Your self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community - mastodon/mastodon

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Your self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community - mastodon/mastodon

Your self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community - mastodon/mastodon

Welcome to the _24th edition_ of Trunk & Tidbits 🎉 We’ve been publishing this monthly series, “behind the scenes of the code” from the Mastodon team, for a whole two years now! We’re getting close to the release of Mastodon 4.6. In the past few weeks we published two feature updates about things you’ll see in the next version: * firstly, there was a post about a redesign for profile pages, now available to try out on `mastodon.social` and coming to other servers with version 4.6; * we also posted a more detailed update on Collections (previously briefly known as “Packs”). Our goal in posting these updates is to offer a community-driven design process, and to provide visibility into _how_ and _why_ we reached implementation choices - similar to the transparency we’ve been offering via Trunk & Tidbits, but at a slightly less technical level. One more thing on a related topic - Imani spoke at FOSS Backstage Design, about the journey of being a designer at Mastodon, and some of the challenges and opportunities of working on federated software at scale. You can watch the talk on YouTube. ## Releases Last month, we released updates for the Mastodon server software across the three active branches. These point releases all include security updates, as well as fixes to compatibility with GoToSocial features. * 4.5.8 * 4.4.15 * 4.3.21 As usual, we strongly encourage server owners to update to the most recent version, in order to get the most stable and secure code and up-to-date user experience. > Note that this is the final month for the 4.3.x branch - the end of support date for this version is May 6th 2026. ## Backend and Web In March 2026 we reviewed and merged 347 Pull Requests (268 with translation and dependency updates removed), from 13 contributors. We’re continuing to focus on the new profile design work, and Collections, both of which will be major features of Mastodon 4.6 - so again this month, much of the work has been around these two areas. Thank you for the feedback shared about the updates to profiles, in particular - this is being used to shape the final full release version. We’ve also worked on improving the accessibility of the Mastodon Web UI. This has involved focusing on the sign-up and login flows, better colour contrast, and improved navigation with skip links, with more to come in the near future. — PR #38006 (by diondiondion) — PR #38188 (by diondiondion) — PR #38036 (by diondiondion) Hidden behind a feature flag for now, we’ve added the ability for account owners to allow anonymous visitors to subscribe to their posts via e-mail, without a Mastodon account. This feature is _not yet ready for testing_ - we are working on the missing pieces right now. The work has been funded by an NGI0 grant through NLNet, to improve Mastodon’s suitability for use by institutions. Mastodon now supports two additional Fediverse Enhancement Proposals, FEP-2c59 (_Discovery of a Webfinger address from an ActivityPub actor_ — PR #38239 (by ClearlyClaire) ) and FEP-3b86 (_Activity Intents_ — PR #38120 (by Gargron) — PR #38130 (by ClearlyClaire) ). This will improve interactions with other Fediverse servers. On the API side, as part of the profile redesign we are introducing a new dedicated `profile` endpoint, allowing client apps to access the current profile and update it. App developers are encouraged to add support for this new set of functions - they also allow brand new capabilities, such as setting a text description for profile pictures and header banners. Lastly, there have been a lot of technical improvements and refactoring in the codebase, including: support for Ruby 4.0; the removal of the `oj` gem for JSON handling in the backend; and, an upgrade of our web client toolchain to Vite 8, which should make the web assets build step both faster and more memory efficient. ## Android We continued working on the profile redesign, and made two releases with minor bug fixes. ## iOS We shipped version 2026.02 with a number of technical improvements that will help us keep moving forward, and some visible fixes as well: * You can now manage multiple logged-in accounts from the Settings screen (this has always been accessible by long-pressing the current account avatar, but was not easy to discover). * Fix for No audio while playing videos or audio before going full screen * Fix for Quoted posts that are _long_ are not truncated * Fix for Encoded HTML entities in display names are applied ## Community One of the benefits of building open platforms is that people can build interfaces that work well for different scenarios. We’ve got a number of client apps listed on our website (and you can add your own, if it is not listed there yet - send a pull request on our website repository). Not everyone uses the latest and greatest devices, and even if you do, maybe you also like small and simple interfaces as well? In these cases, check out smolfedi - a lightweight, cross-fedi-platform front end that works with Mastodon as well as with several other Fediverse services. If you run a Mastodon server, or any kind of Fediverse server - or even if you ran a server, and then closed it down - the Social Web Foundation has a new survey to gather data for a sustainability report. The Fediverse Sustainability Survey is anonymous, and the report will be published on the SWF site in the future. ## Thank you As the initiator and author of twenty four editions of Trunk & Tidbits, and on behalf of the Mastodon team, I’d like to say, directly to _you_ - Thank You, for all of your support over the past couple of years. Please do “chip in” with a recurring donation to the project - Open Source, not-for-profit software and movements like ours, need to be sustained. ### Thank you for supporting Mastodon We develop and maintain the free and open source software that powers the social web. There is no capital behind this — we rely entirely on your support. Donate to the project View our sponsors

