How to Mastodon: Opening Links
Written by tikli.
Page last updated on 19 July 2023 [change log].
When you see a link to someone's Mastodon post on Twitter etc. and click it, it usually opens in your web browser. If you have logged in on Mastodon on your browser and the link was to a post that's on your home server, you can interact with the post without trouble.
If you don't have a Mastodon account on the server where the linked post is (or if you do, but have not logged in to that server on your browser), you can still read the post (if it's public), but you can't like/repost/bookmark it or reply to it. The website will also tell you to log in.
It's a bit similar to when people share links to other platforms (like Tumblr and Instagram) and the link opens in a browser instead of the platform's app.
To open the linked post so that you can interact with it, you need to access it through your own server. There are two ways to do this.
- Depending on the device you are using, you might be able to choose to open the link in your app of choice.
- Manually copy the link and and paste it to the search field on your Mastodon app (or your own server's website if you use Mastodon via browser) and run the search.
Each Mastodon server is its own platform. Even when you can follow accounts from other servers and see their posts easily on your Home timeline, a direct link to a server that's not your own will open in a browser and the browser will not realise that you are already logged in on your app.
Opening links directly in the app (on iPhone)
1. I see a tweet with a link to Mastodon. In this example, it's a link to a Mastodon profile, but it could also be a link to a Mastodon post.
2. When I tap the link, it opens as a webpage. In this example, it opens the user profile of account "ofmdresearch" that is hosted on the Mastodon server "fandom.ink". Because I am not logged in on this server, the website tells me to sign in, or create an account.
Since I already have a Mastodon account, but it's not hosted on fandom.ink, I want to access this profile through my own account, not through fandom.ink's webpage.
3. Instead of tapping the link to view it as a webpage, I Long Press it to access the menu of available actions. I still see the preview of the webpage, and the action menu below it. I choose "Share via..." to open iPhone's Share Sheet.
4. iPhone's Share Sheet lets me access a variety of actions. I have installed two Mastodon apps, Ice Cubes and Mona, and they both show up in the menu.
5. After choosing "Open in Mona", the link opens in the app where I'm already logged in. I see the user profile of @ofmdreserach@fandom.ink and I also see that I'm already following this account.
Extra tips for iPhone, not strictly Mastodon-related! You can customise the Share Sheet view of your iPhone. Go to "Edit Actions..." at the bottom. (Yes, I only realised this today.)
You can remove actions from the Share Sheet by toggling them off. "Plus" adds actions to Favourites and "Minus" removes them from Favourites.
I removed Dropbox and Pinterest from the Share Sheet completely, and added Mona and Ice Cubes to Favourites.
After customisation, the Share Sheet is now a lot easier to use, since the actions I'm most likely to need are in the Favourites at the beginning of the menu.
