Using Mastodon with Buffer
Grow your following by joining the Mastodon community, a unique platform that is ad-free, algorithm-free and decentralized. With Buffer, you can connect to any server on Mastodon and publish content. Let’s get started!
📝 Scheduling and publishing to Mastodon is only available on our new plans. On a Legacy plan? Get in touch with us at hello@buffer.com to discuss your options!
In this article:
- Connecting and refreshing your Mastodon channel
- Scheduling Mastodon posts
- Image, video, and GIF specifications for Mastodon
- Engaging with Mastodon posts
- Mastodon analytics
- Mastodon error library
These features are available for Mastodon
| Publishing | Analytics | Engagement |
| ✓ |
Connecting and refreshing your Mastodon channel
Connecting Mastodon works slightly differently from other channels. Because Mastodon is decentralized, you'll need to join a server before you can connect Mastodon to Buffer.
Join a Mastodon server
- Find the address of a server running the Mastodon software (called an Instance) that is accepting new sign-ups to join.
- At Buffer, we chose the Mastodon World server, and you're welcome to join us there or you can also out Mastodon's servers list for potential servers to join.
- Once you identify an instance you would like to join that’s also accepting new members, fill in the form and choose an ID.
- Click Sign Up and wait for the confirmation email.
- Once you've received confirmation, you can proceed to connecting your Mastodon channel to Buffer.
Check out our Beginner's Guide to Mastodon for more tips on joining a server and setting up your Mastodon profile.
Connecting your Mastodon channel to Buffer
- Head to https://account.buffer.com/channels
- Select Mastodon.
- Select the server you signed up with. You'll be asked to sign into your account to connect it to Buffer.
To see a step-by-step guide and troubleshooting steps, check out the article: Connect your channels to Buffer.
Refreshing your Mastodon channel
If your connected channel requires a refresh, check out the article Refreshing a channel in Buffer.
Scheduling Mastodon posts
The "best time to post" feature in Analyze is not available for Mastodon at this time.
| Features & good-to-knows | Notes |
| Scheduling posts | Checkout our step-by-step guide to scheduling posts on any social channel or peruse Mastodon-specific details below. |
| Scheduling Mastodon threads |
Good to knows:
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| Content warning | If you'd like to add a content warning along with your post, you can use the Content Warning field when creating your post:
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| Tagging / mentions | You can mention users by typing out their full address, e.g. @bufferapp@mastodon.social. For more information, visit our full guide to adding tags (mentions) here. We are unable to autocomplete or verify usernames at this time. |
| Hashtags | You can use a #hashtag to make your post discoverable by anyone searching for that hashtag. Hashtags can contain alphanumeric characters and underscores, but cannot contain numbers only. Learn more about how hashtags work in Buffer here. |
| Character limit | 500 characters per post. Learn more about Character limits for each social network here. 📝Although some Mastodon servers have been customized to support a higher number of characters, Buffer can't detect if the server you're posting to has a higher limit than the default, so we use the default. |
| Emoji | Although Mastodon supports custom emojis, we only support emoji from our emoji picker at this time. |
| Links | If you include links in your post, they must begin with http:// or https://, otherwise they'll be shown as plain text. All links are counted as 23 characters, no matter how long they actually are, so there is no need to use a link shortener to save characters. In fact, using a link shortener is actively discouraged. |
| Daily posting limit | 100 posts per 24 hours. Learn more about Daily posting limits here. |
At this time, we do not support the creation of Mastodon polls through Buffer. If you'd like to see us support them in the future, you can upvote this suggestion on our feature request board.
Image, video, and GIF specifications for Mastodon
Mastodon supports images, videos, and GIFs.
| Videos | Images | GIFs | |
| Number allowed per post | 1 | 4 | 1 |
| File size | Up to 40MB. Video will be transcoded to H.264 MP4 with a maximumG bitrate of 1300kbps and frame rate of 60fps |
Up to 8MB. Images will be downscaled to 1.6 megapixels (enough for a 1280x1280 image) |
GIFs are converted to videos. Animated GIFs are converted to soundless MP4s like on Imgur/Gfycat (GIFV). You can also upload soundless MP4 and WebM, which will be handled the same way |
| File types supported | MP4, M4V, MOV, WebM | PNG, JPG, WebP, HEIC | GIF |
| Custom thumbnail supported | No | - | - |
| Autoplay in the feed | No | - | No |
| Canva integration | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Alt text | - | Yes. Learn more about adding alt text to your images here. | - |
Engaging with Mastodon posts
Buffer’s engagement features are only available for Facebook and Instagram. Mastodon is not supported within Buffer's engagement features at this time.
Mastodon analytics
You can view basic analytics for each of your posts' metrics (favorites, comments, reblogs) by heading to the Publish tab and then the Sent tab.
Mastodon is not currently supported within Analyze.
Mastodon error library
We don't currently have an error library for Mastodon, but feel free to reach out to our Customer Advocates via hello@buffer.com if you're hitting any errors.
📝Do you have a Mastodon feature suggestion? We’d love for you to submit or upvote it here on our feature suggestions board.