5.0: Laying the foundation - Mastodon BlogSkip to content<br>Two weeks ago, we shared insights from Mastodon’s first Discovery Week and how it’s informing our roadmap. Today, we’re offering a deeper dive on what’s in store for Mastodon 5.0 – not an exhaustive list of changes, but a glimpse into major decisions and the thoughts behind them.<br>Note: This article contains mockups and screenshots of work currently in development – the final experience may be different from what you see here.<br>Composing posts in 5.0<br>Discovery Week showed that Mastodon users are generally happy with the composer UI – and the bigger challenges hindering creation are higher-level and often cultural. So, what does it mean to lay a better foundation for composing on Mastodon?<br>We think it starts with fixing what’s obviously broken: The composer has limited real estate, and users are often wildly unclear about their visibility and interaction settings when composing.<br>The composer breaks free.<br>The composer window has been confined to Mastodon’s sidebar for 10 years – and we’re finally moving it. In 5.0, the composer opens as a overlay: There when you need it, with plenty of space to create – and hidden when you don’t.<br>Prototype of the upcoming composer menu. In addition to this menu, users can quick-compose a post from a prominent ‘New post’ action in the redesigned main navigation.<br>The visibility selector is a dropdown again.<br>We briefly introduced a visibility settings modal in 4.5 alongside the addition of quote posts. At the time, we were trying to offer important context about how quote settings actually worked, how they were impacted by visibility settings, and the various permutations that were possible. And we heard you loud and clear – the modal approach was clunky, and it added friction by forcing both the eye and the cursor to travel farther on the screen.<br>We knew that the overly explanatory modal was a band-aid fix to a deeper problem: Our visibility settings are downright confusing. Discovery Week confirmed that ‘quiet public’ is particularly misunderstood and that the existing UI doesn’t help users understand the ways that mentions impact who can see their post.<br>‘Quiet public’ leaves the chat.<br>The setting itself isn’t going anywhere – it’s just now displayed in the UI as a more accurate representation of what it is: A sub-setting applicable to public posts that hides the post from search and discovery views.<br>In other words, you can configure ‘quiet public’ on a public post by simply disabling the setting “Discoverable in public feeds & search results”.<br>Quiet public represented in the 5.0 composer<br>Quote settings also have a new look.<br>To make the dropdown pattern work with all permutations of visibility & quotability, without over-explaining to the user, we’ve broken down the options into simpler decisions.<br>Quote settings start with a toggle of ‘Allow others to quote.’ On public posts, the user can toggle on this setting, and then choose whether to allow quotes from everyone or from followers only.<br>Prototype showing how a user can toggle on quote settings to reveal additional options.<br>Quotes were implemented in a way that when you set your post visibility to followers-only, it means that only you can quote. In the new UI, this is represented by disabling the option ‘Allow others to quote.’<br>Prototype showing that when a user selects ‘Followers’ as the post visibility, the options for discovery and quoting are disabled.<br>The visibility selector label also adapts to context.<br>When you compose a followers-only post and then mention someone who’s not following you, that person still sees your post. Today, this consequence is not obvious in the UI.<br>In 5.0, the visibility selector’s label updates when you’ve mentioned people in a followers-only post. The name of the first mention is prepended to the label, and if there are multiple mentions, a count is added.<br>If you’re replying to someone, the OP themself is listed first – regardless of whether you remove the at-mention text from your composer.<br>Example of a reply-in-progress, with a visibility label that includes the name of the OP and a count of other mentions (”Sage, Your followers + 1 other”)<br>Messaging in 5.0<br>Private mentions are now ‘messages’.<br>Insights from Discovery Week and previous feedback on Github confirmed that the term ‘private mention’ creates more confusion than it alleviates. In 5.0, ‘private mention(s)’ will be renamed ‘message(s)’ throughout the UI. The icon has also changed to a more familiar choice: the chat bubble.<br>The 5.0 desktop web interface, showing the Messages navigation link and corresponding page.<br>DMs are distinguished from posts in the composer.<br>Users should never worry that they’re publishing something that’s meant to be private. That’s why in 5.0, direct messaging has its own composer. Access it from the Messages page, from a user’s profile, or from the composer button in the bottom right corner of the browser window.<br>Messaging composer opened, showing a ‘New...