Faisons le tour des fonctionnalités…

Créer un compte

Vous avez décidé de créer un compte Mastodon et avez trouvé une instance à rejoindre.

Pour créer un compte, n’est demandé qu’un nom de compte et un mot de passe (certaines instances demandent une adresse de courrier électronique).

Nom de profil

Choisissez votre nom de compte, il fera parti de votre identifiant par la suite.

Ici, le nom choisi est PaulaToThePeople et l’identifiant sera @PaulaToThePeople@climatejustice.social.

Vous pouvez choisir un nom de profil différent du nom de compte.

Adresse de courrier électronique

Entrez votre adresse de courrier électronique, il est important de se souvenir de quelle adresse vous utilisez ainsi que d’y avoir accès.

Mot de passe

Choisissez un mot de passe. Pour plus de sécurité il est recommandé d’utiliser un générateur puis de l’enregistrer dans un gestionnaire de mot de passes tel que KeePass.

Vous devez l’entrer deux fois pour s’assurer qu’il n’y ait pas de coquille.

Règles du serveur

Pour créer un compte, vous devez accepter les règles du serveur. Lisez les avec précaution, ce sont elles qui encadreront votre conduite et vos interactions avec les autres personnes utilisant l’instance.

Vous devrez non seulement les suivre, mais également vouloir encourager les autres à faire de même.

Courrier de confirmation

En cliquant sur « Enregistrer » vous recevrez un courrier de confirmation. Celui-ci contient un lien sur lequel il faut cliquer pour confirmer votre adresse de courrier électronique et accéder à votre compte.

Pensez à vérifier vos courriers indésirables si vous ne le recevez pas.

Apparence de base

Au début, vous verrez l’interface basique et les suggestions de compte à suivre.

Suggestions de comptes

La première chose que vous verrez sur Mastodon en vous connectant à votre compte sera des suggestions de comptes à suivre.

Elles sont basées sur les comptes que les autres personnes de votre instance suivent.

Vous pouvez les suivre en cliquant sur le symbole « + » à droite ou d’abord visiter leur profil en cliquant sur leur nom de profil.

Pour fermer les suggestions, cliquer sur le bouton « Terminé » en bas de l’écran.

Pour plus de suggestions, ajoutez « /web/start » à la barre d’adresse de votre navigateur.

Interface basique

L’interface basique est celle par défaut sur Mastodon. Il est possible de passer à une interface avancée depuis les paramètres.

Ci-dessous, sont décrites les fonctions de l’interface basique.

Pouets

Sur Mastodon, les publications sont appelées des pouets (traduit de l’anglais toots).

Texte

Dans le champ de texte vous pouvez écrire ce que vous voulez dans les limites des règles de votre instance ainsi que du nombre de caractères (généralement 500).

En bas à droite est affiché le nombre de caractères restants.

Sur l’image, 5000 caractères sont encore disponibles, choix fait par l’instance sur laquelle la capture d’écran a été faite.

Émoticônes

Cliquez sur l’émoticône en haut à droite du champ de texte pour ajouter des émoticônes.

Au delà des classiques, l’administration de votre instance peut en ajouter des personnalisés. N’hésitez pas à la contacter pour en demander d’autres.

Mots croisillons

Ajouter un mot-croisillon (également appelé hashtag) est simple, il suffit de placer un # devant le mot voulu.

Par exemple #UneVoiture.

Mentions

Pour mentionner une personne, entrez @ suivi de son nom de compte (pas le nom de profil). Son compte devrait vous être suggéré lorsque vous commencez à entrer son nom si vous avez déjà interagi avec.

Pour mentionner une personne avec qui vous n’avez pas encore interagi, vous devez entrer l’identifiant complet de compte (ex : @PaulaToThePeople@climatejustice.social).

Liens

Il est évidemment possible d’ajouter des liens dans vos pouets, il suffit de coller l’adresse dans le champ de texte.

L’adresse entière, dont l’entête https://, est nécessaire pour pouvoir cliquer sur le lien.

Pas de soucis sur la taille du lien, la limite de caractère ne leur est pas appliquée (du moins pas entièrement).

Pièces jointes

Cliquer sur le symbole de trombone pour joindre un fichier, vous pouvez ajouter jusqu’à 4 images, une vidéo, ou un fichier audio.

En ajoutant une image ou une vidéo, il est possible de marquer son contenu comme choquant, elle sera floutée et il faudra cliquer dessus pour la voir.

