How do I quote posts in Mastodon?

With the release of Mastodon version 4.5.0 on 6th November 2025, you can now quote people’s posts!

It’s been done on a consent basis, so you can only quote posts that people have consented to be quoted. When people create a post, there is now a settings box for choosing its visibility and its quoting status, where the post’s author can either forbid quoting, allow anyone to quote, or only allow followers to quote.

How do I quote someone?

  1. Go to the post you want to quote
  2. Click on the post’s 🔁 Boost button and select Quote
  3. The quoted post will appear in the post creation box, write your comment above it and then click to publish it

How do I set my quoting consent on a post? How do I opt in or opt out?

  1. Create a post as normal but don’t yet publish it
  2. Click on the option for the post’s visibilty and choose one of the quoting consents (“Anyone”, “Followers only” or “Just me”). If you don’t want to be quoted at all, select “Just me”.
  3. Publish the post

You can set different consents for different posts, because each post has its own quoting consent menu.

How do I set my default quoting consent?

  1. Log into your server’s website or web app
  2. If you’re on a phone click ☰ in bottom right corner, then ⚙️ Preferences. If you’re on a computer you can just click ⚙️ Preferences.
  3. If you’re on a phone click ☰ in top right corner, then Posting Defaults. If you’re on a computer you can just click Posting Defaults on the left of the screen.
  4. Select the default you want from “Who can quote?”
  5. Click Save Changes button at top

How do I quote a post in a reply within a conversation thread?

By default if you use the Quote button it will start a brand new thread with your quote post at the top. If you want to quote a post within a reply without creating a new thread, you can do this by copy-pasting a link to the post you want to quote at the bottom of your reply:

  1. Go to the post you want to quote in a reply
  2. Click ⋯ on the post you want to quote and select Copy Link to Post
  3. Go to the thread where you want to do a quote as your reply
  4. Write your reply and paste the link you copied in step 2 at the bottom of your reply, then publish the reply

You can also quote by pasting a link if you’re starting a brand new thread, but the link-pasting method has no advantage over the Quote button if you’re starting a new thread.

Does the author of the post get notified that they have been quoted?

Yes, they get a notification similar to the one for boosts or replies.

I don’t like having to click twice to boost things. How do I go back to the old way where I could just click once to boost?

  1. Log into your server’s website or web app
  2. If you’re on a phone click ☰ in bottom right corner, then ⚙️ Preferences. If you’re on a computer you can just click ⚙️ Preferences.
  3. Scroll down to the part that says “Boosting Preferences”
  4. Tick the box marked “Enable Quick Boosting”
  5. Click Save Changes button at top

Once you’ve done this, boosting will go back to the way it was, and you will be able to quote by clicking ⋯ and then Quote on the post you want to quote.

I tried clicking Boost but it won’t let me select Quote?

If the author of the post hasn’t allowed quoting of their post, then you won’t be able to click on the Quote option. Also, any post made before the quoting feature was released cannot be quoted.

Some others have quoted a post, why can’t I quote that same post?

One of the options for quoting permissions is to allow only followers to quote. It could be that the quotes you’re seeing are from the author’s followers.

I can quote some of their posts but not others. What is going on?

Quoting permission is separate for each post, so the author may have allowed quoting some posts but not allowed quoting others. Alternatively the posts you can’t quote might be older: posts made before the quoting feature became available cannot be quoted at all.

Why are there so few posts I can quote?

This is a brand new feature and only posts which include consent can be quoted. Posts made before the quoting feature was available cannot be quoted as they do not include consent to be quoted.

I can’t see any options for quoting on my server or app?

This is a brand new feature, it requires your server to be running v4.5.0 of Mastodon or newer. If your server is running on an older version it won’t have quoting in it. Ask your admin about this if you’re unsure about when they might update their server software.

Also, some apps don’t yet have the quoting feature included as it’s so new. These should be added to apps over time.

Why does it say “This post is pending approval from the original author” on a quoted post?

Simple answer: This message is probably due to a bug that usually goes away by itself, and the quoted post will appear eventually. There is no mechanism in Mastodon for anyone to approve the quotation after publication, the author either consents or doesn’t consent when they first publish their post.

Slightly less simple answer: This message is supposed to be displayed as a fallback if there is some way to quote a post before the author has given approval for quoting. There are a variety of different platforms on the Fediverse and different quoting implementations. However, Mastodon in its current state does not allow quoting posts without prior permission, so this message should not currently be appearing if quoter and quotee are both on Mastodon. The message usually seems to disappear by itself without anyone taking action, so in those cases it’s probably a bug.

Why was quoting not available on Mastodon for so long?

The main reason quoting wasn’t previously on Mastodon was a deliberate design decision taken many years ago by the makers of Mastodon. Here are the lead developer’s comments on it from 2018:

Another feature that has been requested almost since the start, and which I keep rejecting is quoting messages. Coming back to my disclaimer, of course it’s impossible to prevent people from sharing screenshots or linking to public resources, but quoting messages is immediately actionable. It makes it a lot easier for people to immediately engage with the quoted content… and it usually doesn’t lead to anything good. When people use quotes to reply to other people, conversations become performative power plays. “Heed, my followers, how I dunk on this fool!” When you use the reply function, your message is broadcast only to people who happen to follow you both. It means one person’s follower count doesn’t play a massive role in the conversation. A quote, on the other hand, very often invites the followers to join in on the conversation, and whoever has got more of them ends up having the upper hand and massively stressing out the other person.

Cage the Mastodon: An overview of features for dealing with abuse and harassment ⧉

…however, since then they decided that they would allow quoting as long as people being quoted had consented to it.

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