Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub where users can follow friends and discover new ones. On Mastodon, users can publish anything they want: links, pictures, text, and video. All Mastodon servers are interoperable as a federated network (users on one server can seamlessly communicate with users from another one, including non-Mastodon software that implements ActivityPub!)
Click below to learn more in a video:
- Project homepage 🐘
- Support the development via Patreon
- View sponsors
- Blog
- Documentation
- Roadmap
- Official Docker image
- Browse Mastodon servers
- Browse Mastodon apps
It doesn't have to be Mastodon; whatever implements ActivityPub is part of the social network! Learn more
Updates of people you're following appear in real-time in the UI via WebSockets. There's a firehose view as well!
Upload and view images and WebM/MP4 videos attached to the updates. Videos with no audio track are treated like GIFs; normal videos loop continuously!
Mastodon includes private posts, locked accounts, phrase filtering, muting, blocking, and all sorts of other features, along with a reporting and moderation system. Learn more
Mastodon acts as an OAuth2 provider, so 3rd party apps can use the REST and Streaming APIs. This results in a rich app ecosystem with a lot of choices!
- Ruby on Rails powers the REST API and other web pages
- React.js and Redux are used for the dynamic parts of the interface
- Node.js powers the streaming API
- PostgreSQL 12+
- Redis 4+
- Ruby 3.0+
- Node.js 16+
The repository includes deployment configurations for Docker and docker-compose as well as specific platforms like Heroku, Scalingo, and Nanobox. For Helm charts, reference the mastodon/chart repository. The standalone installation guide is available in the documentation.
A Vagrant configuration is included for development purposes. To use it, complete the following steps:
- Install Vagrant and Virtualbox
- Install the
vagrant-hostsupdater
plugin:vagrant plugin install vagrant-hostsupdater
- Run
vagrant up
- Run
vagrant ssh -c "cd /vagrant && bin/dev"
- Open
https://mastodon.local
in your browser
To set up MacOS for native development, complete the following steps:
- Use a Ruby version manager to install the specified version from
.ruby-version
- Run
brew install postgresql@14 redis imagemagick libidn
to install required dependencies - Navigate to Mastodon's root directory and run
brew install nvm
thennvm use
to use the version from.nvmrc
- Run
corepack enable && corepack prepare
- Run
bundle exec rails db:setup
(optionally prependRAILS_ENV=development
to target the dev environment) - Finally, run
bin/dev
which will launch the local services viaovermind
(if installed) orforeman
For development with Docker, complete the following steps:
- Install Docker Desktop
- Run
docker compose -f .devcontainer/docker-compose.yml up -d
- Run
docker compose -f .devcontainer/docker-compose.yml exec app .devcontainer/post-create.sh
- Finally, run
docker compose -f .devcontainer/docker-compose.yml exec app bin/dev
If you are using an IDE with support for the Development Container specification, it will run the above docker compose
commands automatically. For Visual Studio Code this requires the Dev Container extension.
To get you coding in just a few minutes, GitHub Codespaces provides a web-based version of Visual Studio Code and a cloud-hosted development environment fully configured with the software needed for this project..
- Click this button to create a new codespace:
- Wait for the environment to build. This will take a few minutes.
- When the editor is ready, run
bin/dev
in the terminal. - After a few seconds, a popup will appear with a button labeled Open in Browser. This will open Mastodon.
- On the Ports tab, right click on the “stream” row and select Port visibility → Public.
Mastodon is free, open-source software licensed under AGPLv3.
You can open issues for bugs you've found or features you think are missing. You can also submit pull requests to this repository or submit translations using Crowdin. To get started, take a look at CONTRIBUTING.md. If your contributions are accepted into Mastodon, you can request to be paid through our OpenCollective.
IRC channel: #mastodon on irc.libera.chat
Copyright (C) 2016-2024 Eugen Rochko & other Mastodon contributors (see AUTHORS.md)
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.