Mastodon lets you follow hashtags the same way you follow people. When you follow a hashtag, posts tagged with it appear in your home feed alongside accounts you follow. This feature helps you track topics without manually searching. This article explains how to follow a hashtag on Mastodon from the web interface and mobile apps. … Read more
You created a hashtag on Mastodon and expected it to appear in search results, but it shows no posts or does not appear at all. This happens because Mastodon’s search engine indexes content differently than traditional social platforms. Mastodon does not automatically index every post with a hashtag — the server must first process and … Read more
Mastodon does not have a single global trending algorithm like traditional social platforms. Each instance maintains its own trending hashtags based on local activity. This means a hashtag popular on mastodon.social may not appear on your smaller instance. Finding trending hashtags across multiple instances requires using specific tools and features. This article covers the built-in … Read more
You search a hashtag on Mastodon and see only a handful of posts. The same tag on another instance shows hundreds of results. This happens because Mastodon does not treat hashtags like a global search engine. Each instance only sees posts that its own users have interacted with or that originated from instances it follows. … Read more
Mastodon users often struggle to get their posts seen by people who do not follow them. Unlike algorithms on centralized platforms, Mastodon relies on hashtags and federation to surface content. Your profile bio is one of the first places new visitors check, and adding hashtags there can help the Mastodon search engine index your account … Read more
When you post on Mastodon, hashtags help your content reach users beyond your followers. But Mastodon does not accept every character you might type in a hashtag. Many users find that a hashtag with spaces, punctuation, or mixed case does not work as expected. The platform enforces strict formatting rules based on the Unicode standard. … Read more
If you follow a hashtag on Mastodon but the posts annoy you, you can mute that hashtag instead of unfollowing it. Muting a hashtag removes posts with that tag from your Home and Federated timelines. The authors of those posts are not blocked or muted themselves. This article explains how to mute a hashtag on … Read more
When you type a hashtag on Mastodon, the platform automatically preserves the capital letters you use. A hashtag like #AccessibleTech displays with the same capitalization in the post text but remains case-insensitive for search and filtering. This feature is called CamelCase or PascalCase hashtag formatting. It directly improves accessibility for screen reader users because the … Read more
When you follow a hashtag on Mastodon, posts using that tag appear in your Home feed mixed with posts from people you follow. This makes it hard to track a specific topic like “photography” or “tech news” without scrolling through unrelated content. Mastodon lets you pin a followed hashtag to a separate column so you … Read more
Mastodon server administrators often see tags appear in the Trending sidebar that do not match the community guidelines or the instance theme. Without an approval workflow, any tag that gains enough local activity can automatically trend. This can lead to spam tags, off-topic content, or hashtags that violate the server rules showing up prominently. This … Read more