Using Mastodon with Buffer

When you connect your Mastodon account to Buffer, you can plan your content, schedule your posts, and watch your reach grow just as you can on any of our other supported channels. Now you can celebrate by checking off one more efficiency measure you've implemented this year! ✅

This article contains the following sections:

1. Connecting Mastodon
2. Creating Posts
• Post privacy
• Character count
• Adding links
• Adding mentions
• Adding hashtags
• Adding media to your posts

Connecting Mastodon to Buffer

Connecting your Mastodon account works slightly differently than connecting other channels in Buffer. Because Mastodon is decentralized, you’ll need to select your server first and then you’ll be asked to sign into your account to connect it to Buffer.

To do this:

1. Log into your Mastodon account.
2. Open a new browser window and log into buffer.com.
3. In the Buffer dashboard, click on your profile avatar at the top right of your dashboard and then click Account from the drop-down menu.
4. Click the Channels option from the menu on the left hand side of your screen.
5. Click on Mastodon. (If you already have channels connected, click Connect New Channel and then click Mastodon).
6. Once you select Mastodon from the connection screen, you’ll have the choice to select the 5 most popular servers:
   
   • mastodon.social
   • mas.to
   • mastodon.world
   • techhub.social
   • mastodon.online
   • At this time, we support all servers that allow third party connections. If your account is set up on a different server, you can select Other and type in the server name. (Want to create a Mastodon account and don't have a server? You can search for a server to join here).
     
     
7. Click Next and log into your Mastodon account.
8. Once that’s complete, you should be taken back to Buffer and the channel should appear in your list of connected channels.

Creating Posts

When it comes to creating posts, there are a few guidelines and good to knows:

Post privacy

All posts are posted as Public, any restricted privacy or audience settings would not be applied.

Character count

Each post can contain up to 500 characters. 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.

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.

Link previews can appear differently based on the way a server/instance is set up (as part of that server's theme settings), and based on your followers viewing preference settings and device. Some mobile clients have previews disabled by default, for example.

Mentions

You can mention users by typing out their full address, e.g. @alice@example.com. Note that any usage of@word will be interpreted as mentioning the local user with the username word, if that user exists. Only the username part will count against your character limit – the domain is not counted. 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 to anyone searching for that hashtag. Hashtags can contain alphanumeric characters and underscores, but cannot contain numbers only.

Emoji 

Although Mastodon supports custom emojis per server, we only support emoji from our emoji picker at this time.

Adding media to your posts

• Images (PNG, JPG, GIF) up to 8MB. Images will be downscaled to 1.6 megapixels (enough for a 1280x1280 image). Up to 4 images can be attached. GIFs are converted to videos so only 1 GIF can be supported at a time. 
• 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. For more information on adding images to your post, visit our guide here. 
• Videos (MP4, M4V, MOV, WebM) up to 40MB. Video will be transcoded to H.264 MP4 with a maximum bitrate of 1300kbps and frame rate of 60fps. For more information about uploading and sharing links to videos, check out our full guide. 
• We do not support audio-only files.