Profiles are the primary way for people using Mastodon to ‘meet’ one another on a deeper level – beyond a threaded conversation or search results. You might have noticed that the overall design of Profiles hasn’t been explored in a while, and in the meantime, we’ve heard requests and challenges from people who use Mastodon every day. The profile redesign supports some of our current priorities: * **Make the Fediverse Intuitive.** We want people who are new to Mastodon and the Fediverse to be able to discover and connect with interesting accounts, without having to understand the details of decentralisation. The new Profiles view includes an updated handle explainer, and a new editing experience delivers a more consistent, unified experience across web and native mobile apps. * **A Home for Everyone.** As well as individuals, Mastodon is also home to organisations (NGOs, local governments, software projects, etc) that want to share news and interact with their communities. The layout changes offer us a solid starting point from which to explore features that will help these “institutional users” to make their most out of their presence in the Fediverse. ## Our approach ### Learning from the community In addition to reviewing community requests related to profiles, we surveyed more than 500 people across over 300 servers, to understand what profile information they prioritise when it comes to identifying whether an account is trustworthy (and therefore, worth following). We also analysed patterns from other apps that respondents mentioned they frequently use. ### Technical constraints We’re currently constrained within the existing 3-column layout on desktop. We also know that improvements could be made to the custom fields feature, but structural and backend changes to custom fields were out of scope for this work. ## What’s changing ### Profile viewing #### The new ‘Activity’ tab offers granular filtering of posts Previously, there have been two tabs for “Posts” and “Posts and replies.” It turns out that this was misleading (the “Posts” tab also included boosts); and, that there was no way for you to view an account’s activity with the granularity that you can after following them – no view for Posts only, for example. There are, in fact, 4 distinct views that you may want to see: _Posts_ , _Posts+boosts_ , _Posts+replies_ , or _Posts+boosts+replies_. Providing this granularity led us to adopt a more appropriate UI over displaying each of these as tabs. The new Activity tab has a dropdown menu, allowing you to view any of these combinations by filtering both boosts and replies. It is optimised to work equally well for you on the desktop as on mobile, and also if you use the advanced interface for desktop. #### Featured hashtags are more discoverable and contextual Hashtags can provide you with topic-based discovery. In the new Profile view, you can view hashtags contextually within the Activity tab, and click on them for a filtered view of the account’s tagged posts. #### It’s easier to view all pinned posts Some people have expressed frustration over pinned posts being buried in a carousel. We understand this concern, and are also balancing the needs of people who are browsing others’ profiles who have shared that they want easy access to _recent_ posts. Informed by data on the number of pinned posts across Mastodon profiles, we’ve replaced the carousel with an alternative form of progressive disclosure that allows you to reveal all pinned posts in a single click. #### Updated handle explainers One of our objectives is to make the Fediverse more intuitive for people who are non-technical. We’ve updated the handle explainer card to clarify what handles and servers are. Additionally, the full profile handle (`@user@domain.com`) now displays beneath the account’s display name, even if the account is on the same server as yours. The updated explainer for profile handles. #### Custom fields are more compact Custom fields display side-by-side when possible, making smarter utilisation of the Profile’s vertical space so that you get to the account’s content more swiftly. A more compact design for custom fields. #### Additional changes reduce visual load People must be able to find the content they need. However, when _all_ information displays at once, it impacts your ability to focus and complete tasks. You might notice we’ve given less prominence to a few pieces of information. When introducing changes that add friction, we take into account both the frequency and importance of related actions. **Personal notes:** The ‘Add a personal note’ action does not display as prominently on the profile; it is now accessed within the profile’s overflow menu. If a note exists, it still displays on the profile page, just as it has in the past. **‘Following you’:** The ‘Following you’ badge no longer