Cool Tools for Mastodon

When it comes to the new breed of social media, I prefer the federated and independent nature of Mastodon over everything else. I want nothing to do with Threads or anything else tainted by Meta. I like the atmosphere at Bluesky, but we have to face that it is a company founded by a billionaire, funded with venture capital and it's going to be enshittified one day - breaking the heart of millions. Mastodon, on the other hand was founded in Europe and is out of the control of the American fascist movement. Unlike the reality with Blue Sky, you really can have your very own Mastodon server. While it has an undeserved reputation for being difficult for normal people to use, there is only a single extra step to get started and there are many guides and walk throughs o hold your hand throught that step. In the 15 months of being on Mastodon, I have yet to witness the kind of hate filled craziness seen on corporate owned social media every day.

There are almost 100 different apps with Mastodon access available for Apple hardware and a few online, browser based clients as well. Here are a few unique offerings that can compliment or replace your primary Mastodon client.

Newsmast (free)

In a first for the Fediverse, we’re seamlessly integrating content from your home server with Newsmast’s hand-curated, knowledge-sharing Communities, hosted on our customised Mastodon instance, newsmast.social. There’s no scraping or content aggregation - all the community content comes from Newsmast users or via federation, and is moderated by applying the Oliphant Tier 0 blocklist, filters that keep out NSFW, crypto and hate-speech, and our human team.

Automadon ($14.99 year)

Automadon provides a suite of Shortcuts actions for Mastodon with support for multiple accounts. Actions available within Shortcuts include: • Post to Mastodon • Full-text search • Get account details, timelines, and following/follower lists • Interact with posts, including boosting, favoriting, and bookmarking posts • Follow/unfollow, block/unblock, mute/unmute accounts

Toot Later for Mastodon ($4.00)

With TootLater, you can: • Schedule multiple posts with different dates and times • Add multiple Mastodon accounts and switch between them easily • Attach images to your posts and preview them before sending • TootLater uses the official Mastodon API to ensure your account and posts are secure

Video for Ants ($3.99)

Got videos that are too big to upload to Mastodon? Everyone does. What kind of limits are these?! All you have to do is pick your video and then tap a button and video for ants will automatically convert the format, compress the bitrate, and optimize the fps (frame rate) as needed to make them fit. You only have to tap a button. That's it. That's the app.

Threaditor: write for everyone ($9.99)

• Draft threads for popular microblogging platforms all in one place
• Save unlimited threads to the cloud - always pick up where you left off
• Link your accounts to automatically publish, and group accounts to post to multiple places at once
• Add images and polls to your posts

Re: Toot ($2.99)

Re: Toot turns Mastodon posts into images that are suitable for quote posts. Images are accompanied by attribution to the original author and an alternative text. Images created by Re: Toot can also be shared to other social networks and messaging services. To create an image from a Mastodon post, just copy the link the post and open Re: Toot or invoke the app through the Share Sheet.

Still Followers for Mastodon (Expensive - just use the free features)

Still Followers is a useful analytics tool to keep you fro getting suckered by the people who game social media by following and unfollowing people. The free version offers several useful tools for the casual user.

AppAddict Picks

• My favorite Mastodon client isMona for Mastodon, a one time purchase with more features than any other Mastodon client.
• My favorite Mastodon instance is social.lol, which is for members of OMG.LOL and IndieWeb platform with multiple features inlcuding a link in bio page, a blog, photo hosting, an omg.lol email address and much more, all for $20 a year.
• My favorite social media tool for analytics, scheduled posts. account discovery, reports and more is Fedica. The free tier is useful. A paid membership is insane. Works with 10 different social media platforms.
• If you want to learn more about the Fediverse, how to use it, what it can do - head over to Fedi Tips.

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