Pièces jointes et sondages sont exclusifs, il n’est pas possible d’utiliser les deux sur un même pouet.

Description des fichiers

cliquer sur le bouton « Modifier » pour ajouter une description. Vous disposez généralement de 1500 caractères pour la description, soit plus que pour le pouet même.

Sondages

Cliquez sur les 3 barres à côté du trombone pour ajouter un sondage. Par défaut, il est possible d’y mettre 4 choix.

Visibilité

Le symbole suivant sur la ligne, un globe, vous permet de changer la visibilité de votre pouet.

Public
Sélectionné par défaut, votre pouet sera visible par tout le monde sur votre profil, le fil public et le fil personnel des personnes abonnées.
Non listé
Votre pouet sera visible pour tout le monde sur votre profil et le fil peronnel des personnes abonnées, mais ne sera pas visible sur les fils publics.
Des personnes peuvent vous repouet mais celui-ci sera soumis aux même règles.
Personnes abonnées uniquement
Seules les personnes abonnées verront votre pouet sur votre profil et leur fil personnalisé. Les repouets sont désactivés.
Personnes mentionnées uniquement
Un message privé est seulement visible par la personne mentionnée (et l’administration de vos instances). Il est possible de mentionner plusieurs personnes et d’en ajouter par la suite, en quel cas elles n’auront accès qu’aux nouveaux messages à partir de celui où elles sont mentionnées.

Avertissement de contenu

Le dernier symbole de la ligne, CW signifie Content Warning. En cliquant, un champ de texte supplémentaire apparaît en haut.

En pouetant avec un CW, les personnes verront seulement le texte écrit dans second champ de texte et devront cliquer dessus pour pouvoir accéder au reste du pouet.

Si le pouet contient une image ou une vidéo, celui-ci sera marqué comme pouvant présenter du contenu choquant. Cela est modifiable en cliquant sur la case à cocher.

Au delà du contenu pouvant heurter la sensibilité, les CWs peuvent parfois être utilisés pour des blagues où la seconde partie est cachée.

Recherche

Il est possible de chercher des personnes, des mots-croisillons ainsi que, sur certaines instances, les pouets.

Vous trouverez les personnes à l’aide de leur nom de compte ou de profil. Pour un compte avec lequel vous n’avez jamais interagi l’identifiant complet sera nécessaire (ex : @PaulaToThePeople@climatejustice.social) ou un lien vers leur profil.

En cherchant un mot-croisillon, seront affichés tous les mots-croisillons commençant par les caractères tapés. Commencer avec la recherche « une » affichera « #UneVoiture », contrairement à « voiture ».

Annonces

Dans l’ordre des aiguilles d’une montre, sur l’interface vient ensuite l’affichage des annonces, caché derrière un symbole de mégaphone.

Les messages de l’administration d’une instance y sont affichés. Si plusieurs annonces sont disponibles, il est possible de cliquer sur les flèches pour les consulter.

Le point bleu sur le mégaphone indique de nouvelles annonces non lues.

Paramètres du fil d’accueil

À droite du mégaphone se trouvent les options. Cliquez dessus pour changer ce qui est affiché dans le fil d’accueil.

Vous pouvez choisir la visibilité des repouets et réponses, visibles par défaut.

Fil d’accueil

Le fil d’accueil affiche les pouets de vos abonnements. Selon vos paramètres seront également affichées les repouets et réponses des personnes que vous suivez.

Pouets dans le fil

Repouet

L’en-tête d’un pouet affiche si celui-ci a été repouet dans votre fil ains que l’identité de la personne.

Date

Dans le coin supérieur droit est affichée la date à laquelle le pouet a été fait. En cliquant dessus le pouet s’ouvrira dans un nouvel onglet.

Cacher les images

Si une image est jointe, vous pouvez choisir de la flouter à la manière du contenu sous CW.

Réponse

En bas du premier symbole est le bouton de réponse. Cliquez dessus pour répondre au pouet.

Pour que la personne à l’origine du pouet soit notifiée de votre réponse, n’enlevez pas la mention dans le champ de texte.

RePouet

Le symbole suivant est le bouton de repouet. L’équivalent sur Mastodon du partage ou du retweet d’autres plateformes.

En cliquant dessus, le pouet apparaîtra sur votre profil et sur le fil d’accueil des personnes abonnées.

La personne à l’origine du pouet sera notifiée que vous l’avez repouet.

Like

Liking a post will also notify the author of the toot and - like boosting - the post will show a count of how many times it was liked.
Other than that it has a similar function as bookmarking the toot - you can see all the toots you liked in a separate view.

