Mastodon Release Notes

After many months of design, development, gathering feedback, and testing, today we’re releasing a big update with Mastodon 4.6. The headliner of this release is Collections, a way to create and share curated collections of profiles. Part of Mastodon’s work ethos is our commitment to trust and safety, so we’ve put a lot of thought and care into the design of this feature to avoid some of the pitfalls and abuse people have experienced with similar features on other platforms, while focusing on its primary goal: Helping new users discover more of the Fediverse.

Collections

The quality that sets our Collections feature apart is that you can control which collections your profile appears in. If you aren’t opted in to our “Feature me in discovery experiences” preference, you cannot be included in collections at all. If you are opted in, you will be notified every time you’re added to a collection, and can always—at any time—remove yourself from a given collection. We’ve also limited the number of profiles that can be included in a single collection to 25, and decided not to offer a “follow all” shortcut. We might tune the exact number in the future, but the idea is that high volume makes collections harder to overview and therefore easier to use for spam (by e.g. sneaking in some profiles used for spam among a sea of legitimate ones).

Once you have created a collection, you can send the link to your friend or share it anywhere on the web, including Mastodon itself. Your collections will also be available on your own Mastodon profile, under the “Featured” tab. If you update the title or description of your collection later, the profiles that are on it will be notified, so no funny business! For now, finding collections is very manual, primarily through word of mouth. In the future, we are planning to introduce some ways to browse and discover popular collections.

Profiles

After doing a survey to understand what information about other users our community values the most, we’ve updated the look of profiles on Mastodon to make them more ergonomic (and a little prettier!). Whether you like browsing a profile’s original posts only, or want to see everything they boost and reply to, it now takes fewer clicks to get to that information, and your preference applies on every profile you view. Featured hashtags are now also way more prominent and easier to access.

Perhaps even more importantly, we’ve reworked the entire editing experience for your profile. Instead of navigating away into the settings area just to update your profile picture, everything is available right from your profile by switching it into editing mode. Now you can crop your profile picture and header right there, instead of having to do it by hand before uploading. We’re also making it possible to add alt text for profile pictures and headers now, making your profile more accessible for blind and visually impaired users.

With the new profile editing experience comes a few brand new options for customising your profile. You can now control whether a “Media” tab shows at all, and if so, whether it should include media attachments from your replies to other people or not. This way, if you want to use it as a portfolio while hiding the GIFs and memes you use to respond to others, you can. You can also control if the “Featured” tab, which displays your collections and featured profiles, should show up or not.

Newsletters

This feature is primarily for our institutional users, though we expect that journalists, bloggers, and other creators who run their own server might find it useful too: You can now opt-in to allow anonymous visitors to subscribe to your posts via e-mail, so even people who don’t have a Mastodon or Fediverse account and don’t wish to get one can keep up to date with you—given that you have an assigned role with the respective permission and the feature has been enabled on the server. We chose not to make this available for everyone by default as sending e-mail newsletters can significantly rack up the costs of operating a Mastodon server. You can discuss with your server administrator if you want to use this feature.

New landing page variant

If you are looking at the Mastodon server of the European Commission or the German government, the “Trending” tab may not be the most suitable place to start. For this reason, we’re introducing a setting for a new type of landing page that highlights the description of the server and the most recent updates from local profiles, as well as a simplified interface that keeps you from wandering off.

#Wrapstodon

You might remember for the past two years we’ve been offering your year in review on mastodon.social around the month of December. This is a feature we’ve been polishing and optimizing and it’s finally officially becoming available to all server administrators. Starting from December 10 each year, Mastodon will offer you an option to generate your year in review report—only if you agree will anything be generated. The offer can just as easily be dismissed. Unlike the original 2024 version of this feature, which required you to manually take a screenshot to share your #Wrapstodon with other people, it can now be shared as a link with anyone on the web. So that’s something to look forward to towards the end of the year!

Accessibility fixes

We’ve already mentioned that you can now add alt text for profile pictures and headers, but that is just one of many countless accessibility improvements in Mastodon 4.6, from keyboard navigation and focus management, improving color contrasts, to various improvements to how screen readers navigate and read out things in the Mastodon interface. We want to thank the Dutch government who sponsored a significant part of this effort.

In conclusion

Mastodon is the result of the work of our (now much larger!) engineering team and community contributors who submit patches, file bug reports, and translate Mastodon into their native languages. From our heart: Thank you to everyone who contributed to this release, either through code, feedback, or by funding our mission.

Delivering handcrafted code that runs on tens of thousands of servers and serves hundreds of thousands of users is not an easy task. We don’t take venture capital, we don’t sell ads, and we don’t sell your data—unlike many other platforms out there. Please support our mission, so that we can continue to make Mastodon better, and work towards an internet that is diverse, fun, and free from corporate control.

Thank you for supporting Mastodon

We develop and maintain the free and open source software that powers the social web. There is no capital behind this — we rely entirely on your support.

Original source

Upgrade overview

This release contains upgrade notes that deviate from the norm:

⚠️ The minimum supported version for Ruby has been bumped to 3.3
⚠️ The minimum supported version for Node.JS has been bumped to 22
⚠️ The minimum supported version for FFMpeg has been bumped to 5.1
⚠️ ImageMagick support has been dropped, libvips is required
⚠️ Custom themes need to be updated
ℹ️ Requires assets recompilation
ℹ️ Requires streaming server restart
ℹ️ Requires database migrations

For more information, view the complete release notes and scroll down to the upgrade instructions section.

Changelog

Added

Add collections (#37992, #37005, #37049, #37020, #37053, #37110, #37117, #37122, #37154, #37157, #37176, #37192, #37222, #37225, #37254, #37277, #37298, #37322, #37434, #37468, #37514, #37512, #37549, #37556, #37560, #37580, #37591, #37552, #37618, #37643, #37658, #37731, #37678, #37741, #37762, #37790, #37805, #37823, #37837, #37842, #37850, #37848, #37812, #37950, #37898, #37916, #37920, #37927, #37928, #37961, #37967, #37974, #37989, #37986, #38004, #38026, #38027, #38030, #38038, #38065, #38081, #38082, #38096, #38106, #38113, #38124, #38133, #38144, #38153, #38166, #38167, #38169, #38170, #38177, #38193, #38213, #38251, #38255, #38256, #38282, #38298, #38292, #38307, #38306, #38316, #38115, #38329, #38334, #38337, #38351, #38368, #38370, #38356, #38383, #38386, #38385, #38394, #38393, #38399, #38402, #38409, #38414, #38413, #38424, #38425, #38450, #38508, #38528, #38534, #38536, #38540, #38543, #38491, #38586, #38611, #38588, #38612, #38628, #38626, #38630, #38633, #38629, #38638, #38645, #38644, #38636, #38660, #38657, #38688, #38690, #38672, #38698, #38697, #38708, #38712, #38713, #38709, #38719, #38728, #38730, #38732, #38739, #38749, #38751, #38750, #38767, #38769, #38783, #38785, #38959, #38786, #38794, #38776, #38817, #38792, #38822, #38827, #38831, #38830, #38844, #38843, #38852, #38850, #38847, #38865, #38897, #38900, #38919, #38933, #38934, #38935, #38942, #38941, #38954, #38961, #38957, #38962, #38991, #39009, #39062, #39029, #39069, #39020, #39073, #39082, #39096, #39080, #39182, #39143, #39127, #37929, #38029, #39194, #39198, #39210, #39211, #39202, #39214, #39215, #39220, #39234, #39260, #39251, #39361, #39357, #39349, #39287, #39376, #39289, #39342, #38711, #39379, #39282, #39286, #39296, #39047, #39346, #39373, #39372, #39429, and #39457 by @ChaosExAnima, @ClearlyClaire, @Gargron, @arte7, @diondiondion, @mjankowski, @oneiros, and @shleeable)

Create collections with up to 25 accounts each, then share them with others. You can read more about this feature on our blog. This is based on FEP-7aa9 (Featured Collections) to be interoperable with the wider Fediverse. All the new API methods are documented here.

Add email subscriptions (#38163, #38507, #38502, #38487, #38527, #38582, #38741, #38907, #39162, #39271 by @ClearlyClaire and @Gargron)

Admins can allow specific roles to enable email subscriptions on their profile, allowing anonymous visitors to subscribe to their posts via email.

Add new overview landing page setting (#39074, #39170, #39163, and #39138 by @Gargron, @diondiondion, and @zunda)

Admins can choose a new frontpage for anonymous visitors, which combines the about page and most recent posts from local profiles.

Add ability to require 2FA for specific roles (including Everybody) (#37701, #37846, and #38906 by @ClearlyClaire and @mjankowski)

Add import and export for custom filters (#39085, #39256, #39386 by @arte7)

Add ability to search email blocks by domain in admin UI (#38923 by @arte7)

Add new endpoints for profile editing in REST API (#37912, #37934, #37932, #38221, and #38339 by @ClearlyClaire)

Add GET /api/v1/profile and PATCH /api/v1/profile to replace the existing update_credentials endpoint. See the documentation for more information.

Add missing_attribution boolean to preview cards in REST API (#38043 by @ClearlyClaire)

Documentation: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/entities/PreviewCard/#missing_attribution

Add exclude_direct flag to /api/v1/accounts/:id/statuses to exclude direct messages (#37763 by @ClearlyClaire)

Add max_note_length and max_display_name_length attributes to configuration.accounts in Instance entity (#37991 by @ClearlyClaire)

Add profile field limits to instance entity in REST API (#37535 by @mkljczk)

This adds attributes configuration.accounts.max_profile_fields, configuration.accounts.profile_field_name_limit and configuration.accounts.profile_field_value_limit to the Instance entity.

