This is an unofficial non-technical guide to using Mastodon and the wider Fediverse. If you are totally new here, read the section at the beginning marked “QUICK START” 🙂
This site is created by humans for humans. All the text and artwork are entirely by humans. No AI/LLM of any kind is used.
QUICK START – New people start here!
If you’re totally lost and just want to know what the heck Mastodon actually is in really simple terms, watch this very short video ⧉.
If you just want a tiny list of beginner’s guides about how to get started on Mastodon, click on a topic to find out more:
- Sign up for an account ⧉ (if you want additional tips see [the sign-up guide](https://fedi.tips/which-server…
This is an unofficial non-technical guide to using Mastodon and the wider Fediverse. If you are totally new here, read the section at the beginning marked “QUICK START” 🙂
This site is created by humans for humans. All the text and artwork are entirely by humans. No AI/LLM of any kind is used.
QUICK START – New people start here!
If you’re totally lost and just want to know what the heck Mastodon actually is in really simple terms, watch this very short video ⧉.
If you just want a tiny list of beginner’s guides about how to get started on Mastodon, click on a topic to find out more:
- Sign up for an account ⧉ (if you want additional tips see the sign-up guide)
- Choose an app or use your server’s website or use the web app
- Fill in your profile
- Discover people to follow
- Follow some hashtags and follow some groups
- Use some tips to get your account and posts discovered more easily
- Share your account address with friends so they can follow you
- If you’re an official account for a person or organisation, you might want to to verify your account so people know it’s official.
Don’t get stressed about which server you choose, you can always transfer your account to another server later.
If you’re wondering why there are many different servers, there are really good reasons for it. Have a look at this guide to find out why.
To browse this site’s complete list of guides on how to use Mastodon and the Fediverse, keep scrolling!
COMPLETE CONTENTS
Here’s a complete list of all the tips and tutorials on this site organised into categories.
♿ Accessibility Notice: The links below lead to individual pages answering specific questions. Each page has a link at the bottom that leads back to this front page.
An intro to Mastodon and the Fediverse
- What is Mastodon? What is the Fediverse?
- Who owns the Fediverse? Is it owned by a corporation or venture capital firm? Can it be bought out by Google/Facebook/Elon Musk?
- Who sets the rules on the Fediverse? How do I find out what the rules are on my server?
- Who gets to start their own server?
- Why is the Fediverse on so many separate servers?
- What if a server misbehaves? What if it allows its members to do something really bad?
- Does Mastodon or the Fediverse use ads or trackers or algorithms or blockchain/cryptocurrency or anything annoying like that?
- What other kinds of servers are on the Fediverse?
- What are toots? What are boosts? What are CWs? What are instances? What is birdsite?
- What’s that rainbow pentagon thing that everyone seems to use on the Fediverse?
- Are there any other guides to Mastodon and the Fediverse?
Joining Mastodon and the Fediverse
- How do I join?
- Do I need multiple accounts? Do I need to join lots of servers?
- Which server should I join? How do I find out more about a server?
- Mastodon.social is not a good way to join Mastodon. If you’re already on it, you might want to move your account to another Mastodon server.
- How do I choose a good username? Can I change my username later?
- Tips for organisations joining Mastodon and the Fediverse
- Customising and editing your profile page
- Which apps can I use? Should I use the official app or a third party app or a web app?
- How do I log in through my server’s website? Help, my password doesn’t work!
- Using Mastodon and the Fediverse through web apps
- How do I check which version of Mastodon a server is running? What are Mastodon forks?
- How do I stop receiving email notifications from Mastodon?
- What if a server closes down? What happens to my account?
- Can I use my account to log in on other servers?
- How do I verify my account?
- My website verification doesn’t work! The address won’t turn green!
- How to make your Mastodon account address appear when people link to your website or articles you’ve written
- Inviting people onto the Fediverse
- Using multiple accounts
- Transferring your Mastodon account to another server
- Downloading your Mastodon account’s post archive
- Logging out of your account
- How to delete your account
Posting on Mastodon
- Who can see my posts? What are post visibility settings? How do I send DMs?