displays on the profile. People we surveyed ranked this information remarkably low in terms of establishing both trust and interest an account. You still have numerous options to understand whether someone is following you: * **The ‘Follow’ button:** When you’re not following an account but the account follows you, the primary button label displays as “Follow back”. * **The accounts ‘Following’ list:** If the account is following you, you will see yourself at the top of that account’s ‘Following’ list. * **Profile overflow menu:** If the account is following you, a ‘Remove follower’ option appears in the overflow menu. * **Preview cards (desktop):** When hovering over an account, the preview cards still show ‘Follows you’ and ‘You follow each other’ statuses. ## Profile editing ### A unified editing experience Previously, profile editing on web was hidden within account settings. You had to take multiple steps to navigate back to your profile view. The new profile editing experience combines featured hashtags, link verification, and all other profile customisation in a single view. It’s easily accessible from an ‘Edit profile’ button directly on your profile – making switching between viewing and editing more seamless. A screenshot of the redesigned profile editing experience on desktop web. The page shows sections for profile and cover photo editing, display name and bio editing, custom fields, featured hashtags, and profile tab settings. ### More control during image upload You can now crop images, and add alt text to profile and cover photos. A screen recording showing a user zooming and cropping a profile photo within a modal, then clicking on the “Next” button. On the next step, the modal displays a preview of the cropped image and a text field where the user can enter alt text. ### Custom fields and verified links Previously, custom field editing was only available on web, and lacked accessible form labels. Additionally, link verification – a powerful feature for establishing credibility – was hidden in profile settings. Now, you can access link verification instructions directly from the custom field editing experience. You can also now add and edit custom fields in our iOS and Android apps. A zoomed-in view of the interface for editing custom fields, which contains buttons for adding, reordering, changing, and deleting custom fields. Beneath the custom fields, a hyperlinked text reads “How do I add a verified link?” ### Featured hashtags Featured hashtags are a useful way of helping others discover topics you frequently post about. We’ve decreased the friction and guesswork in adding featured hashtags on web: Suggested hashtags will appear on your profile view, and can be bulk added in a single click. For more granular control, hashtags can also be managed within the profile editor. Basic functionality for featured hashtags is now supported on iOS and Android. A screen recording showing the interaction of a user viewing a banner on their own profile that contains suggested hashtags with options to add or dismiss. The user clicks on “Add” and the suggested hashtags are immediately added to their profile. ### Customising tab displays The editing experience includes profile tab display settings, allowing you to hide the ‘Media’ and ‘Featured’ tabs if desired. Replies can also be excluded from the ‘Media’ tab, allowing for a more accurate gallery where creative people may showcase their work. We hope that these additional controls empower both people who use Mastodon day-to-day, and people who represent institutions. Before the 4.6 release, profile tab customisations will only impact a few servers that are testing the new profile experience. After the 4.6 release, these customisations will be reflected on most servers running the latest version of Mastodon. Displays may vary on third-party apps and independent servers. A screenshot of the Profile tab settings modal, which contains three settings allowing users to show/hide the Media tab, show/hide replies on the Media tab, and show/hide the Featured tab. A banner at the bottom of the modal explains that displays may vary on other servers. ## Availability The new design will be visible on `mastodon.social`, and other servers that run nightly builds of Mastodon, from today. The goal is to do some testing ahead of the 4.6 release, and make any adjustments based on feedback (see below). The new look will roll out to all Mastodon servers, as part of Mastodon 4.6, coming in a few weeks. ### We’re open to feedback We’ve shared our thinking, and the choices we made in this redesign, in this post. If you have things you’d like to let us know related to these updates, contact us at **feedback@joinmastodon.org**. We may not be able to respond to every individual message, but we’ll be reading every piece of feedback to inform our future plans.

