Whereas Twitter is busy limiting the variety of readable tweets and breaking its TweetDeck app, open supply Twitter various Mastodon is celebrating the launch of a big refresh of its Android app. The brand new app, launched over the weekend, incorporates a full Materials You redesign — Google’s design language for Android — in addition to revamped options resembling tab bars, settings, a compose display screen, and extra.

Mastodon founder and CEO Eugen Rochko shared information of the replace on the Mastodon weblog, because the social community — together with its cell apps, internet model, and third-party purchasers — now reaches an lively person base of 1.4 million month-to-month lively customers in accordance with the corporate’s personal knowledge. That month-to-month lively determine is up 19%, the web site additionally notes, however is down from Mastodon’s peak reputation within the wake of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover late final yr, when it had then seen 2.5 million month-to-month customers.

Immediately, Rochko shared that the variety of lively customers throughout Mastodon rose by 294,000 over the weekend, and posting exercise roughly tripled — figures possible tied to Twitter’s troubles.

In accordance with Rochko, the brand new Android app out now options dozens of the way to customise the person expertise within the new settings display screen, starting from with the ability to change the default posting language, to reminding your self so as to add various textual content in your media uploads, to with the ability to cover the “enhance” and “favourite” counters — the previous, Mastodon’s model of Twitter’s retweet.

Android customers may entry details about the server they’re linked to and consider its guidelines. (In Mastodon’s decentralized social community, customers be a part of a server that’s linked — or federated — with different servers throughout the broader community, and every server has its personal admin(s) and moderation tips.)

As well as, the Android app’s refreshed person profile part will now show all of the featured content material that was beforehand lacking from the app, Rochko notes, together with issues like pinned posts, featured hashtags, and endorsed customers.

Plus, customers can now filter Mastodon’s content material by creating filters for phrases or key phrases after which customizing when these filters ought to apply. Customers may quickly pause notifications for these occasions after they need to take a break.

One other change is how the app shows verifications. On Mastodon, customers can self-verify by inserting a selected hyperlink on their web site that factors to their Mastodon profile, then edit their profile so as to add the hyperlink to their web site. This doesn’t give them a “blue badge” as on different social networks, however verifies somebody’s broader id throughout the net.

Now, when profiles have a verified hyperlink, Mastodon’s app will floor it within the search outcomes and in different lists so it’s simpler to inform totally different profiles aside. This might assist to deal with one of many complaints from customers that discovering notable folks to observe on Mastodon is just too tough.

The refreshed app is on the market by way of the Google Play Retailer, however it’s not the one choice for Android customers. Different in style Android purchasers for Mastodon embody Tusky, Megalodon, Fedilab, Tooot, and others. Nevertheless, iOS customers have a wider choice, together with newer apps like Woolly, Mammoth, Radiant, and Ivory, which sprung up amid the Twitter exodus after Musk’s acquisition and API modifications that put Twitter apps out of enterprise. As a result of Android customers have fewer third-party choices, an replace to Mastodon’s official cell app on Android has a extra important affect than it will on iOS.