- You don’t need link shorteners on Mastodon, all links count as 23 characters
- How do I post images, videos or audio? What can I attach to a post? How do I post GIFs?
- How do I post polls? How do I allow multiple responses in a poll?
- How do I edit my posts?
- How do I quote posts in Mastodon?
- Making your posts easier to find in searches
- What are hashtags? Should I add them to my posts?
- I can see a reply in my timeline, how do I see the full discussion it comes from?
- What are mentions? What does @-ing mean? How do I mention accounts when posting?
- How do I post a thread on Mastodon?
- How do I use rich text such as bold, italics or underlining on Mastodon?
- How do I get a link preview image to appear in my post?
- What about Likes and Re-Tweets? How do I do those in Mastodon?
- What are custom emoji? How do I access them? Can I add new ones?
- How do I share posts?
- How do I stop seeing the same post boosted again and again?
- Embedding posts on your website or blog
- How do I delete my posts?
- What does the eye icon 👁️ mean above Mastodon post threads?
- Scheduling posts to be automatically posted at a specific time
- Deleting old posts automatically after a certain time period
- How to use the reminder bot
- How do I pin my posts to my profile?
- Some accounts seem to have posts longer than 500 characters? How is this possible?
- Favourites and Bookmarks in Mastodon
- Customising Mastodon polls to allow multiple selections
- Adjusting photo previews on Mastodon so they look nice
- I’ve written a link but it isn’t clickable. How do I make it clickable?
- It’s a good idea to have at least some followers before posting your best content
- Why are some accounts marked as “Automated”? What is a bot account, and how do I mark my account as one?
- Crossposting between Mastodon and other social networks
Discovering interesting people and posts on Mastodon
- How do I search for stuff on Mastodon?
- Where are the trending posts and hashtags?
- How do I find interesting accounts to follow? How do I find my friends?
- How do I get my account discovered by other people?
- What’s my account’s address? How do I follow addresses?
- How do I follow someone on Mastodon? How do I unfollow them?
- What are hashtags? How do I use them?
- How do I follow hashtags? What does hashtag following mean?
- Does Mastodon use algorithms? Is it going to start pushing content at me, or hiding stuff I want to see?
- Groups on Mastodon and the Fediverse
- Some links on Mastodon also say “More from…” below them and have an additional link to a profile. What does this mean? Whose profile are they linking to?
- Why are some accounts marked “Automated”?
- What does the padlock 🔒 mean next to people’s names on Mastodon?
- What are notes? What does “Click to add note” mean on a profile?
- Why does it say “Pending” or “Cancel Follow” when I try to follow an account?
- What kind of accounts can I follow from Mastodon?
- How to be notified when your favourite accounts post something
- How to avoid accidentally boosting or deleting in Mastodon
- What are the Home, Local and Federated timelines? How do I stop them scrolling so quickly?
- How do I browse the Local timelines of other servers? Can I follow other servers’ Local timelines on my account?
- Using the Lists feature on Mastodon
- Browsing the Media tab on Mastodon profiles
- Browsing a Mastodon account’s posts that use a particular hashtag
- Following accounts through RSS
Customising Mastodon
- How do I customise my profile? How do I upload a profile banner? How do I verify my account?
- Customising your timeline
- Using Mastodon in light mode, dark mode and other themes
- Customising your notifications
- Filtering your timeline
- Restricting who can follow you
- How to stop receiving email notifications from Mastodon
- Creating themed mini-timelines with the Lists feature
- Making sure you never miss posts by your favourite accounts
Using Mastodon on a computer
- How to activate the Mastodon Advanced Web Interface
- Desktop apps for Mastodon
- Using Mastodon through a keyboard
- Typing emoji through the keyboard on Mastodon
- Using Mastodon through a CLI or TUI
- Using Mastodon on retro computers from the 1980s and 1990s
Languages and translation options
- Setting your language preferences, filtering out posts in other languages
- How to use the built-in language translation system on Mastodon
- Language codes used by Mastodon
Federation issues on Mastodon
- What are “original pages”? Why are they so useful? How do I see a post on its own server?
- Remote following and remote interactions on Mastodon and the Fediverse: Why does it keep asking me to give the name of my server or log in again?