Your self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community - mastodon/mastodon

Hello everyone! I’m Renaud, and I’m the Technical Director at Mastodon. I’ve also been the technical lead for delivering Mastodon releases for several years now. This post is co-written with Imani, our lead product designer. Mastodon continues to grow as more people seek alternatives to centralised social media and closed social networks. Today, we’re sharing our vision for making the Fediverse more accessible, diverse, and empowering for everyone—from first-time users to established creators. At its core, Mastodon remains a microblogging, or short form text app. We’re building an app that enables anyone to connect with their friends, and share their thoughts and creativity. We are part of an ecosystem of interconnected social apps known as the Fediverse - built on common standards and protocols, a space where you can choose the apps and communities that are the right fit for how you want to express yourself, and participate how and where you are most comfortable. Over the past 18 months, we’ve focused on growing our core development team and improving our processes to set us up for this phase of the project. We’ve gone from having one or two full-stack developers, to a broader team with expertise and experience across backend, web, and mobile apps, working with a dedicated designer who helps us to think deeply about how people encounter and use the social web. You’ve seen us increase the rate of updates over the past eighteen months - three major new versions (4.3, 4.4 and 4.5), each with headline new features that the community has been waiting for: improved discovery; better onboarding; list management upgrades; new tools for server owners; and, of course, Quote Posts! We’re far from done, and we plan to continue to deliver regular updates. It is important to understand that Mastodon is vital infrastructure for many, so we will also continue to spend a large proportion of our time on ensuring that the platform remains safe, stable and secure. This is a key reason why we take our time when it comes to evaluating new features. ## The broader roadmap We recently reworked our roadmap, to make it more specific about what we are working on in the immediate future (three to six months). The roadmap on our site represents what we’re directly building in the current and following release cycles: we deliberately keep it focused, and want to avoid committing to add functionality when we may not yet be ready to support it. As we think about our plans, we recognise that we are also part of the broader Fediverse. We make an effort to implement features in an open and interoperable manner, creating new specifications when needed. Recent examples include Quote Posts, Collections, and the Fediverse Auxiliary Service Provider specification - we’re excited to see other people build new implementations. It’s also useful to provide a longer-term view of where we are going, so with that in mind, here’s a broader view of what we’re planning to build over the next 1-2 years. ### A social web for everyone A thriving Mastodon ecosystem is one where anyone can participate, regardless of technical knowledge. We’re redesigning core parts of the experience to make this a reality: a streamlined sign-up flow that explains server choice without overwhelming newcomers, improved search and discovery tools to help you find communities and conversations, and clearer navigation throughout the app. ### Promoting indie servers Right now, too many newcomers default to the largest servers. We want to change that - because Mastodon is best when communities are spread across many independent servers, each with its own character and focus. We’ll be shipping new admin tools to help independent server operators manage moderation and maintenance more easily, like a feature to use external blocklists, extensible ways to set up content scanning to detect illegal content or spam, and ways to reduce your media storage usage by delegating serving remote posts media files from a trusted third party. We’ll also be redesigning server discovery to showcase the diversity of communities available. You’ll hear more about this from Hannah, our Community Director, in tomorrow’s post. ### A decentralised platform for content creators Public figures, journalists, and institutions are looking for alternatives to mainstream platforms – and we want Mastodon to be their first choice. We’re introducing features designed specifically for creators: a redesigned profile view that better showcases their work, and an enhanced compose experience. For organisations like public institutions, we’re working on a new email notification option that allows people to follow their updates even if those people don’t have a Mastodon account yet. This means creators can reach their audiences wherever they are – whether they’re active in the Fediverse or still exploring their options. Our goal is to give audiences and creators a way to connect on their own terms, free from algorithmic manipulation. ### Onward, together These upcoming changes represent our commitment to building a social web that puts people first. Mastodon won’t ever harvest your data or chase engagement metrics. We’re focused on creating spaces where authentic connection can flourish. If you have thoughts on software improvements, send us an email. ### Support Mastodon We’re a small team building software to power the Fediverse. Unlike ad-driven platforms, we operate entirely on donations – and _every contribution matters_. See our donation page for ways to support us. ### Thank you for supporting Mastodon We develop and maintain the free and open source software that powers the social web. There is no capital behind this — we rely entirely on your support. Donate to the project View our sponsors