Expand this post

The following functions can be found in the dropdown menu - the last symbol in the row.
Expanding a post will show it instead of the home timeline (different in extended interface) and display replies underneath it.
You can also get to the expanded view by simply clicking on the post - but make sure you don't click on a mention, hashtag or link.

Copy post url

This function simply copies the direct url of the toot. You can use this to share the toot somewhere else - e.g. in a messenger.

Embed

This function copies the html code that lets you embed the toot on a website.

Bookmark

Bookmarking a toot is like liking it, except the author won't be notified and there is no count of how many times a post was bookmarked.
You can see your bookmarked toots in a separate view than your liked toots.

Mention

This function starts a new post mentioning the author of the toot. This is not like replying as the post you start will not display underneath the authors post.

Direct message

This is like the mention function except the visibility of the started toot will be set to "direct".

Mute, block, report, block domain

See further down

Notifications

Whenever someone interacts with one of your toots or sends you a message you'll be notified.
The notifications button will display a marker if there are unread notifications, unless you changed that in the notification settings
Click on the notifications button to see all notifications instead of the home timeline.

Notification settings

In the top right corner you can change some settings about the notifications.

Clear notifications

This removes all notifications from the view.
You don't need to remove notifications to remove the unread notifications marker though.

Unread notification markers

Select whether to show or hide the unread notifications badge on the notifications button.

Quick filter bar

By default you can choose between all notifications and mentions.
If you hide the quick filter bar you can't choose anymore and will only be shown all notifications.
If you show the quick filter bar and select "display all categories" too, you'll be able to see only relies, only likes, only boosts, only poll results, only updates from people you follow or only new followers.

Desktop notifications

Next you can choose what kind of notification will be displayed for each category.
Desktop notifications are popup notifications on your computer that don't just show up while you are in the browser.

Show in column

Here you can hide notification types from your notifications view. E.g. if you get too many notifications you can hide likes to only see "more important" notifications.

Play sound

This simply changes whether you get a sound notification for each type of notification.

Explore

When you click on explore you'll first see trending posts. These are simply posts a lot of people on your instance like and boost - no sponsored posts or anything. Next you can select "Hashtags" and you'll see trending hashtags. They trend the same way. Then there is "News" which contains trending links and "For you" which contains follow recommendations.

The explore feature may not show much on your instance if the admin(s) are not really behind it, because it takes a lot of moderation effort.

Local timeline

The local timeline displays all toots by people on your instance. Boosts and replies are not shown.
If you are on an instance with a specific theme or for a specific location the local timeline is usually more interesting than on a general purpose instance.

Media only

In the top right corner you can select whether only posts with media attachments will be shown in the local timeline.

Federated timeline

The federated timeline displays toots by everybody who is known to your instance.
Here you can also choose whether to only display toots with media.

Remote only

This option will hide toots from people on your instance from the federated timeline.

Direct messages

Here you'll be shown every direct message you are part of - the ones you sent and the ones you received.

Favorites

Here you'll see every toot you liked starting with your latest like.

Bookmarks

The bookmarks column shows every post you bookmarked.
When you don't want a toot to show up here anymore click on the dropdown menu for the toot and select "remove bookmark".

Lists

Here you can create and view lists.
Lists are timelines containing only toots from people you put on that list.
So e.g. you can create a list of people who post very interesting stuff so you don't miss any of their posts.
A list will only display new posts from users since they were added to the list.

Profile Directory

The profile directory displays new or active users from your instance or from all over.
People can choose not to be displayed in profile directories in the settings.

Preferences

This button takes you directly to the appearance preferences.

Follows and followers

This button takes you to the Follows and followers section of the settings.

Trends

Here you'll see 3 trending hashtags.
You can hide this in the settings and the admin can hide this for everybody on the instance.

Advanced Interface

You can switch to the advanced interface in the appearance settings.
The advanced interface display more than one column at once. By default it displays the home timeline and the notifications, but you can "pin" the local & federated timeline, the profile directory, direct messages, bookmarks, favorites and lists too.
When you search for a hashtag you can pin that too and then select whether you want to display additional hastags in that timeline and switch between all toots with those hashtags or just local toots.

Profiles

Click on a profile picture to get to the user's profile.
Let's start with your own profile.

Your profile

Display name

After your header image and your profile image the first thing from top down is your display name.
The display name is also what's shown prominently on each post. It can, but doesn't have to be the same as the profile name.
You can change the display name in the settings.