Add unresolved flag to /api/v1/admin/reports to query both resolved and unresolved reports (#38323 by @mkljczk)

Add fallback attributes to notifications for new and infrequent notifications in REST API (#38832 and #38860 by @ClearlyClaire)

This adds a supported_types parameter to GET /api/v1/notifications, GET /api/v1/notifications/:id, GET /api/v2/notifications, and GET /api/v2/notifications/:group_key along with a new fallback attribute for notifications and notification groups.

Add support for posts in vertical languages in web UI (#37204, #38205, and #38797 by @shimon1024)

Add Alt + PageUp and Alt + PageDown hotkeys for list navigation (#39252 and #39427 by @diondiondion)

Add g+e keyboard shortcut to access the trending page in web UI (#38014 by @antoinecellerier)

Add Cmd/Ctrl+Enter for form submissions in more text areas in web UI (#37821 by @diondiondion)

Add support for quoting by dragging a link into the compose form in web UI (#36859 and #36896 by @ClearlyClaire and @tribela)

Add text-autospace to posts to improve rendering of mixed script posts in web UI (#37694 by @ahxxm)

Add Taiwanese (Minnan), Lazuri, Mingrelian and Ottoman Turkish to supported locales (#37650, #34923, #37822, #37721, #38648 by @ClearlyClaire and @Yoxem)

Add ability to filter notifications from bots (#38809 and #39377 by @evanp and @shleeable)

Add support for hosts resolver in request socket DNS lookup (#38699, #38866, and #39030 by @ClearlyClaire and @mjankowski)

Add support for FEP-2c59 (Webfinger Backlink) (#38239, #38538, and #38639 by @ClearlyClaire and @shleeable)

Add support for FEP-3b86 (Activity Intents) (#38120 and #38130 by @ClearlyClaire and @Gargron)

Add support for alt text for profile pictures and headers (#37634, #37641, #38000, #39352 by @ClearlyClaire and @Doxterpepper)

Add support for multiple keypairs for remote accounts (#38279, #38407, #38419, #38511, #38516, #38515, #38555 and #39235 by @ClearlyClaire)

Add duration to ActivityPub representation of media attachments (#38061 by @ClearlyClaire)

Add Stoplight circuit-breaker on Elasticsearch endpoints to better handle some Elasticsearch failures (#39323 and #39375 by @ClearlyClaire and @shleeable)

Add support for the “require approval” feature for email domain blocks to tootctl email_domain_blocks (#34579 and #38107 by @ClearlyClaire and @e-nomem)

Add --keep-interacted flag to tootctl media remove to preserve cached media on cleanup (#36200 by @northerner)

Add systemd service file for prometheus exporter (#35130 by @ThisIsMissEm)

Changed

Change design of profiles in web UI (#37472, #37490, #37479, #37513, #37527, #37550, #37538, #37632, #37627, #37593, #37638, #37626, #37645, #37653, #37683, #37707, #37682, #37742, #37747, #37760, #37761, #37831, #37766, #37811, #37813, #37825, #37854, #37851, #37876, #37885, #37892, #37890, #37907, #37922, #37952, #37958, #37996, #37990, #37994, #38005, #38012, #38040, #38052, #38066, #38083, #38147, #38148, #38152, #38168, #38156, #38175, #38191, #38189, #38235, #38283, #38310, #38309, #38315, #38314, #38365, #38366, #38363, #38346, #38382, #38384, #38400, #38404, #38417, #38426, #38440, #38442, #38443, #38445, #38446, #38451, #38456, #38509, #38510, #38512, #38513, #38517, #38529, #38531, #38535, #38532, #38544, #38549, #38575, #38579, #38580, #38581, #38585, #38584, #38604, #38605, #38606, #38607, #38622, #38616, #38625, #38632, #38640, #38663, #38667, #38646, #38691, #38692, #38766, #38791, #38687, #38826, #38828, #38863, #38845, #38870, #38872, #38932, #38945, #38963, #38964, #39055, #39042, #38893, #39079, #39084, #39160, #39070, #39217, #39309, #39354, #39324, #39387, #39452, #39467 by @ChaosExAnima, @ClearlyClaire, @Coro365, @diondiondion, and @shleeable)

The profile screen has been entirely redesigned, has new features, and allows you to update your own profile directly without going into the preferences panel. You can read more about it on our blog.

Change how #Wrapstodon reports are generated and displayed (#37033, #37045, #37093, #37055, #37096, #37047, #37103, #37104, #37106, #37109, #37121, #37138, #37134, #37177, #37182, #37169, #37186, #37187, #37188, #37189, #37190, #37193, #37198, #37201, #37203, #37205, #37206, #37207, #37209, #37202, #37216, #37219, #37224, #37226, #37229, #37249, #37251, #37256, #37261, #37269, #37270, #37273, and #37289 by @ChaosExAnima, @ClearlyClaire, @channyeintun, and @diondiondion)

This finishes up work started in 2024 by completely revamping how Wrapstodon reports are generated and displayed, reducing the amount of data collected and generating reports when active users ask for them.

Instead of requiring manual generation from a server administrator, this is now offered between the 10th of December and the end of each year if enabled in the server settings.

The design of the Wrapstodon report has also been fully reworked to be more delightful and easier to share!

The relevant API endpoints are documented at https://docs.joinmastodon.org/methods/annual_reports/

Change limitation to allow posts with both media and a poll to be created (#39203, #39368, #39388 by @ClearlyClaire and @Gargron)

Change account display name length limit from 30 to 40 characters (#39458 by @mjankowski)

Change alt text limit for media attachments to 10,000 characters (#39306 by @ClearlyClaire)

Change pending user notification email to link directly to the pending account (#39206 by @vmstan)

Changed emoji processing in web UI to make it less resource intensive and more robust (#39077, #39008, #39088, #38892, #38885, #38965, #38854, #38825, #38784, #38541, #37442, #37300, #37306, #37271, #37255, #37284, #37272, #37178, #37084, #37080, #37418, #39167, #39126, #39353, #39378, #39382, #39402, and #39421 by @ChaosExAnima, @ClearlyClaire, @diondiondion, @gomasy, and @Hanage999)

Change composer textarea to have a limited height to prevent column scrolling (#39268 by @diondiondion)

Change mentions of “Mastodon gGmbH” to “Mastodon GmbH” (#39261 by @renchap)

Change the limited profile message to be less misleading (#39231 by @mortie)

Change images/videos in posts in web UI to not have unlimited height (#36966, #37035, #37136, and #37032 by @diondiondion)

Change search field and tabs to stick to the top on the search results page in web UI (#38968 by @diondiondion)

Change “anyone can quote” label to “quotes allowed” in web UI (#37427 by @vmstan)

Change navigation by j/k hotkeys to anchor navigated item to top of viewport in web UI (#38036 by @diondiondion)

Change hotkeys to focus columns to not reset scroll, add hotkey 0 to scroll to top in web UI (#37052 by @diondiondion)

Change media modal swipe animation in web UI (#36916, #37034, #37323, and #37464 by @ChaosExAnima and @heathdutton)

Change “Hide”/“Show all” eye icon in thread view in web UI (#22301 by @tribela)

Change order of onboarding steps (follow people, then fill out profile) in web UI (#38121 by @Gargron)

Change “Why do you want to join” field on the sign-up page to have a label (#38936 by @diondiondion)

Change date of birth field on the sign-up page to use locale-specific fields order (#36039 and #36895 by @mjankowski)

Change how invalid-but-not-expired invites are shown in admin UI (#38736 by @ClearlyClaire)

Change wording and ordering of media display settings (#38731 by @mjankowski)

Change wording of server account recommendation setting description (#36771 by @mjankowski)

Change wording and ordering of account migration warnings (#20387 by @jsoref)

Change wording of “Automatic post deletion” settings (#37286 by @mjankowski)

Change wording of language filter settings to clarify they do not impact home/lists (#38490 by @mjankowski)

Change wording of tootctl preview_cards remove command description to clearly state it only removes media (#39348 by @mjankowski)

Change invitations to only bypass sign-up approval setting when the issuer of the invitation has the invite_bypass_approval permission (#38278 by @ClearlyClaire)

This splits the “Invite Users” permission into a new “Invite Users without review” permission.

Existing roles will be updated to have the new permission if they have the old one, but default permissions will not include the new invite_bypass_approval permission.

Change followers synchronization mechanism on followers-only posts to be skipped for accounts with 25k followers or more (#37302 by @ClearlyClaire)

Change "Accept" link on sign-up page to a form to prevent some crawling behavior (#39283 and #39345 by @ClearlyClaire and @mjankowski)

Change “dark”, “light” and “high contrast” themes to be separate “Color scheme” and “Contrast” settings handled by a single theme (#37095, #37120, #37288, #37459, #37470, #37477, #37519, #37520, #37523, #37524, #37526, #37612, #37824, #37807, #37810, #37819, #37906, and #38261 by @ClearlyClaire, @diondiondion, and @mjankowski)

Existing settings should be migrated automatically from user settings, and using browser defaults otherwise.

This also allows third-party theme authors to make use of the same browser defaults and user settings. Learn more about this in our new Theming docs.

Change default theme to use CSS theme tokens (#36861, #36936, #37019, #37054, #37056, #37081, #37105, #37268, #37841, #37843, #38387, #38459, and #38621 by @diondiondion)

A guide to using the new tokens can be found in our docs.

