Mastodon social network just released a big update

Mastodon is a decentralized social network that has grown rapidly in popularity over the past few weeks. Now a new major update is coming to the Mastodon servers.

Mastodon 4.0 was released earlier today after an extended testing period – beta and release candidate (RC) versions were already running on some servers such as mastodon.social and mastodon.online .

There are several improvements to hashtags, such as the ability to follow hashtags as if they were user accounts so that they appear on your home timeline along with posts from regular accounts. This can make your feed harder to read, especially on larger servers that keep track of more posts, but it can come in handy. Favorite tags are now also visible in the web interface, and not just in some mobile applications.

Mastodon 4.0 also improves multilingual support. Messages can now be translated from one language to another using DeepL or LibreTranslate behind the scenes if configured by your server administrator. You can also set preferred languages ​​for trending and link status, as well as filter posts by language.

There are many other small changes in the update. Now you can upload HEIC, AVIF and WebP files directly instead of manually converting them first. The web interface also looks a bit different, matching the project’s current purple logo and color scheme, and the “Toot” button has been replaced with “Publish.” Server admins can also create roles and assign them to specific accounts, such as roles on web forums or Discord servers.

Mastodon 4.0 is an update to the software that runs each server, not an update to the mobile apps. This means that you will only have access to it when the administrators who manage your server have time to perform an update.

Source: Github