X rival Mastodon rolls out revamped notifications, a refreshed look and more

Mastodon, the open source, decentralized alternative to X (formerly Twitter), is rolling out a handful of new features, including refreshed notifications, new discovery tools, as well as an updated look. Although some of these changes were available in nightly releases, they are now officially rolling out in a stable release.

Notifications on Mastodon will now look somewhat similar to how they do on X, as the social network is introducing notification grouping. That means you’ll be able to better understand your notifications if your posts are gaining traction. Instead of seeing a notifications page with hundreds of individual notifications for the same post, you will now see a summary of how many people boosted or liked it.

Mastodon is also launching a new system for filtering unwanted notifications. You can decide how, or if, you want to receive notifications from people you don’t follow, who aren’t following you, recently created accounts, or unsolicited private mentions.

For instance, you can choose to never see notifications for unsolicited private mentions, or choose to have them go to a special inbox that you can view whenever you want. While Mastodon’s private mentions aren’t as protected as X’s Direct Messages, this will still offer more high-profile users who receive a lot of inbounds a better way to filter out unwanted requests.

In addition, Mastodon is giving users more insight into how moderation decisions impact them.

The service will now notify you if a moderator decision results in you losing followers or no longer being able to follow people from another server, and you will have the ability to export a list of the affected profiles. You will also receive an in-app notification if a moderator decision targets your account specifically.

Mastodon says it’s been working to make it easier for new users to get started on the platform, but found that people were often skipping follow recommendations during the onboarding process and ending up with a quiet feed. To fix this, the company will display follow recommendations above the first post older than four hours on the first page of your home feed.

The social network has also improved follow recommendations in general, noting that users will see mixed results for recommendations, such as profiles that are popular in your language and profiles that a lot of people you know follow. Mastodon will display the reason for the recommendation for added transparency, the company says.

As for the service’s new look, Mastodon has redesigned the new post composer to make it more intuitive to use. You can now re-arrange the media that you have uploaded and also see how your post will look when it’s shared.

Plus, Mastodon’s iconography and color palette on the web app are getting a refresh.

Another new feature that brings Mastodon more in line with X is the launch of link previews, as you can now hover over an account name to get a quick look at their profile and quickly follow or unfollow them.

Mastodon is also officially rolling out a way to highlight writers and journalists.

The feature, which was first announced back in July, brings clickable author bylines on link posts that can direct users to the author’s account on the fediverse. The update allows journalists to gain more exposure and increase their following, while also helping users stay updated on news.

In terms of the future, Mastodon plans to introduce highly requested features like quote posts and the ability for server operators to subscribe to managed blocklists.