Change location blocks in default nginx.conf (#19644 and #37866 by @BedrockDigger and @Izorkin)

Change proxy_read_timeout to 120 seconds in default nginx.conf (#30599 by @shleeable)

Change JSON-LD collection handling (#34595 and #37806 by @ClearlyClaire and @sneakers-the-rat)

Removed

Remove support for EOL Node version 20 (#38926 by @mjankowski)

Remove support for Ruby 3.2 (#37476 by @mjankowski)

Remove support for ENABLE_SIDEKIQ_UNIQUE_JOBS_UI (#38340 by @ClearlyClaire)

Remove support for ImageMagick (#37488 by @mjankowski)

Remove outdated hint for "Use system scrollbar" preference (#39297 by @diondiondion)

Fixed

Fix accessibility issues in web UI (#37250, #38006, #38033, #38188, #38230, #38252, #38257, #38285, #38293, #38362, #38387, #38459, #38796, #38801, #39098, #39111, #39120, #39129, #39133, #39134, #39144, #39145, #39149, #39164, #39165, #39169, #39181, #39335, #39305, #39331, #39356, #39350, #39358, #39360, #39325, #39270, #39439, #39400, and #39408 by @ChaosExAnima and @diondiondion)

Fix report modal heading being impossible to translate properly in some languages (#39457 by @diondiondion)

Fix being unable to edit an attachment twice without submitting (#39453 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fix error with audio player in Safari Lockdown Mode (#39397 by @Federicorao)

Fix tiny checkboxes and radio buttons in Safari (#39332 by @diondiondion)

Fix handling of offset in timezone list in settings (#39334 by @mjankowski)

Fix being unable to unmark media as sensitive when "always mark media as sensitive" is enabled in web UI (#39339 by @matrix07012)

Fix display of sensitive media cards in web UI according to settings (#39366 by @nshki)

Fix some inputs incorrectly having resize handles in Firefox (#39274 by @diondiondion)

Fix processing some link previews where text is language-tagged (#39190 by @zunda)

Fix error when “New trends” email is sent at the same time trends are recomputed (#39122 by @arte7)

Fix hovercard not showing in compose column (#39430 by @diondiondion)

Fix hover card opening even when not preceded by mouse movement in web UI (#39166, #39381 by @diondiondion)

Fix ominous "Moments remaining" timestamp in web UI (#38488 and #38689 by @ChaosExAnima and @MitarashiDango)

Fix filters not being applied to search results in web UI (#36346 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fix error when visiting non-public hashtag timelines (#36961 by @diondiondion)

Fix duplicate favourite/boost counters in some languages (#36844 by @ChaosExAnima)

Fix unblocking domain from blocked domains column not updating the list in web UI (#38882 by @tribela)

Fix "change thumbnail" button being visible when it shouldn't in web UI (#38467 by @dpbento)

Fix profile dropdown menu sometimes ending with a separator in web UI (#38481 by @mkljczk)

Fix short numbers rounding up instead of truncating in web UI (#38114 by @serranodfm)

Fix directory showing load more button when no more profiles exist in web UI (#37465 by @heathdutton)

Fix focus restoration after closing some modals in web UI (#37424 by @MegaManSec)

Fix video modals being pushed down on mobile in web UI (#37421 by @ChaosExAnima)

Fix outer page margins when viewport width equals content width in web UI (#36733 by @diondiondion)

Fix announcement margin when in advanced web UI (#36714 by @ChaosExAnima)

Fix navigation overflow issue in advanced web UI (#39178 by @diondiondion)

Fix stale merging stale account from cached instance API response in web UI (#37666 by @ChaosExAnima)

Fix HTML lang attribute being stripped out of remote posts (#39114 by @artemist)

Fix remote posts with large media descriptions being rejected (#39135 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fix some occurrence of PostgreSQL log pollution when processing new hashtags (#35792 by @oelison)

Fix blocked domains not being removed from the Instance search index (#39109 by @shleeable)

Fix Elasticsearch connections not being cleaned up properly in Sidekiq middleware (#39359 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fix replica database not being used when REPLICA_DB_HOST is used but neither REPLICA_DB_NAME nor REPLICA_DATABASE_URL (#37240 by @smiba)

Fix remote media attachment thumbnails not being stored in the cache/ directory (#36911 by @shugo)

Fix race condition when processing posts twice with the same idempotency key (#37879 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fix expire_at instead of expires_at in muted words CSV exports (#39304 by @arte7)

Fix various missing translation strings (#37671, #37838, #37078, #37371, #37827, #39328 by @ClearlyClaire, @mjankowski, and @valtlai)

Fix last post time for remote accounts not being accurately tracked (#37619 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fix filtering of mentions from filtered-on-their-origin-server accounts (#37583 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fix irrelevant remote accounts being passed through to local fan-out worker (#37589 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fix required field markers being displayed on fields that cannot be empty anyway in settings (#37291 by @diondiondion)

Fix thumbnails for links from The Guardian (and possibly other CDNs that check URL hashes) not showing up (#36139 by @phocks)

Fix mastodon-async-refresh response header not being exposed through CORS (#38914 by @mkljczk)

Fix FASP availability being incorrectly updated (#38818 by @oneiros)

Fix use of deprecated vsync FFmpeg option, using fps_mode instead (FFmpeg >= 5.1 now required) (#38198 by @mjankowski)

Fix unnecessary downcasing of some words in admin UI (#37364 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fix delivery worker counting unsalvageable HTTP errors as successes (#37235 by @shleeable)

Fix streaming heartbeat comment not being its own event (#37389 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fix posts with edited out media attachments being returned in GET /api/v1/accounts/:id/statuses?only_media=true (#37363 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fix wrong media attachment URLs being returned from DELETE /api/v1/statuses/:id (#35880 by @dbarabashh)

Fix hashtag matching by replacing negative look-behind with positive look-behind (#37684 and #38212 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fix discovery of ActivityPub representation from HTML tags in presence of a non-ActivityPub alternate Link header (#37439 by @shleeable)

Fix Webfinger endpoint not handling new ActivityPub ID scheme (#38391 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fix error when admin-selected theme does not exist by falling back to default theme (#38703 by @shleeable)

Fix wrong endonyms for Divehi and Latvian in languages list (#36254 and #36876 by @cuu508 and @shimon1024)

Fix Accept headers when fetching ActivityPub resources not including JSON-LD profile (#30354 by @TheOneric)

Fix wrong hover indicators on unclickable items in admin UI (#38782 by @diondiondion)

Fix streaming server using deprecated url.parse instead of WHATWG URL API (#36973 by @Exagone313)

Upgrade notes

To get the code for v4.6.0, use git fetch && git checkout v4.6.0.

Note

As always, make sure you have backups of the database before performing any upgrades. If you are using docker-compose, this is how a backup command might look: docker exec mastodon_db_1 pg_dump -Fc -U postgres postgres > name_of_the_backup.dump

Dependencies

External dependencies have changed since v4.5.0, with new Ruby, Node and FFMpeg version requirements.

Ruby: 3.3 or newer

PostgreSQL: 14 or newer

Elasticsearch (recommended, for full-text search): 7.x (OpenSearch should also work)

LibreTranslate (optional, for translations): 1.3.3 or newer

Redis: 7.0 or newer

Node: 22 or newer

libvips: 8.13 or newer

FFMpeg: 5.1 or newer

ImageMagick removal and libvips replacement

ImageMagick has been deprecated since Mastodon 4.4.0 and is now unsupported. If you used MASTODON_USE_LIBVIPS=false, this will be ignored and you will need to install libvips.

Theming system changes

The theming system has changed substantially, changing how light and dark themes work, as well as high-contrast. We also overhauled the whole theme to use design tokens and CSS variables.

Custom themes will most likely require significant changes to work with Mastodon 4.6.0.

If you are a theme author, please see our documentation at https://docs.joinmastodon.org/dev/frontend/theming/ and https://docs.joinmastodon.org/dev/frontend/design-tokens/

Email subscription feature and additional costs

Mastodon 4.6 introduces a new feature that lets users turn their public posts into mailing lists. This can result in an increased amount of sent emails and thus increased costs.

This feature needs to be enabled by a Mastodon user with administrator privileges, then opted-in by individual users.

In situations where the Mastodon administrators and the people hosting the server are not the same people, such as providers that offer Mastodon as a service, the system administrators may want to disable this feature. This can be done by setting the DISABLE_EMAIL_SUBSCRIPTIONS environment variable to true.

Update steps

The following instructions are for updating from 4.5.11. They also apply for migration from v4.6.0-beta.1, v4.6.0-rc.1, and v4.6.0-rc.2.

If you are upgrading directly from an earlier release, please carefully read the upgrade notes for the skipped releases as well, as they often require extra steps such as database migrations. In particular, it is very important to read the 4.5.0 release notes.

Non-Docker

Tip

The charlock_holmes gem may fail to build on some systems with recent versions of gcc.

If you run into this issue, try BUNDLE_BUILD__CHARLOCK_HOLMES="--with-cxxflags=-std=c++17" bundle install.

If you are using rbenv, update the list of available versions and install the proper Ruby version by doing RUBY_CONFIGURE_OPTS=--with-jemalloc rbenv install in the Mastodon install directory (e.g. /home/mastodon/live)

Install dependencies with bundle install and yarn install --immutable

Precompile the assets: RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile

Run the pre-deployment database migrations by specifying the SKIP_POST_DEPLOYMENT_MIGRATIONS=true environment variable: SKIP_POST_DEPLOYMENT_MIGRATIONS=true RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails db:migrate

Restart all Mastodon processes.

Run the post-deployment database migrations: RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails db:migrate

When using Docker

Run the pre-deployment database migrations by specifying the SKIP_POST_DEPLOYMENT_MIGRATIONS=true environment variable: docker-compose run --rm -e SKIP_POST_DEPLOYMENT_MIGRATIONS=true web bundle exec rails db:migrate

Restart all Mastodon processes.

