Mastodon is making changes in the hopes of making its social networking service more appealing 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’s redesigning a key part of its platform by giving people’s user profiles a new look, which it hopes will appeal to organizations, as well as individuals.
Built on the ActivityPub protocol, Mastodon became better known after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, now called X, which led some to seek alternatives. The platform’s appeal is its decentralized nature, meaning a single company doesn’t have control of the algorithm, and users can move their accounts if they don’t like how a particular server operates or moderates its community.
However, this system is also more complicated compared with signing up for a traditional social network like X. On Mastodon, users have to pick a server to join and have different timelines (local and federated), which can be confusing to newcomers. The process for following others on the service can be cumbersome, too.
That’s left Mastodon struggling to pick up more users, numbers that now hover at around 800,000 monthly actives, down from a million at the height of the Twitter drama.
Mastodon has been working in more recent months to address various pain points that could alienate users. In February, it simplified the onboarding process and added other features users expect, like Quote Posts or “starter packs” called Collections.
Now it’s tackling user profiles. The revamped version makes several changes, many of which are visual in nature.
What’s changing
Instead of offering two views of a person’s posts (“posts” or “posts and replies”), similar to X, profiles feature just one “Activity” tab with a dropdown menu. This lets users configure other combinations of posts, by toggling on or off replies and boosts — the latter being Mastodon’s version of the repost.
Hashtags also now appear at the top of this Activity tab, allowing users to filter the posts on that account by the tag they click on.
Mastodon also ditched the pinned posts carousel, which many users didn’t like. The feature was meant to balance the needs of those who wanted to pin several posts, with the needs of those visiting a profile to quickly get to the user’s recent posts. Now Mastodon users with multiple pinned posts will have one featured, while the rest can be revealed by clicking on a new “View all pinned posts” button.
Another change is designed to explain Mastodon handles to newcomers. Unlike on X or Threads, where users are just @username, Mastodon handles have two @’s in them — one referencing their account name and the other their server’s name. A new informational pop-up explains this.
Users have more control over how their profile appears, too, with options to hide the “Media” or “Featured” tabs, if desired, or hide replies from their “Media” tab if they want to showcase their work.
Custom fields on the profile, where users add things like links, pronouns, and other information, are displayed side by side, which means there’s more vertical space available on the screen. These fields can now be modified on iOS and Android, too, not just the web.
Other tweaks to the design make profiles seem less cluttered — like the removal of a “following you” 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 the account settings, allowing users to manage tasks like their featured hashtags (which Mastodon helpfully now suggests), links, and other profile information.
Link verification — which is Mastodon’s tool to establish someone’s credibility without becoming a centralized authority (or requiring payment, as on X) — is no longer buried in settings. Users can crop and add alt text to their profile images and cover photos.
The changes will initially be available to the mastodon.social server and other servers that opt to run the nightly build. More servers will get the update when the Mastodon 4.6 software update arrives in a few weeks.