Handle

Below the display name you can see your handle. It is @profilename@instance.domain.

Profile fields

Next you can see up to 4 profile fields where you can e.g. display your links. You can add profile fields in the settings.

Profile description

Next is your profile description or bio. Here you can write something about you. You can include emojis, links and hashtags. You can write the bio in the settings

Join date

Underneath your profile description - at least on most instances - you'll see the date you joined that instance.
This is not necessarily the date you joined the Fediverse, as you could have started on another instance.
Even if you move instances this date will not transferred.

Following and follower stats

Next you'll see the number of toots you posted, how many people you follow and how many people follow you.
The number of posts includes replies and non-public posts.

Posts, posts & replies, media

Next you can choose whether below your posts will be shown (starting with your pinned posts), posts and replies or just posts with media.
If you choose media only the media will be displayed in thumbnails. If you click on one of them you'll see the media in large, but still not the post.
Below the media you'll see some buttons - one takes you to the post.

Interactions with your own posts

You can interact with your own posts like with other peoples posts, including replying, liking, boosting, bookmarking and more.
Additionally you can do the following.

Pin on profile

You can pin up to 5 toots on your profile. They will show on top of the other posts.
It's a good idea to pin toots that say something about yourself - like maybe your intro post.
If someone discovers your profile for the first time it might look empty from their point of view of the Fediverse, if it wasn't for your pinned posts. Pinned posts are always discovered with the profile.

Delete

This function is quite self-explanatory. It deletes your post. The post won't be recoverable.

Delete & redraft

Mastodon doesn't have an edit toot feature. What comes closest is delete & redraft.
This deletes the post - all boosts, likes and replies will be gone - and you can edit it to post again.

Someone else's profile

Here we'll go through everything that's different on someone else's profile than on your own.

Follows you

If the user follows you this will be displayed on top of the profile.

Follow/Unfollow

Next you'll see the follow or unfollow button. If you click on follow it might turn into a "cancel follow request" button instead of the unfollow button.
This happens if the other person locked their profile.

Notify me

If you follow the profile you'll see a bell symbol besides the unfollow button. Click on it to receive notifications every time the user toots something.

Mention & direct message

We covered this before.

Hide boosts

This will hide boosts by that user in your public timelines. This can be useful if the person toots interesting stuff, but boosts too much uninteresting stuff.

Feature on profile

You can feature other users' profiles on your profile in a separate tab.
They will be displayed as recommendations below your bio.

Add/remove from lists

Here you can add the profile you're looking at directly to a list or to lists or remove them.

Mute

Muting a user means toots by them and toots mentioning them will be hidden, but they can still see your toots and follow you.
You can select whether you still get notifications when the user interacts with you as well as how long the mute should last.

Block

Blocking a user hides their toots and toots mentioning them as well as blocks the user from seeing and interacting with you and your toots.

Report

Reporting a user sends a report to your instance admin and - if you so choose - also to the admin of the instance the user is on.
You can select posts by the user to include in the report and write a bit about why you are reporting them.

Block domain

This blocks not just the user, but the whole instance the user is on. This is e.g. used to fight spam, trolling and harassment by a whole instance.
When you block an instance its usually a good idea to also send a report or a direct message to your instance admin, so they can choose whether to block the domain for everybody on your instance.

Profiles in separate tabs

When you open a profile in a separate browser tab or window there will be more things shown than when you open the profile in the same tab.

E.g. you'll see all the user's toot instead of just the ones known to you.

User's choices

Below the user's bio you'll see other profiles the user chose to feature on their profile.
You can see up to 4 of them. If the user highlights more than 4 then you can reload the tab and see 4 random profiles again.

Featured hashtags

Below the featured profiles you'll see featured hashtags if the user chose some in their profile settings.
Click on one of the hashtags and you'll see all the posts by the user that mention that hashtag.

Instance description and trending now

If you continue further below you'll see an image and a description of the instance the user is on and below that the hashtags that are currently trending on that instance.

Settings

If you go to your settings you'll fist end up in the preferences -> appearance part of the settings, but above that are the profile settings.

Profile settings

Appearance

Display name

Here you can choose the name that will display prominently on your profile and your posts.
A display name can contain spaces and emojis.

Bio

Here you can write a short text about you to tell visitors of your profile who you are.

Header

The header image will only be displayed to people if they visit your profile. It will be displayed on top like a banner.

Avatar

The avatar is your profile image that won't just be displayed on your profile, but also on all your toots.
An avatar can be transparent.