- When I visited an account the profile was blank with no posts. Is it really blank? I’m sure there are posts there but I can’t see them.
- Which posts and accounts can I see from my server? How do I make my server notice posts and accounts that it can’t currently see?
- Why doesn’t every Fediverse server show all posts ever made by all users from all other servers?
Staying Safe
- Do I need to use my real name or real photo?
- How do I report a post? How do I report a person?
- How do I contact the person who runs my server? How do I find out what the rules are on my server?
- Blocking and muting people on Mastodon
- Blocking and muting servers on Mastodon
- Help! I’ve accidentally blocked a server, how do I restore my follows and followers from that server?
- How to remove followers on Mastodon without blocking them
- Filtering your timeline to hide posts that use certain words, phrases or hashtags
- How do I mute notifications from a thread that I don’t want to take part in?
- Hiding someone’s boosts without blocking or muting them
- Blocking DMs from people you don’t follow
- Restricting who can see your posts
- Opting into or out of full text search on Mastodon
- Making old Mastodon posts self-destruct automatically
- If you @ someone in a Mastodon DM, they will be able to see it
- Restricting who can follow you
- How to hide your follows and followers
- How to hide your profile and posts from search engines like Google, Bing etc
- Using Content Warnings (CWs)
- How do I add a CW to a post I want to share?
- How to prevent your account being suggested to others
- Verification works very differently on the Fediverse
- Using Two Factor Authentication (2FA) on Mastodon
- Is Mastodon end-to-end encrypted?
- Adding extra safety by activating Authorized Fetch
- Adding extra safety by using allowlists instead of blocklists
Accessibility
- ⚠️ Do not use flashing images or emoji on posts or profiles!
- How do I make my posts more accessible to blind, deaf and deafblind people?
- How do I use Mastodon through a screen reader?
- How do I remember to add text descriptions?
- How can Mastodon server administrators automatically remind their users to add text descriptions?
The Fediverse beyond Mastodon
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Mastodon API: Using Mastodon apps with non-Mastodon accounts
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Importing your data into BookWyrm from GoodReads, LibraryThing, StoryGraph, OpenLibrary or Calibre
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Manyfold: Organise and share 3D printing files on the Fediverse
-
How use PeerTube, how to follow PeerTube accounts from Mastodon
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Uploading video (or audio) to PeerTube, also how to start your own PeerTube server if you want to
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Getting your PeerTube videos, accounts and channels noticed by more people
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Giving people early access or exclusive access to your PeerTube videos
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How PeerTube admins can federate videos from other servers and accounts onto their server
-
I’m trying to send a DM on Pixelfed but it tells me I need to wait a bit?
-
Wanderer: Recording your trails and journeys on the Fediverse
Running your own server on Mastodon and the Fediverse
- ⚠️ Mastodon admins: Leave the “remote content retention period” setting blank!
- How do I create my own server?
- What do I call my server? What kind of domain name or subdomain should I use?
- Can I re-use a subdomain or domain from a defunct server on a new server?
- Which posts and accounts can I see from my server? How do I make my server notice posts and accounts that it can’t currently see?
- How to greatly increase your server’s view of the Fediverse using updates, relays, groups, directories and scripts
- How admins can communicate with their server’s members
- How to moderate your Mastodon server’s trends
- Managing how your members invite people to join your server
- Adding an extra layer of user safety by activating Authorized Fetch
- How to add custom emoji to your Mastodon server
- Customising your server’s artwork, giving a server its own visual identity
- Customising your Mastodon server’s appearance with CSS
- Recommending accounts to new users on your server
- How to block (defederate) another server
- Importing ready-made server blocklists on your own Mastodon server
- Running a Mastodon server with allowlists instead of blocklists
- Setting your Mastodon server’s website to display in a particular language for people who haven’t logged in
- How organisations and groups can run a Mastodon server collectively, how to assign roles to admins and moderators, how to create custom roles
- How to close your Mastodon server gracefully and responsibly
- How PeerTube admins can federate videos from other servers and accounts onto their server
- Should I publish some server rules if I’m running a single-user server?
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