Top 10 Mastodon Apps That Work With Other Federal Social Media

Mastodon is a unique social media experience. It’s a set of servers that all work together to give you a complete experience. Each part of Mastodon is a private instance, completely separate from other instances, but still part of the whole. It’s definitely something different. The premise is young, but there are some decent apps that get you online. Here are the best Mastodon apps for Android. Most of these work with other syndicated social networks like Plemora, Pixelfed, Peertube, Friendica and more.

It’s worth noting that Mastodon is relatively new to the social media space and has only just started to build momentum due to recent Twitter controversies. The apps here are definitely not as polished as the third-party Twitter or Reddit apps.

AndStatus is a free and open source application. It supports Mastodon, Twitter, ActivityPub, GNU Social and Pump.io. It has a pretty basic user interface, but it’s more than good enough to view and post stuff on any of these networks. The app also has a unified timeline where you can see posts from all these places in one place. Some other features include a conversation view, a global search that searches all the networks you’re logged into, and the ability to backup and restore your data.

The app can be a bit clunky at times and requires some learning. We think this one could use more polishing. It’s functional, but a dedicated Mastodon client would probably serve you better.

Fedi (not to be confused with Fedilab) is a client of Plemora and Mastodon. This is another simple client with enough features to interact with instances without much trouble. Features include emoji reaction support, push notifications, the ability to upload almost any type of media file, multi-account support, and DM support. This one is still very much a work in progress as it only recently got things like dark mode. However, there is enough potential here to recommend it to people.

Fedilab is a good client for Mastodon, Plemora, Peertube, GNU Social and Friendica. It is one of the cleaner clients with a good user interface and decent support. Some of the features include support for multiple accounts, scheduling posts, bookmarking messages, a translation feature, and the ability to sort your timeline by things like video. It’s an open source app and you can see the code here if you want. There are a few bug reports here and there, but nothing serious.

Husky for Plemora

Price: free

Husky for Plemora is a lightweight user client for Plemora, Mastodon, and anything else that uses Mastodon’s API. It works for Mastodon, but includes some extra features specifically for Plemora. It includes a clean user interface, most basic features and is open source. There are a few small things we would like to see. For example, at the time of this writing, Husky does not open Mastodon links by default. Other than such small problems, it worked quite well, especially when using both Plemora and Mastodon.

Indigenous is somewhat of a wildcard for our list of Mastodon apps. It is relatively new and has not seen many downloads yet. However, it seems to have a good feature set. They include support for multiple accounts, all the basic publishing features, support for saving drafts, uploading multiple images, and you can even submit your location if you want. The UI is clean with Material Design and all the login options we tried worked. No doubt there are bugs, so hopefully the developer will keep up with the fixes.

Subway Tooter

Price: free

Subway Tooter is one of Mastodon’s upcoming apps. The app supports multiple accounts and different settings. The user interface is not the prettiest and there is a bit of a learning curve. However, it supports most of the features you would need for Mastodon. The best part is the ability to switch between instances with a simple swipe from one column to another. You can also customize the columns to show things like hashtags, blocked users, and other things. Again, there is a learning curve and it doesn’t look the best, but it works pretty well.

Tusky for Mastodon

Price: free

Tusky is one of Mastodon’s most popular apps. It includes a clean user interface, support for most media file types, custom emoji, dark theme, drafts feature and even uses material design guidelines. This is one of the first Mastodon apps that people try and many stick with it. There are many complaints about some Mastodon instances not being available because the developer doesn’t like them. I didn’t run into any of these during my testing, but it seems to be something people really don’t like about the app.

This is, in my opinion, the best Mastodon app on the Play Store right now. It is the most developed and seems to have the most features, along with the best user interface. There is a nightly version (Google Play link) from another developer if you want to live on the edge.

Twidere

Price: Free / up to $1.99

Twidere is one of the best Twitter clients and it also happens to support Mastodon. The app has a clean Material Design user interface, the ability to schedule posts, support for most media file types, and more. It works better for Twitter than for Mastodon. So it’s a better choice for people who use Twitter a little more heavily and just want to dip their toes into Mastodon to see what it’s like. The developer has a habit of releasing updates that break things, but when it works, it works pretty well.

Yuito is a fork of Tusky. In most cases, it looks, works and feels the same. The app includes a clean user interface, a streaming feature for each timeline, a limited mode for mobile networks to avoid data usage, and some minor changes compared to the main Tusky app. The Google Play site is in Japanese and the app is in English, so you don’t have to worry. It also supports Pixelfed, Plemora and all other networks that use Mastodon’s API.

Bonus: Mastodon apps on F-Droid

Price: free

F-Droid is a popular third-party app store aimed primarily at advanced users. Everything there is open source and it’s home to some decent Mastodon apps that you can’t find on Google Play. They include MouseApp, Twitlatte (related to Button), Husky, Librem Social (a fork of Tusky). MouseApp in particular is very good if you have needs that exist outside the norm. You need to download F-Droid and install it, then find these apps and install them from there.

If we’ve missed any great Mastodon apps, let us know about them in the comments. You can also click here to see our latest lists of Android apps and games.

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