Mastodon now has an official iPhone app

Decentralized social network Mastodon now has an official iPhone app. The non-profit organization behind Mastodon launched the app on iOS today, complementing an existing web version and various third-party apps for iOS, Android, and other platforms. The app is free and offers a feature set similar to Mastodon's core service, although it does not include Mastodon's local and federated timelines.

Mastodon describes the app as especially geared towards getting new users aboard the non-traditional social platform. As we described above, Mastodon looks like Twitter but relies on independently managed communities (and the ActivityPub protocol) rather than a single core network. You can create your account in a community of your choice while following and messaging people in other communities as well. It's an unusual design among modern social platforms, and offering an official iOS entry point could help people access it seamlessly. CEO Eugen Rochko confirmed plans for a comparable Android app, but there is no timetable for its launch.

Mastodon's iOS app supports features like polls and sensitive content filters, and the app's page subtly highlights its differences from larger services like Twitter by mentioning Mastodon's "ad-free, chronological timeline." However, as mentioned above, you won't find a section for local and federated schedules - Mastodon's fire hose from all public posts from your home community and the communities of people linked to it, respectively.

Rochko tells The Verge that those timelines were a "suboptimal" way to discover new content, and excluding them also reduced the potential for conflict with Apple, which has required some social networks to limit what users can find through. your applications. (Reddit's iOS app, for example, lets you opt-in for NSFW content over the web.) For a different set of functions, you can continue to use one of the existing iOS applications, or simply log in via the web.