If you’re using Mastodon through the website on a computer, you can control it through your keyboard with the hotkeys feature and the emoji typing feature.
Hotkeys on Mastodon
Hotkeys are always on, press shift + ? (or just ? on some keyboard layouts) to see a complete guide to which keys do what. Some of the 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 |
Typing emoji through a keyboard on Mastodon
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 matching emoji, and you can pick one with the arrow keys. For example :sun will bring up emoji matching the keyword “sun”.
If there are a lot of matches for a keyword, they may 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.