Mastodon made its decentralized social network easier to use with its latest update

Mastodon is making changes in the hopes of making its social networking service more attractive and easier to use, especially for more casual users looking for an alternative to X or Threads.

On Thursday, the official social media software maker said it is redesigning a key part of the platform by giving people’s profiles a new look, which it hopes will attract organizations, as well as individuals.

Built on the ActivityPub protocol, Mastodon became better known after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, now called iX, which led others to look for alternatives. The platform’s appeal is its decentralization, meaning that no single company has control over 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 when compared to signing up for a traditional network like X. In Mastodon, users have to choose a server to join and have different sessions (local and guild), which can be confusing for newcomers. The process of following others into the service can be difficult, too.

That left Mastodon struggling to get more users, the numbers are now moving to around 800,000 active monthly, down from a million at the height of the Twitter drama.

Mastodon has been working in recent months to address a variety of pain points that can alienate users. In February, it simplified the onboarding process and added other features expected by users, such as Quote posts or “first packs” called Collections.

It now deals with user profiles. The updated version makes several changes, most of which look natural.

What is changing

Instead of offering two views of a person’s posts (“posts” or “posts and replies”), like X, profiles feature a single “Activity” tab with a drop-down menu. This allows users to configure other combinations of posts, by turning on or off replies and boosts – the latter is Mastodon’s version of reposting.

Hashtags also now appear at the top of this activity tab, allowing users to filter posts from that account by the tag they clicked on.

Mastodon also dropped the post carousel, which many users didn’t like. This feature was intended to balance the needs of those who want to pin a few posts, and the needs of those who visit a profile for quick access to a user’s latest posts. Now Mastodon users with multiple pinned posts will only have one included, while others can be displayed by clicking the new “View all pinned posts” button.

Another change was made to explain Mastodon’s handles to new people. Unlike X or Threads, where users are just @username, Mastodon handles have two @’s in them – one refers to their account name and the other refers to their server name. A new info pop-up explains this.

Users have more control over how their profile appears, too, with options to hide the “Media” or “Featured” tabs, if they wish, or hide replies on their “Media” tab if they want to show their work.

Custom fields in the profile, where users can add things like links, pronouns, and other information, are displayed side by side, meaning there is more vertical space available on the screen. These fields can now be changed on iOS and Android, too, not just the web.

Other design tweaks made profiles appear more comprehensive – such as removing the “following” badge and moving the optional “personal note” they add to their profiles to the overflow menu.

Profile editing can now be done in one place in the account settings, allowing users to manage functions such as their included hashtags (suggested by Mastodon now), links, and other profile information.

Link verification – which is Mastodon’s tool for verifying someone’s trustworthiness without being a middle-of-the-road official (or requiring payment, as in X) – is no longer buried in the settings. Users can crop and add other text to their profile pictures and cover pictures.

The changes will first be available on the mastodon.social server and on other servers that have chosen to use the nightly build. Additional servers will receive the update when the Mastodon 4.6 software update arrives in a few weeks.