Mastodon is making changes in hopes of making the social networking service more attractive and easier to use, especially for more mainstream users looking for an alternative to X or Threads.
On Thursday, the decentralized social networking software maker said it is redesigning a key part of its platform by giving users’ user profiles a new look that it hopes will appeal to both organizations and individuals.
Built on the ActivityPub protocol, Mastodon became more widely known after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, now called X, which led some to look for alternatives. The appeal of the platform is its decentralized nature, meaning that a single company is not in control of the algorithm, and users can move their accounts if they don’t like the way a particular server operates or moderates its community.
However, this system is also more complicated compared to signing up for a traditional social network like X. On Mastodon, users have to choose a server to join and have different schedules (local and federal), which can be confusing for newcomers. The process of tracking others in the service can also be painful.
That left Mastodon struggling to attract more users, numbers now hovering around 800,000 monthly actives, down from a million at the height of the Twitter drama.
Mastodon has been working in recent months to address various pain points that could alienate users. In February, it simplified the onboarding process and added other features users have come to expect, such as promotional posts or “starter packs” called Collections.
Now it is dealing with user profiles. The updated version makes several changes, many of which are visual in nature.
What changes?
Rather than offering two views of a person’s posts (“posts” or “posts and replies”), similar to X, profiles have only one “Activity” tab with a drop-down menu. This allows users to configure other combinations of posts, turning replies and boosts on or off — the latter being Mastodon’s version of reposting.
Hashtags now appear at the top of this Activity tab, allowing users to filter posts on this account based on the tag they click.
Mastodon also ditched the pinned post carousel, which many users didn’t like. The feature was intended to balance the needs of those who wanted to pin multiple posts, with the needs of those who visit a profile for quick access to the user’s recent posts. Now Mastodon users with multiple pinned posts will have one selected, while the others can be revealed by clicking a new “View all pinned posts” button.
Another change is designed to explain Mastodon grips to newcomers. Unlike X or Threads, where users are just @username, Mastodon handles two @s – one referring to their account name and the other to their server name. A new informational popup explains this.
Users also have more control over how their profile is displayed, with options to hide the “In” or “Featured” tabs if they wish, or hide replies from their “In” tab if they want to showcase their work.
Custom fields in the profile, where users add things like links, pronouns and other information, are displayed side-by-side, meaning there’s more vertical screen space available. These fields can now be modified on both iOS and Android, not just the web.
Other design tweaks make profiles look less cluttered — like removing a “follow” badge and moving the optional “personal note” users add to their profiles to an overflow menu.
Profile edits can now all be done from one place in account settings, allowing users to manage tasks such as their chosen hashtags (now helpfully suggested by Mastodon), links and other profile information.
Link verification — which is Mastodon’s tool for establishing someone’s trustworthiness without becoming a central authority (or requiring payment, as in X) — is no longer buried in settings. Users can crop and add alt text to their profile pictures and cover photos.
The changes will initially be available on the mastodon.social server and other servers that choose to run the nightly build. More servers will receive the update when the Mastodon 4.6 software update arrives in a few weeks.