Require follow requests

Choose whether you want everybody to be able to follow you instantly, or whether you want to approve follow requests.

This is a bot account

This option doesn't do much except mark your profile as a bot. This is e.g. chosen if you predominantly crosspost from Twitter or feed your toots from RSS.

Suggest account to others

This option will display your profile in the profile directory and in the follow suggestions.

Profile metadata

Here you can define 4 user fields. Many people use this to link to their homepage(s) or to display their pronouns.

Verification

You can verify a link in your profile fields by adding the rel="me" attribute to a link back from that homepage to your profile.
There is a link that you can just copy and paste on your homepage.

Moving from or to a different account

Moving is explained in this article.

Delete account

If you really don't like mastodon of course you can delete your account. After all you are the owner of your data.
This might not delete all your posts people boosted from those people's profiles.

Featured Hashtags

Here you can select up to 10 hashtags to be displayed on your profile.

Preferences

Appearance

Interface Language

Choose what language Mastodon communicates with you in.
This doesn't affect the posts in your timelines as Mastodon doesn't have a translate feature.

Site Theme

Choose between the standard theme, a high contrast theme and a light theme. The high contrast theme will display links and hashtags in blue.

Enable advanced web interface

Here you can choose between the basic interface and the advanced interface.

Animations and accessibility

Here you can choose whether the timelines will automatically load new toots or not, whether gifs automatically move or not, whether there are animations displayed e.g. for boosting or liking a post, whether you can use swiping motions to interact with Mastodon and whether Mastodon will display it's own fonts or fall back to your system's default fonts.

Crop images in non-expanded posts to 16x9

We recommend unticking this box as toots look better if the whole picture is shown.

Show today's trends

Here you can hide the trending hashtags from your basic or advanced interface.

Confirmation dialogs

These are some good options to avoid unintentionally boosting or deleting a post or unfollowing someone.

Sensitive content

The sensitive content settings let you hide or reveal all media or all media marked as sensitive by the poster.
If you're not easily triggered you can also expand all posts with content warnings so you don't have to click on the content warning every time to see the full toot.

Notifications

Most notification settings were mentioned before so here are options only for email notifications plus options to block all notifications and/or direct messages from people you don't follow or people who don't follow you.

Other

Opt-out of search engine indexing

This will hide your profile from search results on Duck Duck Go, Google and other search engines.

Hide your social graph

Whether your profile displays how many people you follow and how many people follow you.

Group boosts in timelines

This feature is enabled by default. Disabling it may result in your home timeline showing the same post multiple times in a row if many people boosted it.

Posting defaults

Here you can change the default privacy setting for your toots, what language your toots are written in (if you only post in one language) whether all your media is by default marked as sensitive (e.g. if you post a lot of nudes) and whether to disclose what application you are using in your posts. The last option will not do anything if you are just using Mastodon in the browser.

Filter languages

Here you can filter out toots in languages you don't understand. Select the languages you do understand and leave the other boxes unticked.

Follows and followers

Here you can see everybody who follows you, everybody who you follow or every mutual follow.
You can filter by account activity and order by most recent or last active and batch unfollow people.

Filters

Filters let you hide posts based on words or terms included in the posts.
You can e.g. use this to filter out retweets (RT @), words that trigger you or discussions you're simply not interested in.

Automated post deletion

Choose whether old posts of yours are automatically deleted, when they are deleted and what exceptions apply.

Account

Account Settings

Account status

This will usually show "Your account is fully functional". If it doesn't you better contact your instance admin.

Security

You can change your email and password. It is not really recommended to change your password regularly as long as it is a good password and you don't use it on many sites.

Sessions

Here you can see which devices when had last access to your account and under which IP-address.

Below that again are to options to move to and from your account or deleting it.

Two-factor auth

Two-factor authentication is an additional security step to a strong password. You'll be sent messages to your phone containing tokens that you'll need to login to your account.

Authorized apps

Here you'll see which apps are connected to your account. E.g. mobile apps you use on your phone will be displayed here.
When you click on "revoke" you'll be logged out from that app.

Import and Export

You can export the people you follow, your lists, mutes and blocks and your bookmarks.
These can be used to be imported to another profile. You can also request an archive of your posts and media, but there is no import function for that, so you can't take your posts with you when you move instances.

Invite people

This option is only displayed if your admin allows you to invite people and it only really makes sense if the instance you're on is closed.
You can generate invite links to share with people who can use them to create an account on the same instance.
If you want you can select an option to let everybody who uses your links automatically follow you.