This year, the Mastodon team returned to FOSDEM for the third time. FOSDEM is an annual gathering of open source developers, held in Brussels. We’re excited to report that the Fediverse is feeling vibrant! FOSDEM has become a central element of EU Open Source Week - a series of events, meetups and workshops that have formed around the conference itself. The range of events makes this trip to Brussels valuable for our team, with opportunities to meet other projects, non-profit organisations, open source foundations, and policymakers. On Friday evening before FOSDEM, a group of around forty Fediverse supporters, builders and enthusiasts got together for a social meetup. This was the first time that several prominent developers across the ActivityPub ecosystem had met in person, and there was an immediate sense of excitement and anticipation! We enjoyed the chance to meet up with both community members, and also developers working on other ActivityPub-related projects. FOSDEM itself runs across Saturday and Sunday. The team had a table with handouts that explained the project; a slideshow covering improvements since last year’s event as well as our roadmap; and some pins and stickers for sale. A few lucky visitors were able to pick up a special _limited-edition_ sticker featuring a “My friends are not for sale” tagline. The Plushtodons also made an appearance, for photo opportunities - unfortunately we were not able to transport any for sale, but folks were able to order new friends directly from the online store. My friends are not for sale stickers - only available at FOSDEM (so far) Reflecting on our third trip to FOSDEM, we’ve been thinking a lot about how things have developed in only three years: * in 2024, Mastodon was the first (and so far, remains the only) Fediverse project to get a stand at the event… and there was no specific conference track for Social Web discussions; * last year, the Social Web track - partly created from the popular demand seen the previous year - was a (packed) half-day affair, with spill over birds of a feather and after hours events; * this year, the track ran throughout the day on Saturday, with _29 speakers_ from countries worldwide, covering both technical and non-technical topics - _and_ there were additional meetups and sessions outside of that! Hannah (Community Director) and Andy (Head of Communications) co-presented a session on Mastodon’s mission, governance and community, and they also announced a forthcoming experiment to extend default server recommendations. > Post by @Mastodon@mastodon.social > > View on Mastodon Overall, this year’s Social Web track highlighted the diversity of projects and discussions in the Fediverse ecosystem. It was also a hub of conversation around the need for greater autonomy in technology choices in Europe. It was a very exciting day. Some speakers at the end of the Social Web track (thank you to @Sturmsucht for being with us throughout the day and for sharing the photo!) On Sunday, our Executive Director Felix was part of a discussion about the Fediverse and the EU’s Digital Services Act. Conversations like these provide opportunities to share our mission, and they help to educate policymakers on the values of the Fediverse. Members of the team also took part in other sessions related to the Fediverse; and the others were kept busy with conversations at our table - although, by Sunday, we’d run out of most of the merchandise items we’d taken along… > Post by @Mastodon@mastodon.social > > View on Mastodon At Mastodon, we value everyone across the community - our fellow developers, people who run Fediverse servers, and the people who use Mastodon and other connected applications every day. We were happy to be back in Brussels for FOSDEM, and we hope to return to continue the important conversations that happen there. Thank you to everyone who visited our table, for their interest and kind words about the project. We’re building a better social web for everyone, and we were happy to see you there! If you’re curious about what you missed, have a look at the recordings from the Social Web track. ### Thank you for supporting Mastodon We develop and maintain the free and open source software that powers the social web. There is no capital behind this — we rely entirely on your support. Donate to the project View our sponsors