Run the post-deployment database migrations: docker-compose run --rm web bundle exec rails db:migrate

Original source

Changelog

Security

• Fix allowed attribution domains spoofing (GHSA-rwcw-vq68-g34p)
• Fix uncaught exception in message sanitization causing Denial of Service (GHSA-qrgq-9fx2-vf2r)
• Update dependencies

Fixed

• Fix remote statuses with large media descriptions being rejected (#39135 by @ClearlyClaire)

Upgrade notes

To get the code for v4.5.11, use git fetch && git checkout v4.5.11.

Note

As always, make sure you have backups of the database before performing any upgrades. If you are using docker-compose, this is how a backup command might look: docker exec mastodon_db_1 pg_dump -Fc -U postgres postgres > name_of_the_backup.dump

Dependencies

External dependencies have not changed since v4.5.0.

• Ruby: 3.2 or newer
• PostgreSQL: 14 or newer
• Elasticsearch (recommended, for full-text search): 7.x (OpenSearch should also work)
• LibreTranslate (optional, for translations): 1.3.3 or newer
• Redis: 7.0 or newer
• Node: 20.19 or newer
• libvips (optional, instead of ImageMagick): 8.13 or newer
• ImageMagick (optional if using libvips): 6.9.7-7 or newer

Update steps

The following instructions are for updating from 4.5.10.

If you are upgrading directly from an earlier release, please carefully read the upgrade notes for the skipped releases as well, as they often require extra steps such as database migrations. In particular, it is very important to read the 4.5.0 release notes.

Non-Docker

Tip

The charlock_holmes gem may fail to build on some systems with recent versions of gcc.

If you run into this issue, try BUNDLE_BUILD__CHARLOCK_HOLMES="--with-cxxflags=-std=c++17" bundle install.

Install dependencies with bundle install

Restart all Mastodon processes.

When using Docker

Restart all Mastodon processes.

Original source

Note

While we continue to support Mastodon 4.4 and release patches for it, please note that Mastodon 4.5 is available with new features, changes and fixes. We encourage administrators to update to the latest 4.5 version when they can.

Changelog

Security

• Fix allowed attribution domains spoofing (GHSA-rwcw-vq68-g34p)
• Fix uncaught exception in message sanitization causing Denial of Service (GHSA-qrgq-9fx2-vf2r)
• Update dependencies

Fixed

• Fix remote statuses with large media descriptions being rejected (#39135 by @ClearlyClaire)

Upgrade notes

To get the code for v4.4.18, use git fetch && git checkout v4.4.18.

Note

As always, make sure you have backups of the database before performing any upgrades. If you are using docker-compose, this is how a backup command might look: docker exec mastodon_db_1 pg_dump -Fc -U postgres postgres > name_of_the_backup.dump

Dependencies

External dependencies have not changed since v4.4.1:

• Ruby: 3.2 or newer
• PostgreSQL: 13 or newer
• Elasticsearch (recommended, for full-text search): 7.x (OpenSearch should also work)
• LibreTranslate (optional, for translations): 1.3.3 or newer
• Redis: 6.2 or newer
• Node: 20 or newer
• libvips (optional, instead of ImageMagick): 8.13 or newer
• ImageMagick (optional if using libvips): 6.9.7-7 or newer

Update steps

The following instructions are for updating from 4.4.17.

If you are upgrading directly from an earlier release, please carefully read the upgrade notes for the skipped releases as well, as they often require extra steps such as database migrations. In particular, it is very important to read the 4.4.0 release notes.

Non-Docker

Install dependencies with bundle install

Restart all Mastodon processes.

When using Docker

Restart all Mastodon processes.

Original source

Upgrade overview

This release contains upgrade notes that deviate from the norm:

ℹ️ Requires assets recompilation

For more information, view the complete release notes and scroll down to the upgrade instructions section.

Changelog

Security

• Fix SSRF protection bypass (GHSA-crr4-7rm4-8gpw, GHSA-xx55-4rrg-8xg6)
• Fix Linked-Data Signature bypass through JSON-LD graph restructuring features (GHSA-53m7-2wrh-q839, GHSA-chgx-jx3p-rf73)

Updated dependencies

Fixed

• Fix type of interactingObject, interactionTarget and add missing QuoteAuthorization (#38940 by @ClearlyClaire)

Removed

• Remove unused devise strategies (#38795 by @ClearlyClaire)

Upgrade notes

To get the code for v4.5.10, use git fetch && git checkout v4.5.10.

Note

As always, make sure you have backups of the database before performing any upgrades. If you are using docker-compose, this is how a backup command might look: docker exec mastodon_db_1 pg_dump -Fc -U postgres postgres > name_of_the_backup.dump

Dependencies

External dependencies have not changed since v4.5.0.

Ruby: 3.2 or newer

PostgreSQL: 14 or newer

Elasticsearch (recommended, for full-text search): 7.x (OpenSearch should also work)

LibreTranslate (optional, for translations): 1.3.3 or newer

Redis: 7.0 or newer

Node: 20.19 or newer

libvips (optional, instead of ImageMagick): 8.13 or newer

ImageMagick (optional if using libvips): 6.9.7-7 or newer

Update steps

The following instructions are for updating from 4.5.9.

If you are upgrading directly from an earlier release, please carefully read the upgrade notes for the skipped releases as well, as they often require extra steps such as database migrations. In particular, it is very important to read the 4.5.0 release notes.

Non-Docker

Tip

The charlock_holmes gem may fail to build on some systems with recent versions of gcc.

If you run into this issue, try BUNDLE_BUILD__CHARLOCK_HOLMES="--with-cxxflags=-std=c++17" bundle install.

Install dependencies with bundle install and yarn install --immutable

Precompile the assets: RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile

Restart all Mastodon processes.

When using Docker

Restart all Mastodon processes.

Original source

Note

While we continue to support Mastodon 4.4 and release patches for it, please note that Mastodon 4.5 is available with new features, changes and fixes. We encourage administrators to update to the latest 4.5 version when they can.

Upgrade overview

This release contains upgrade notes that deviate from the norm:

ℹ️ Requires assets recompilation

For more information, view the complete release notes and scroll down to the upgrade instructions section.

Changelog

Security

Fix SSRF protection bypass (GHSA-crr4-7rm4-8gpw, GHSA-xx55-4rrg-8xg6)

Fix Linked-Data Signature bypass through JSON-LD graph restructuring features (GHSA-53m7-2wrh-q839, GHSA-chgx-jx3p-rf73)

Updated dependencies

Removed

Remove unused devise strategies (#38795 by @ClearlyClaire)

Upgrade notes

To get the code for v4.4.17, use git fetch && git checkout v4.4.17.

Note

As always, make sure you have backups of the database before performing any upgrades. If you are using docker-compose, this is how a backup command might look: docker exec mastodon_db_1 pg_dump -Fc -U postgres postgres > name_of_the_backup.dump

Dependencies

External dependencies have not changed since v4.4.1:

Ruby: 3.2 or newer

PostgreSQL: 13 or newer

Elasticsearch (recommended, for full-text search): 7.x (OpenSearch should also work)

LibreTranslate (optional, for translations): 1.3.3 or newer

Redis: 6.2 or newer

Node: 20 or newer

libvips (optional, instead of ImageMagick): 8.13 or newer

ImageMagick (optional if using libvips): 6.9.7-7 or newer

Update steps

The following instructions are for updating from 4.4.16.

If you are upgrading directly from an earlier release, please carefully read the upgrade notes for the skipped releases as well, as they often require extra steps such as database migrations. In particular, it is very important to read the 4.4.0 release notes.

Non-Docker

Install dependencies with bundle install and yarn install --immutable

Precompile the assets: RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile

Restart all Mastodon processes.

When using Docker

Restart all Mastodon processes.

Original source

Caution

Mastodon 4.3 is unsupported and contains known security issues. Please update to a newer Mastodon version as soon as possible.

This version is only provided as a stop-gap, as patches were ready before the end-of-support date, but no further update will be made on this branch.

Changelog

Security

Fix SSRF protection bypass (GHSA-crr4-7rm4-8gpw, GHSA-xx55-4rrg-8xg6)

Fix Linked-Data Signature bypass through JSON-LD graph restructuring features (GHSA-53m7-2wrh-q839, GHSA-chgx-jx3p-rf73)

Updated dependencies

Upgrade notes

To get the code for v4.3.23, use git fetch && git checkout v4.3.23.

Note

As always, make sure you have backups of the database before performing any upgrades. If you are using docker-compose, this is how a backup command might look: docker exec mastodon_db_1 pg_dump -Fc -U postgres postgres > name_of_the_backup.dump

Dependencies

External dependencies have not changed since v4.3.0, the compatible Ruby, PostgreSQL, Node, Elasticsearch and Redis versions are the same, that is:

• Ruby: 3.1 or newer
• PostgreSQL: 12 or newer. PostgreSQL versions 14.0 to 14.3 are not supported as they contain a critical data-corruption bug (see v4.3.0 release notes)
• Elasticsearch (recommended, for full-text search): 7.x (OpenSearch should also work)
• LibreTranslate (optional, for translations): 1.3.3 or newer
• Redis: 4 or newer
• Node: 18 or newer
• ImageMagick (optional if using libvips): 6.9.7-7 or newer
• libvips (optional, instead of ImageMagick): 8.13 or newer

Update steps

The following instructions are for updating from 4.3.22.

