⁨Mastonaut⁩

Description of App

Mastonaut is a Mastodon client for Mac.
Mastodon is a distributed social network of over 2 million users and hundreds of servers catering to the most varied set of interests and topics. Mastonaut is an easy-to-use and beautiful window into this world. Browse, follow, interact, and contribute to this amazing community from the comfort of your Mac.
As a lovingly-crafted app from a Mastodon user to other Mastodon users, Mastonaut is made to integrate with macOS in the finest aspects. Some features include:
* Thoughtful interface, made for the Mac, with simple usability and powerful capabilities.
* A concise status composer, that also lets you submit posts with image and video attachments that can be drag-and-dropped from Finder.
* Keyboard navigation, so you can quickly browse through your feed
* Polls support: Vote on polls right from your timelines, and compose your own, right from Mastonaut.
* Instance emoji support: Each mastodon instance has its own set of custom and often animated emoji. Mastonaut makes sure you can enjoy them at their best by letting you see them in your timelines, and also letting you insert them using a picker in the composer. But if you're a pro you can also insert instance emoji by simply typing their shortcode between colons.
* Versatile column-based layout, that allows browsing anywhere from a simple and straightforward single-column mode, to a many column window that lets you keep everything that's happening now right in front of you.
* Multi-Account support, so that you can manage and post from several accounts (even in different servers) at once (and quickly switch between them via keyboard shortcuts).
* Mention auto-complete: Just type the first few characters from a user's handle to get Mastonaut to suggest them to you.
* Full support for media and content warnings (spoiler warnings), so that you don't have to see what you don't want to see.
* Annotated media support, so you can access the accessibility labels of attachments in posts, but also insert annotations on your own posts.
* Search: Find users by handle or display name, and lookup hashtags.
* Delete & Redraft: We all make typos, so Mastonaut lets you quickly delete and re-draft your statuses. It will even reuse the attachments from the original status so you don't need to upload them again.
* Notifications: Get notified when other users mention you, or favorite your toots. Notifications can be configured per account.
* Share extension: Share webpages, text, and images right from other apps such as Safari, Photos, or Finder.
* Saved tags: Bookmark your tags to easily browse through them later.
* Account editing support: You can update most of your accounts settings from Mastonaut, including your avatar and header, your bio, fields, and more.
The goal for Mastonaut is to be the best client for Mastodon, period. User feedback is extremely welcome, as this is the only way that such a bold goal can be achieved.
If you're unfamiliar with the Mastodon network and would like to learn more, visit joinmastodon.org.
To learn more about Mastonaut, visit mastonaut.app.
Note to Pleroma users: Although Pleroma servers are supported, there are some quirks and differences in the APIs that makes it hard for a client to support both Pleroma and Mastodon fully. In cases where API issues are present, Mastonaut opts to honor Mastodon's behavior first. Bugs have been filed with Pleroma's developers for the known issues, but since Mastodon is a complex system, comprehensive support can't be guaranteed. Feel free to reach out at the support link for Mastonaut if you have any questions. Thank you for your understanding.
Mastonaut will not interact with servers that are known to not moderate the content posted by their users. The list of blocked servers is not comprehensive, and might change under request from Apple, or at the discretion of the developer. The list of blocked servers is available at the support link. Thank you for your understanding.

Version

1.3.9

Free or Paid

Paid

Version Of macOS App Was Tested On

12.1

Accessibility Comments

Everything reads, accept the toots list when arrowing. VoiceOver just speaks, "Toot". You can read the text by interacting with each item and pressing VO + right a few times though

Usability

There are some accessibility issues with this app, but it can still be used if you are willing to tolerate these issues and learn how to work around them.

Other Comments

If you're looking for a Mastodon client for macOS, this is probably the best you're going to get. I reached out to the developer about this issue though, so we'll see if I get a reply.

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Comments

By Paul Martin on Friday, August 25, 2023 - 06:24

I just got this a few minutes before as of this posting, but viewing the client on the storefront was free instead of how much it would cost before. Perhaps that should be updated in the entry.