remember to select the correct file type from the drop-down menu for each CSV file before you upload it.
  7. Even after the transfer, DO NOT delete your old account. It’s best to leave it where it is, because it will redirect people to your new account and leave your old posts intact.

Make sure you do all these steps in the correct order. If you miss stuff out, the transfer will fail or be incomplete.

After doing all these steps, your old account will redirect to the new one, and your followers, follows, bookmarks, mutes and blocks will transfer automatically. There may be a delay on some items transferring, do not worry if this happens.

How long does it take for all my followers to transfer over?

Some people on your follower list may take hours or even days to automatically follow your new account depending on how busy their own server is. There’s nothing you can do to speed this up, because it’s your follower’s server waiting to process the update request. Busier servers may have longer processing queues and take longer to handle follower transfers.

However, your followers can skip this queue by manually following your new account. It won’t cause any problems if they do this.

By the way, in rare cases some followers may be accounts that followed you a long time ago but are on servers that have since shut down or broken. If this is the case, they will never transfer as the accounts no longer work.

What happens to my old posts? Do they transfer over as well?

Your old posts cannot be transferred. However, your old posts will still be accessible on the old server, as long as you don’t delete your old account. Also, your old posts will redirect people to your new account if people click on the username.

If you absolutely have to delete your old account for some reason, you can do so, but it will mean all your old posts will disappear and people will find it more difficult to find your new account.

If you want to make sure your content is completely under your control forever, you can start your own server for around US$8 a month on a managed hosting service ⧉. Managed hosting means the hosting company does all the technical stuff behind the scenes, so you don’t have to be a techy person to use this option.

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How do I join Mastodon and the Fediverse?

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It’s really easy:

  1. Choose a Mastodon server on the Mastodon website ⧉ or through Fedi.Garden ⧉. All the servers listed on those sites have committed to certain standards of reliability and responsible content moderation ⧉.
  2. Click on the server you want, this will take you to the server’s own website where you can do the actual signing up.
  3. Once you have signed up, you can log in on that server’s website, or if you prefer you can use a Mastodon app.

Don’t worry too much which server you join, as you can always transfer your account to another server (including your follows and followers).

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What is Mastodon? What is the Fediverse?

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Simplified diagram of the Fediverse, showing many kinds of social media servers connected together

If you make an ordinary phone call, your phone provider will connect to the phone provider of the person you’re calling. You don’t need to be on the same provider. This works worldwide and seamlessly, because all the hundreds of phone providers in the world talk to each other. From the user’s point of view, it’s as if all phones in the world are on the same network.

The Fediverse (or “Fedi”) is basically the same idea, but for social media. The Fediverse is a collection of thousands of independent social media servers that talk to each other seamlessly. This means that the millions of users on these servers can interact with each other as if they were on a single social network.

The most popular type of Fedi server is called Mastodon (or “Masto”) and works a bit like a calmer, more friendly version of Twitter. Click here for a cute animated video about Mastodon ⧉ that explains the basic principles of a federated social network, or click here for an even simpler explanation video ⧉. You might also want to watch this short video about the Fediverse ⧉ that emphasises the importance of common technical standards.

There are many kinds of Fediverse servers, often with a specific purpose such as photo sharing, video sharing, livestreaming, book clubs etc. Although the various types of servers work very differently, they talk to each other with a common technical standard called ActivityPub, which means even if you’re not on the same type of server, you can still interact as though you were.

How can totally different types of server communicate seamlessly?

This seamless interaction on the Fediverse works between servers of both the same type and different types. Each server type presents interactions as if they happened on that server, so from the user’s point of view they don’t see anything unusual about posts from other types of server.

For example, someone on a Mastodon server (which is Twitter-like) can follow an account on a PeerTube server (which is YouTube-like). When the account on a PeerTube server publishes a video, the person following that account from a Mastodon server will see the video appear in their timeline as if it was just a normal a Mastodon post with a video attached. If the person on the Mastodon server replies to the video post, the person on the PeerTube server will see that reply appear as a comment below their video, as if it was someone on their own PeerTube server commenting.

The process is so seamless, most people will probably never notice they are interacting with other servers and other types of server!

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