If you are upgrading directly from an earlier release, please carefully read the upgrade notes for the skipped releases as well, as they often require extra steps such as database migrations. In particular, please read the v4.3.0 release notes, as there have been multiple important changes.

Non-docker

Tip

The charlock_holmes gem may fail to build on some systems with recent versions of gcc.

If you run into such an issue, try BUNDLE_BUILD__CHARLOCK_HOLMES="--with-cxxflags=-std=c++17" bundle install.

Install dependencies with bundle install and yarn install --immutable

Restart all Mastodon processes.

When using docker

Restart all Mastodon processes.

Original source

People come to the Fediverse to connect with others around communities and topics of interest. We’ve seen people enjoy their time on Mastodon the most, when they can follow and engage with individuals and organisations that have interesting things to share. We want to help those who are new to the Fediverse discover these communities more easily.

Back in October 2025, we shared our initial ideas about a new feature that’s coming in Mastodon 4.6, that we’re calling Collections. Collections are a way for people on Mastodon to curate and share bundles of accounts that they’d recommend to others - helping to grow these connections more quickly, instead of newcomers hunting around for the accounts they might be interested in.

The team has been working hard on the feature since then, and in this post we’re providing an update on what you’ll see when Collections start to appear in the next few weeks. Importantly, this is just the beginning for Collections! Think of this as the “version 1” release for feedback - we’re taking a slow and intentional approach to building them out.

We want to give a shout-out to some of the other great resources that help people to navigate and discover new content across the Fediverse - for example, fedi.tips and their @FediFollows account, the starter packs from fedidevs.com, and more. There’s room for all of these to offer alternative discovery options, and we appreciate the community initiatives; we hope Collections will be a useful addition.

Our approach

We had three primary inputs that shaped our thinking as we designed Collections.

Learning from Bluesky

We reviewed public feedback around Bluesky’s Starter Packs to inform our approach before building this feature. The biggest influence this had on us, was that we knew that we needed to have a way to for people to review Collections they are added to, and to remove themselves without having to resort to blocking or reporting.

We made the decision early on that people are not automatically included in their own collections. Curators can add themselves, but it’s not a requirement. This also influenced our choice for smaller Collection sizes, at least at the start - we may revisit this later.

Learning from the Mastodon community

We wanted to understand what information would be most helpful for people in deciding whether to follow accounts within a collection. Accounts currently display in list form, and we can’t show the entire profile - trade-offs must be made.

To understand what information to prioritise, we distributed a survey to people on Mastodon in late 2025. We found, unsurprisingly, that an account’s posts and bio text both have a huge influence on trust and interest. Additionally, being aware of mutuals (e.g. “people I follow who are following this account”) scored high on both points. Interestingly, recency of the account’s last post scored higher than the presence of a verified link, follower count, post count, and several other factors in influencing following behaviour (these findings also informed the redesign of Profiles). This study was conducted with limited resources - while not statistically significant, it offered us a starting point in understanding how Collections would be best represented.

Technical constraints

Technical challenges limit our ability to show posts within a Collection for v1, but we’d like to explore this as the feature matures.

Collections are similar to our existing Lists feature, in that they’re account-based. Many people asked for public, shareable lists, but we don’t currently have the infrastructure to build something of that scale. However, we plan to reduce confusion through naming and navigational updates in a future release of Mastodon.

Collections: What’s included in 4.6

We’re moving intentionally with this feature, using the 4.6 launch as an opportunity to learn more from the community. As such, we’ve taken a lightweight approach.

Creation

People with accounts on participating servers will be able to create Collections. Collections may include a short description and topic – a single hashtag to aid in discovery. Additionally, Collections may be marked as sensitive (this setting hides the description and accounts behind a content warning).

Sharing and discovery

Collections can be set to either Public or Unlisted, and shared via a link.

There’s a caveat here - the initial launch focuses on creation, with search and discovery coming soon. There are three reasons we’re doing this:

1. The number of community-created Collections needs to hit a critical mass before certain discovery experiences become impactful. For example, we’d like server owners to be able to recommend Collections to follow during onboarding (this would be a replacement for the current Recommended Accounts feature).

2. We’d like to observe how the community creates and shares Collections first; this will help us to understand how and where to showcase public Collections.

3. Implementing Collections in search and discovery is technically expensive.

This means that Public and Unlisted Collections will function very similarly at first, except that public Collections are also included in the curator’s Featured tab on their profile.

Privacy and moderation

You can opt out of having your account be eligible for inclusion in Collections by disabling the existing “Feature profile and posts in discovery algorithms” account setting.

If you are opted into discovery, you will be notified when another account adds you to a Collection. From there, you can view the contents of the Collection, and remove your account if desired.

In cases of potential harassment, you are encouraged to report or block the other account. Reporting a Collection allows a decision to be made by server moderators; blocking removes you from any collections curated by the blocked account, and prevents the blocked account from adding your account to future Collections.

What’s not in the initial release

Super large Collections

In this release, Collections can include up to 25 accounts.

Collections on Mastodon will continue to focus on quality over quantity. We suspect that smaller Collections will cut down on the type of spammy behaviour that was sometimes seen on Bluesky (where there is a limit of 150 accounts on Starter Packs). However, we don’t know exactly what the magic number is; we’ve talked to several industry leaders, and suspect the number is between 25 and 80. This is still a wide range, and we’re starting on the lower end because it’s far easier from a technical perspective to increase this limit later, than it is to reduce it.

Find yourself maxing out a Collection and then creating a “Volume 2”? Send us your Collection, if you want; or, tell us about it, so we can understand your use case.

A ‘Follow All’ button

We’re not including a bulk follow action on day one.

This is something we’re considering, but we want to approach it with care. We read feedback that people on Bluesky often found themselves mass following accounts from stale Starter Packs, only to have a subpar feed afterwards.

We also recognise that there are scenarios that require more thought. For example, imagine you follow all accounts in a Collection, but then, some of the accounts are removed from the Collection. Do you expect to be able to bulk unfollow all of the accounts you previously followed from that Collection, even if they no longer exist there? Many people look to Mastodon to be the straightforward and authentic platform, so including a bulk follow action without an “escape hatch” is a dark pattern that we wish to avoid.

In short, we’re open to this in the future, but we’d like to understand the demand first. We hope to hear from the community about the experience of using “Collections v1”, and we may add a ‘Follow All’ button, potentially with proper undo controls, if there’s strong demand for reducing friction in the experience.

Availability

We’ll be enabling Collections on mastodon.social in the coming week. As usual, we take a moment to test out these features on our own servers ahead of a release. This initial release of Collections will become generally available for all Mastodon servers as part of Mastodon 4.6, coming in a few weeks.

note: we plan to add more screenshots to this post soon

Open to feedback

We’re focused on user privacy, and this means that we have very limited analytics to inform decisions. We also believe in community-driven design, and we want to be transparent about our thinking as we build new features. Our small team is counting on the insights from your experiences as you create, use, and test Collections! If you have things you’d like to let us know related to these updates, contact us at [email protected]. We might not be able to respond individually, but rest assured that we’ll be reading every piece of feedback.

Thanks

We are grateful to GCC for a grant that supported the development of this feature.

Original source

Profiles are the primary way for people using Mastodon to ‘meet’ one another on a deeper level – beyond a threaded conversation or search results. You might have noticed that the overall design of Profiles hasn’t been explored in a while, and in the meantime, we’ve heard requests and challenges from people who use Mastodon every day.

The profile redesign supports some of our current priorities:

• Make the Fediverse Intuitive. We want people who are new to Mastodon and the Fediverse to be able to discover and connect with interesting accounts, without having to understand the details of decentralisation. The new Profiles view includes an updated handle explainer, and a new editing experience delivers a more consistent, unified experience across web and native mobile apps.
• A Home for Everyone. As well as individuals, Mastodon is also home to organisations (NGOs, local governments, software projects, etc) that want to share news and interact with their communities. The layout changes offer us a solid starting point from which to explore features that will help these “institutional users” to make their most out of their presence in the Fediverse.

Our approach

Learning from the community

In addition to reviewing community requests related to profiles, we surveyed more than 500 people across over 300 servers, to understand what profile information they prioritise when it comes to identifying whether an account is trustworthy (and therefore, worth following). We also analysed patterns from other apps that respondents mentioned they frequently use.

Technical constraints

We’re currently constrained within the existing 3-column layout on desktop.
We also know that improvements could be made to the custom fields feature, but structural and backend changes to custom fields were out of scope for this work.

What’s changing

Profile viewing

The new ‘Activity’ tab offers granular filtering of posts

Previously, there have been two tabs for “Posts” and “Posts and replies.” It turns out that this was misleading (the “Posts” tab also included boosts); and, that there was no way for you to view an account’s activity with the granularity that you can after following them – no view for Posts only, for example.
There are, in fact, 4 distinct views that you may want to see:
Posts, Posts+boosts, Posts+replies, or Posts+boosts+replies. Providing this granularity led us to adopt a more appropriate UI over displaying each of these as tabs.
The new Activity tab has a dropdown menu, allowing you to view any of these combinations by filtering both boosts and replies. It is optimised to work equally well for you on the desktop as on mobile, and also if you use the advanced interface for desktop.

Featured hashtags are more discoverable and contextual

Hashtags can provide you with topic-based discovery. In the new Profile view, you can view hashtags contextually within the Activity tab, and click on them for a filtered view of the account’s tagged posts.

It’s easier to view all pinned posts

Some people have expressed frustration over pinned posts being buried in a carousel. We understand this concern, and are also balancing the needs of people who are browsing others’ profiles who have shared that they want easy access to recent posts.
Informed by data on the number of pinned posts across Mastodon profiles, we’ve replaced the carousel with an alternative form of progressive disclosure that allows you to reveal all pinned posts in a single click.