## Intro Welcome to Mastodon’s monthly product and engineering update, looking back at January 2026. ## Events We’ve just published a recap of our visit to FOSDEM 2026. We’ve had feedback that some event updates were a bit buried in the Trunk & Tidbits posts; and, that the results and outcomes of our team presence at events could be made more clear. We’ve heard you, and we’ll be posting these sorts of update in standalone format in the future. ## Releases In the past month, we released the following point versions - these contain bugfixes, and a fix for a security issue, so we strongly recommend that server operators update to a current version. * 4.5.6 * 4.4.13 * 4.3.19 See the associated release notes at the links above for instructions on upgrading, and remember that these processes sometimes require asset recompilation. > Note that all versions of Mastodon from the 4.2.x release branch and below are now out of support, and support for version 4.3.x will end on **May 6, 2026**. Read more about end-of-life dates. ## Backend and Web In January 2026 we reviewed and merged 242 Pull Requests (157 with translation and dependency updates removed) from 16 contributors, 11 of which were from the broader community. Thank you! Progress towards the next major release of Mastodon continues. Here’s what the team has been working on. * ui We’ve been creating new accessible & redesigned form components for use in the editing interfaces for Collections and Profiles * ui Work on the editing UI for the upcoming Collections feature is in progress, so is work on federation of Collections * ui Continued work on the new Profile design: expect some visible changes in the coming weeks, for users running nightly releases * performance Fix a performance issue with the status batch delete SQL query — PR #37469 (by ClearlyClaire) * interface Add new `data-color-scheme` and `data-contract` attributes on `<html>` to let themes easily get the correct color scheme and contrast settings for the user — PR #37477 (by diondiondion) * backend Shortened caching duration for pending quote post approvals, which should help to reduce the number of times a quote is displayed as pending — PR #37570 (by ClearlyClaire) * backend Removed support for ImageMagick, which has been deprecated for the last 2 versions. Mastodon now requires `libvips` — PR #37488 (by mjankowski) * backend Added storage of image descriptions for profile pictures and headers when they come from federation. This does not have any impact in the UI, nor can they be set by Mastodon users for now. — PR #37634 (by ClearlyClaire) ## iOS We started off the year releasing 2026.01, with a few important improvements: * Avoid triggering post actions accidentally while scrolling. * Display Lists in alphabetical order, as on the web. * Improved hashtag statistics layout for longer translations. * Avoid publishing the same post twice by accidentally double tapping the publish button. Most of our iOS work lately has been on the new profile view, which is not yet in released builds. ## Community We spotted some terminal-based Mastodon apps! Have you tried tooi (below)? There’s also mastui, which is an alternative. > Post by @ihabunek@mastodon.social > > View on Mastodon If you’re looking to make yourself more discoverable, then this tool may help you to find ways to do that, by completing more information in your profile. If you’re building with the Mastodon API, please let us know so we can share with the community! ## Thank you, and until next time We believe that it is always important for us to humbly acknowledge the community that supports our work. Thank you - your contributions mean a lot to all of us on the team, and to our mission. We really appreciate your donations. ### Thank you for supporting Mastodon We develop and maintain the free and open source software that powers the social web. There is no capital behind this — we rely entirely on your support. Donate to the project View our sponsors

Your self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community - mastodon/mastodon

Your self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community - mastodon/mastodon

We are in the process of releasing a brand new mastodon chart to replace the old chart for various reasons (See this issue for more details). As such, we are creating this space as a place to leave...

Your self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community - mastodon/mastodon

This is a patch release for 4.5. Check out the 4.5.0 release notes for information. Changelog Fixes Fix Cmd/Ctrl + Enter not submitting Alt text modal on some browsers (#36866 by @diondiondion) Fi...