Updated handle explainers

One of our objectives is to make the Fediverse more intuitive for people who are non-technical. We’ve updated the handle explainer card to clarify what handles and servers are.
Additionally, the full profile handle (@[email protected]) now displays beneath the account’s display name, even if the account is on the same server as yours.

Custom fields are more compact

Custom fields display side-by-side when possible, making smarter utilisation of the Profile’s vertical space so that you get to the account’s content more swiftly.

Additional changes reduce visual load

People must be able to find the content they need. However, when all information displays at once, it impacts your ability to focus and complete tasks.
You might notice we’ve given less prominence to a few pieces of information. When introducing changes that add friction, we take into account both the frequency and importance of related actions.

Personal notes: The ‘Add a personal note’ action does not display as prominently on the profile; it is now accessed within the profile’s overflow menu. If a note exists, it still displays on the profile page, just as it has in the past.
‘Following you’: The ‘Following you’ badge no longer displays on the profile. People we surveyed ranked this information remarkably low in terms of establishing both trust and interest an account. You still have numerous options to understand whether someone is following you:

• The ‘Follow’ button: When you’re not following an account but the account follows you, the primary button label displays as “Follow back”.
• The accounts ‘Following’ list: If the account is following you, you will see yourself at the top of that account’s ‘Following’ list.
• Profile overflow menu: If the account is following you, a ‘Remove follower’ option appears in the overflow menu.
• Preview cards (desktop): When hovering over an account, the preview cards still show ‘Follows you’ and ‘You follow each other’ statuses.

Note: we’ve heard your feedback in the early roll-out, and the ‘Following you‘ badge has been brought back in the current development build; we’re still iterating on these changes, so look out for the release announcement (when 4.6 launches) for information about any other tweaks between now and then.

Profile editing

A unified editing experience

Previously, profile editing on web was hidden within account settings. You had to take multiple steps to navigate back to your profile view.
The new profile editing experience combines featured hashtags, link verification, and all other profile customisation in a single view. It’s easily accessible from an ‘Edit profile’ button directly on your profile – making switching between viewing and editing more seamless.

More control during image upload

You can now crop images, and add alt text to profile and cover photos.

Custom fields and verified links

Previously, custom field editing was only available on web, and lacked accessible form labels. Additionally, link verification – a powerful feature for establishing credibility – was hidden in profile settings.
Now, you can access link verification instructions directly from the custom field editing experience. You can also now add and edit custom fields in our iOS and Android apps.

Featured hashtags

Featured hashtags are a useful way of helping others discover topics you frequently post about. We’ve decreased the friction and guesswork in adding featured hashtags on web: Suggested hashtags will appear on your profile view, and can be bulk added in a single click.
For more granular control, hashtags can also be managed within the profile editor.
Basic functionality for featured hashtags is now supported on iOS and Android.

Customising tab displays

The editing experience includes profile tab display settings, allowing you to hide the ‘Media’ and ‘Featured’ tabs if desired.
Replies can also be excluded from the ‘Media’ tab, allowing for a more accurate gallery where creative people may showcase their work. We hope that these additional controls empower both people who use Mastodon day-to-day, and people who represent institutions.
Before the 4.6 release, profile tab customisations will only impact a few servers that are testing the new profile experience. After the 4.6 release, these customisations will be reflected on most servers running the latest version of Mastodon. Displays may vary on third-party apps and independent servers.

Availability

The new design will be visible on mastodon.social, and other servers that run nightly builds of Mastodon, from today. The goal is to do some testing ahead of the 4.6 release, and make any adjustments based on feedback (see below). The new look will roll out to all Mastodon servers, as part of Mastodon 4.6, coming in a few weeks.

We’re open to feedback

We’ve shared our thinking, and the choices we made in this redesign, in this post. If you have things you’d like to let us know related to these updates, contact us at [email protected]. We may not be able to respond to every individual message, but we’ll be reading every piece of feedback to inform our future plans.

Original source

Mastodon 4.5 has arrived, with enhanced conversations across communities, expanded moderator tools, and new ways for admins to showcase their server communities. Read on for more details.

As always, if you use mastodon.social, you may already have seen some of the updates as they gradually showed up across the user experience. Rolling out a new stable release enables us to share all of that goodness across the whole Mastodon community. We encourage all server operators to upgrade to Mastodon 4.5, starting today.

🔍 If you’re a developer building on Mastodon, you should check out our Mastodon 4.5 for Developers post, for all the additions and changes in the Mastodon API. 🛠

Quote Posts: Consent and Conversation

Quoting has been integral to deepening discussions online, and it’s now available in Mastodon 4.5. This release not only introduces authoring capabilities but also mechanisms prioritizing user safety and privacy. Authors can limit and disable quoting, both globally on the new Posting Defaults page, and individually on specific posts. Also, when quoted, they can easily revoke the use of their post.

Learn more about Quote posts in our previous blog post, our FAQ, and our developer implementation guide.

Fetch All Replies: Completing the Conversation Flow

Users on servers running 4.4 and earlier versions have likely experienced the confusion of seeing replies appearing on other servers but not their own. Mastodon 4.5 automatically checks for missing replies upon page load and again every 15 minutes, enhancing continuity of conversations across the Fediverse.

Enhanced Features for Server Administrators

For server operators, especially those running smaller, organisational instances, we continue to deliver new tools that enable greater instance customisation:

• Feed Management

The ability to disable some of the content feeds for either visitors or logged-in users, offering greater control over content flow.

• Visitor Homepage

In addition to trends or about pages, administrators can now set the local feed as the home page for visitors. This is useful for small organization servers where there are seldom any trending posts, allowing visitors to see local activity immediately.

• Targeted Blocking

Server owners now have tools to block specific usernames. This process can be configured with options for partial matches or character variations, or to mark a potential user match as needing review by a moderator.

• Moderation Context

The moderator interface has received improvements to display crucial context, such as link previews and quote posts in messages, supporting more rapid and informed decision-making.

Native Emoji support

The web interface now includes support for displaying native emoji. A new setting is available to manage how emoji appear to you.

Looking ahead

Our team is already working on Mastodon 4.6 (tentatively planned for the first quarter of next year). We shared our early explorations around Packs and are planning to include the first parts of this feature in our next version. It will also include improvements to onboarding, and some features targeted toward institutions with a presence on Mastodon, thanks to a grant by NLNet and NGI Zero Commons Fund.

We just updated our public roadmap to provide better transparency on what is currently in the works, and what we are planning to focus on next.

Support Mastodon

Thank you to everyone that contributed to this release, including our team, our community, and the many contributors from across the Fediverse. We’re excited to continue building Mastodon together with you.

We’re going through a formal process of setting up a new European non-profit organisation (more update on this topic very soon!) so that Mastodon remains free, open, and not owned by any single individual .

We depend on your support as we build, support, and advocate for decentralised and non-commercial social media.

We don’t take venture capital, we don’t sell ads, and we don’t sell your data - unlike many other platforms out there.

Please support our mission, so that we can continue to make Mastodon better.

Thank you for supporting Mastodon

We develop and maintain the free and open source software that powers the social web. There is no capital behind this — we rely entirely on your support.

Original source

Over the years, we’ve learned just how essential quoting is to many of you. When done responsibly, quoting allows us to expand discussions, make new connections, and amplify underrepresented voices.

Quoting is a powerful tool, and like any tool, it can be misused. That’s why we’ve taken time to introduce quotes in a way that aligns with Mastodon values, focusing on safety and mental health – not just on engagement. We shared our thinking about bringing quote posts to Mastodon earlier in the year.

Found something inspiring? Quote your favourite posts from where you typically boost them. Don’t want to be quoted? Disable quoting by default for all posts, or turn off quoting for a specific post. Want your thoughts to inspire a wider audience? Keep the default setting enabled to ‘Anyone’. You’re in control of how much or how little you engage.

Quote post functionality will arrive on mastodon.online and mastodon.social next week, and will be available in Mastodon 4.5 soon thereafter. Read on for a more detailed look at how quote posts will look and function in Mastodon 4.5.

Quote anyone who wants to be quoted

Quoting from the Boost menu

If an author of a post has enabled quoting, you’ll see an option to quote their post under a new menu accessed from the Boost button. Your post will then appear within the composer window, where you can add your comment and post to continue the discussion.

Power booster? You can still boost quickly using Shift + Click on the Boost button or using the B hotkey.

Quote responsibly. Authors can remove their post if they’re uncomfortable with the way you’ve quoted them. See Notifications and Revocation for more details.

Quoting across the Fediverse

Mastodon shares space in the Fediverse with other software that may behave differently. In practice, it means it’s possible that when you quote a post from another Fediverse platform, it may take some time for the quote to appear. When the content is available, it will automatically update on your post.

We worked on a technical specification for the Fediverse that offers the concept of consent-respecting quote posts. We’ve also collaborated with other apps and services to make this work between platforms. We expect that not every platform will update to use this specification right away, but we hope to see more of them do so in the future.

You’re in control of who quotes you

Default settings

Disable or limit quotes by navigating to Settings -> Preferences -> Posting Defaults. These defaults will apply to all future posts you create.

(Note: if your server is running Mastodon 4.4.x, you will find this setting under Settings -> Preferences -> Other instead)

Your visibility setting controls options for who can quote. When you make a followers-only post, others (including followers) won’t be able to quote it – this ensures that your post remains visible to only your followers.

Post-level settings

Override your global settings for an individual post by navigating to Visibility and interaction settings within the composer.

Notifications and revocation

When someone quotes one of your posts, you’ll be notified. You can easily remove your original post from theirs, using the ••• Options menu.

Sometimes, removing your post from a single quote may not be enough. If you believe someone is abusing the ability to quote you, you can also take the following actions:

• Block the user. While this action won’t retroactively remove your post from posts the user has already published, it will prevent the user from quoting you in future posts.
• Change the quote settings for your published post. The next section outlines how to do this.

Changing quote settings on a published post

On your own published posts, edit the quote settings from the ••• menu. Changes will prevent users from quoting your post in the future, but will not apply retroactively to quotes already published.

Only public and quiet public posts can be edited this way; your followers-only posts and direct mentions can only ever be quoted by you.

Stay tuned

As we mentioned at the start, quote post functionality will arrive on mastodon.online and mastodon.social next week. If you use a third-party app, the feature may not show up right away, and you may need to wait for the author to add it. It will be available more widely when Mastodon 4.5 is released in the near future.

Developing a Mastodon client? Visit our draft developer implementation guide and documentation.

For more information on how to use quote posts, have a look at the FAQ section of the documentation.

If you’d like to preemptively opt out of being quoted, you can do so on Mastodon 4.4 under Settings -> Preferences -> Other.

We’re committed to making quote posts a tool for meaningful discourse. If you have thoughts on our quote post feature, contact us at [email protected]. We may not be able to respond to every individual message, but we’ll be reading every piece of feedback to learn more about your ideas.

Gratitude

We’d like to thank the NGI Entrust Fund and NLNet for their support towards building this feature for Mastodon and ActivityPub.

Original source

Mastodon 4.4 is here, bringing you new ways to showcase yourself, manage your growing network, and enjoy what’s in your timeline. Administrators and moderators also gain new tools for keeping communities safe.

As always, if you use mastodon.social, you may already have seen some of the updates as they gradually showed up across the user experience. Rolling out a new stable release enables us to share all of that goodness across the whole Mastodon community. We encourage all server operators to upgrade to Mastodon 4.4, starting today.

🔍 If you’re a developer building on Mastodon, you should check out our Mastodon 4.4 for Developers post, for all the additions and changes in the Mastodon API. 🛠

Profiles, and managing your network

Your profile is the main way that people find out more about you on Mastodon, and we want to make it easier to navigate it and highlight what you’re about.

Do you post all of your cat pictures under #CatsOfMastodon? Simply tap “Feature on my profile” on the hashtag page, and people will be able to browse all of your #CatsOfMastodon posts specifically from the new “Featured” tab on your profile. Do you want to promote cool and interesting accounts? Tap “Feature on my profile” on a person’s profile, and they will likewise appear on your “Featured” tab.

On Mastodon, you can pin up to 5 posts on your profile, so you can feature your best work, or plug your latest project. The downside is that if you wanted to see someone’s most recent post, it introduced a bit of scrolling to get there. No more! We’ve reduced the amount of scrolling you have to do, by combining all pinned posts in a single carousel at the top of the profile.

To make it easier to see at a glance if the profile belongs to someone you might know, we’ve added a little widget showing how many of the people you follow are following that person to the top of their profile. This also shows up in the profile preview that appears when you hover over their name somewhere else. Don’t want someone to follow you anymore? You don’t have to block them, simply tap “Remove follower” in the dropdown menu on their profile.

Enhanced list management

Lists in Mastodon allow you to declutter your home feed by organising accounts you follow into arbitrary alternative feeds. Creating and managing lists has been significantly streamlined, and it’s easier than ever to add and remove accounts from your lists both directly from profiles and from your own follows and followers listings.

Media controls

Mastodon doesn’t just support pictures and videos—you can upload audio on the platform. Since every Mastodon profile comes with an RSS feed, some people actually publish their podcasts this way. We’ve just given our audio player a facelift, making it a bit more visually pleasant and a lot easier to use by putting the play and pause front and centre and adding quick shortcuts for skipping forward and backward. We’ve also expanded hotkey controls for audio and video: left and right arrow to skip around, up and down arrow to control the volume, “m” to mute, “f” for full screen, and so on.

If you like to pixel-peek images, or admire the pleasant grain of scanned in analogue photos, we’ve made zooming in more intuitive: simply double tap the image once you’ve clicked to open it. Panning around has also been made smoother. On touch devices, you can now pinch the image with your fingers to zoom it to the desired level, and swiping up when the image is zoomed out will close it, like you would expect from your native photo app.

We are proud of Mastodon’s strong accessibility and inclusivity culture, which has fostered a larger presence of vision impaired users. To support this community, we’ve added a new reminder to add alt text when posting images or video. Alt text isn’t just helpful to those who use screen readers: it can provide extra context to sighted users, and as it’s indexed in Mastodon’s search system, it can help you and others find your post better. Of course, this reminder can be disabled from preferences. We’ve also added some tips on writing good alt text into the user interface.

Navigation enhancements

We’ve revamped the mobile web interface to mimic native apps, with important actions easily accessible in a bottom toolbar that frees up more space for your timeline. We’ve also begun experimenting with ways to make navigation more consistent across devices, and to make relevant content (like followed hashtags and trending content) more easily discoverable. The Explore item has been renamed to Trending, to reduce the need for banners within the Explore page to explain each feed. The navigation sidebar is divided into three sections. At the top is a section for the main navigation areas, which mirrors the bottom navigation bar on smaller screens. Next, a “Library” section, which contains your own curated content - bookmarks, favourites, and lists, and your followed hashtags, now in a more visible location (in response to community feedback). Finally, other elements are in the last section. This brings all the navigation elements into a single place.

We’ve also streamlined the onboarding flow for new users. What used to be a list of four items you could check off as part of onboarding, has become a simpler two-step process where you first fill out your profile, and then follow a few users of your choosing. Importantly, we’ve made search an integral part of this process so people don’t feel confined to the list of recommended accounts we’ve generated for them, but can feel free to immediately begin searching for people they might know.

Features for Administrators

We’ve made a range of updates and improvements for people who operate their own Mastodon servers. Some of these are legal compliance features, such as adding and managing Terms of Service, offering translations of server rules into different languages, and optionally setting a minimum age requirement for new user sign-ups. Our earlier blog post covers each of these topics in more detail.

As well as the legal features, there are a couple of other useful items that administrators should look at. Server owners can now send important announcements to all users via email, for critical communications that cannot be opted out of (essential for emergency notifications, or major policy changes). There is also a new system for moderators to keep internal notes about moderation decisions and user interactions. This should help to improve coordination across moderation teams, and help to keep track of decision making.

Quote Posts (part one)

Earlier in the year, we shared our thought process about bringing the much-requested Quote Posts feature to Mastodon. We’ve worked hard on bringing this capability to the platform while maintaining the strong safety principles that Mastodon is known for. Since Mastodon runs on over 8,000 independent servers that together form the platform you know, releasing features like this requires a two-pronged approach: first we release code that supports processing and displaying this new format, and then release code that allows our users to actively use the feature. This ensures all of our users can see this new type of content before anyone can create it. As part of our 4.4 release, you will be able to see quotes from compatible Fediverse platforms (including future Mastodon releases), but you will not yet be able to quote posts yourself. That capability will come in 4.5.

Looking ahead

We’re really happy that this is the first version released by our expanded team as a whole! We have some exciting plans, and will get moving towards version 4.5 right away.

Key items for the next few months include: enabling anyone to create Quote Posts; some new features for organisations that run their own servers (for example, greater instance customisation); and, the ability to fetch replies to posts from many different instances, to improve the ability to follow conversations that include people your server is not yet aware of.

We plan to have 4.5 ready for everyone later in the year, and we have a lot of other exciting things to work on once the next release is ready. Stay tuned!

Support Mastodon

Thank you to everyone that contributed to this release, including our team, our community, and the many contributors from across the Fediverse. We’re excited to continue building Mastodon together with you.

We’re going through a formal process of setting up a new European non-profit organisation so that Mastodon remains free, open, and not owned by any single individual (more updates on our progress, very soon).

We depend on your support as we build, support, and advocate for decentralised and non-commercial social media.

We don’t take venture capital, we don’t sell ads, and we don’t sell your data - unlike many other platforms out there.

Please support our mission, so that we can continue to make Mastodon better.

Thank you for supporting Mastodon

We develop and maintain the free and open source software that powers the social web. There is no capital behind this — we rely entirely on your support.

Original source

Mastodon’s core purpose is to connect you with your friends and communities, to have conversations that matter to you.

Communities need some ground rules; and, on the internet, we also need to be aware of any regulations that are relevant where our services are being operated. In the upcoming release of Mastodon (version 4.4), there are three key updates to our legal features that support server administrators in meeting these requirements.

Terms of Service

Mastodon servers already have Server Rules and a Privacy Policy, that owners need to define when they create their instance. There will also now be an optional Terms of Service. To help you get started, in the future (post-4.4 final release) we will be providing a generator for the Terms of Service. The effective change date of the Terms of Service will be included, to allow users to review them before taking any action.

If you operate a Mastodon instance, you should decide whether you need a Terms of Service - it may not apply if you run a single-user instance where you are the only user, for example. If you do need one, you should look through the text that is provided by the generator, and decide whether this is appropriate for your server and jurisdiction (i.e. for the laws of the country where your server is located).

On the client side, there is a new API for developers to fetch and display a server’s Terms of Service (including versions and effective dates) inside their apps. We’ve also enhanced the information provided in the instance data, to provide the URLs for the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Server rules translations

We’re providing the ability for server rules to be translated into multiple languages. This means that the rules which apply to everyone that uses your Mastodon instance, will now be able to be read in different languages, as appropriate for your community.

Administrators will now be able to optionally provide translations for each rule in the server settings. If no translated version is provided for a given language, the default text for that rule will be used instead.

The API has been updated in version 4.4, and rules will now be returned with translations where these apply. Developers will need to update their apps to use translations where available (our own apps will be updated soon).

Setting age requirements

We are introducing a new option for server administrators to set a minimum age requirement for user sign-up. When the option is enabled, the Mastodon instance will require a date of birth to be provided when a new account is created. This value will be validated against the minimum age setting, and then discarded.

It is important to note that Mastodon is not implementing age verification. This minimum age check data is not being stored. The feature only enables administrators to specify a baseline age requirement for new accounts on their servers, potentially to comply with local laws, or per their own preferred operating processes.

There’s a change to the sign-up API to support this new feature (previously announced here). Our own mobile apps already support servers that have a minimum age specified.

Next steps

The two Mastodon servers that we operate (mastodon.social and mastodon.online) run preview nightly releases of the next version, and we’ve started to enable these features there already.

• If you have an account on one of these servers, you will receive an email in the coming weeks notifying you about the new Terms of Service. We plan to publish these by 9th June 2025, with at least 30 days from the date of publication before they become effective.
  • Note: as at 20th June 2025 this process is on hold, as we are revising the Terms of Service text. We will update this post when we have a new date for publication.
• Rules translations into a number of major languages have been added to these servers.
• An age requirement on sign-up (with a minimum age of 16) for these servers is enabled from today, 23rd May 2025.

A beta release of Mastodon 4.4 will be available in the next couple of weeks, and we’ll be looking for feedback ahead of the final release. If you’re interested in testing the beta, please keep an eye on our GitHub repository.

If you operate a Mastodon instance, we want to point out that there are some recent regulatory changes in different places around the world, that may affect your service depending on where you are located. We’re grateful to our friends at IFTAS for sharing information on these changes - be sure to take a look at their resources if you need some guidance around these.

Finally, and very importantly - we want to thank you, for being a part of the Mastodon community. Unlike the legacy centralised networks, Mastodon is not “one size fits all”. It is important that there are many different Mastodon servers, reflecting the diverse groups and cultures around the world. We appreciate your support.

Thank you for supporting Mastodon

We develop and maintain the free and open source software that powers the social web. There is no capital behind this — we rely entirely on your support.

Original source

Mastodon 4.3 just landed! If you’re a mastodon.social user, you might have already seen some of this in action as we’ve been gradually rolling out these updates over the course of the last 11 months in nightly releases, but we’re finally making a new stable release available to the community. If you use a different server, you will get access to these improvements once your server operator upgrades.

Notifications

On Mastodon, your experience depends a lot on the moderation style of the server that hosts your account, but your unique ability to choose a server that suits your needs the best is useless if you don’t have much insight into how moderation decisions impact you. If a moderator decision results in you losing followers, or no longer being able to follow people from another server, you will now be notified and have the ability to export a list of the affected profiles.

Also, if a moderator decision targets your account specifically, you will now receive an in-app notification so you can’t miss it.

We’re also bringing two new major features to help people deal with unwanted attention. Notification grouping has arrived in Mastodon, allowing you to make sense of your notifications even if your posts are going viral. Instead of inundating your screen with hundreds of individual notifications for the same post, you’ll see a summary of how many people boosted or favourited it.

We’re also introducing a brand new system for filtering unwanted notifications. You get to decide what happens to notifications from people you don’t follow, who aren’t following you, recently created accounts, or unsolicited private mentions. You can either send them to the void immediately, never to be seen again, or put them into a special inbox you can peruse when you want.

Design

One of the ongoing efforts is to make Mastodon easy and delightful to use. We’ve invested a significant amount of money and time into working with professional designers and performing user testing over the last few years, but we really ramped up our efforts in 2023. Mastodon is quite a large application, and our resources remain very constrained compared to our corporate competitors, but we’ve made significant progress on improving the look and feel of Mastodon across the board.

We have redesigned the new post composer to be much more intuitive to use, to make sure you get your post right the first time. Not only does it look better, but you can now re-arrange media you’ve uploaded as you see fit, and see exactly what layout it will be displayed in. We’ve also made content warnings and word filters easier to notice and expand.

Across the web app, our iconography and color palette got a refresh, link previews look even better, and you can now hover over anyone’s name to peek at their profile and quickly follow or unfollow them. We also redesigned all of the “utility” emails (password resets, follow notifications, etc.) as well as the first welcome email to help you identify what’s most important.

Among various redesigned dialogs, new confirmation dialogs for muting and blocking describe exactly what effects muting and blocking will have. If you are about to block another server, we’ll show you exactly how many followers you would lose to help avoid potential mistakes. In the spirit of surfacing product education in more areas, clicking the domain on someone’s profile now brings up information about Mastodon’s decentralized nature.

Onboarding and discovery

Helping new users get started on Mastodon has been a key focus for us over the past few years. We found that people would skip follow recommendations during onboarding and end up with a boring feed that doesn’t offer anything new for hours or days.

We value the user’s agency over what is shown in the home feed, and pride ourselves on being a reliable platform to keep up with the people you care about without opaque algorithms randomizing which things you see in which order. This presents a challenge when other platforms have created an expectation that the user only has to passively consume what is generated for them instead of actively curating what they want to see.

On Mastodon, you need to follow people or hashtags to see them in your home feed. To bridge the gap for people who fly past the onboarding, we’ve introduced a little carousel with follow recommendations that will appear above the first post older than four hours on the first page of your home feed.

We’ve also significantly improved the system of follow recommendations as a whole, mixing generalized results like profiles popular in your language with personalized ones like profiles that a lot of the people you follow, follow. For added transparency, the reason for the recommendation is displayed along with it.

Helping writers and journalists

In this version we’re introducing a new way to highlight writers and journalists on the fediverse. By adding a single line to their HTML, publishers can feature the fediverse profile of the page author in the link previews on Mastodon. That way, when lots of different people are sharing the link, or the link is trending in the News tab, you can easily navigate to the author’s fediverse profile and follow them right from within Mastodon to receive future updates. Publications like The Verge and TechCrunch are already using this.

We’ve also put a fresh coat of paint on our website embeds. You’ve always been able to embed a Mastodon post on your own website, but we’ve made them look a lot better and gave them a more graceful fallback when the source is slow to load or no longer available. Of course, the dialog for embedding a post now looks a lot better as well, offering a simple click to copy button. Keep in mind that you can only embed posts that are public!

What’s next?

Now that 4.3 is done, our focus for the next release will be on implementing the highly requested features of quote posts, as well as the ability for server operators to subscribe to managed blocklists, which along with our new initiative of pluggable fediverse discovery providers should make running small and medium-sized fediverse servers much more viable; and with Ghost entering the fediverse, further improving how long-form content from other fediverse platforms is displayed within Mastodon.

We are extremely grateful to everyone who supports Mastodon through Patreon, our 501(c)3 in the US, and other means. Unlike our competitors, we don’t take venture capital, don’t sell ads and don’t sell your data. While other social media platforms have teams of hundreds of engineers working on them, we operate on less than 500K USD annually with a team of only 4 full-time employees, and a number of contractors. If you’d like to see the pace of development increase, please consider chipping in so we can hire more people!

Thank you for supporting Mastodon

We develop and maintain the free and open source software that powers the social web. There is no capital behind this — we rely entirely on your support.

In other news

The Mastodon stuffed toy is almost ready to go on sale. We’re waiting for the shipments to arrive at the warehouse. Find out more in the original announcement.

Original source

Upgrade overview

This release contains upgrade notes that deviate from the norm:

ℹ️ Requires assets recompilation

For more information, view the complete release notes and scroll down to the upgrade instructions section.

Changelog

Security

Insufficient verification of email addresses (GHSA-5r37-qpwq-2jhh)

Updated dependencies

Added

Add trademark warning to mastodon:setup task (#38548 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fixed

Fix definition for quote in JSON-LD context (#38686 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fix being unable to disable sound for quote update notification (#38537 by @ClearlyClaire)

Fix being able to quote someone you blocked (#38608 by @ClearlyClaire)

Upgrade notes

To get the code for v4.5.9, use git fetch && git checkout v4.5.9.

Note

As always, make sure you have backups of the database before performing any upgrades. If you are using docker-compose, this is how a backup command might look: docker exec mastodon_db_1 pg_dump -Fc -U postgres postgres > name_of_the_backup.dump

Dependencies

External dependencies have not changed since v4.5.0.

Ruby: 3.2 or newer

PostgreSQL: 14 or newer

Elasticsearch (recommended, for full-text search): 7.x (OpenSearch should also work)

LibreTranslate (optional, for translations): 1.3.3 or newer

Redis: 7.0 or newer

Node: 20.19 or newer

libvips (optional, instead of ImageMagick): 8.13 or newer

ImageMagick (optional if using libvips): 6.9.7-7 or newer

Update steps

The following instructions are for updating from 4.5.8.

If you are upgrading directly from an earlier release, please carefully read the upgrade notes for the skipped releases as well, as they often require extra steps such as database migrations. In particular, it is very important to read the 4.5.0 release notes.

Non-Docker

Tip

The charlock_holmes gem may fail to build on some systems with recent versions of gcc.

If you run into this issue, try BUNDLE_BUILD__CHARLOCK_HOLMES="--with-cxxflags=-std=c++17" bundle install.

Install dependencies with bundle install and yarn install --immutable

Precompile the assets: RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile

Restart all Mastodon processes.

When using Docker

Restart all Mastodon processes.

Original source