Mastodon 4.1.0 was released yesterday, February 10th. There are a lot of updates but many of them are back-end updates. I thought I would write up a summary to call out some of the things that average people using the platform might like to know about. If you’d like to see everything, you can read the full Release v4.1.0 Changelog.
Note: It will take time for the various Mastodon mobile apps to update to support these new features. Some will be faster than others. This includes the official Mastodon apps, as their development is separate from the core product.
Add listing of followed hashtags
You can now view a listing of the hashtags that you follow. After the ability to follow hashtags was added, there was no way to view a listing of the hashtags that you had followed. Now you can!
Expanding the menu next to your profile will now reveal a new Followed hashtags option. This option takes you to a list of the hashtags you have followed. From there, you can click through to any one and choose to unfollow it.
From the conversation around this feature it seems likely that in a future version we will be able to unfollow directly from this page without needing to click through.
Add support for editing media description and focus point of already-sent posts
With version 4.1.0 we can edit the description and focus point of previously sent posts. So if you forgot to add a media description to an image, now you can edit the post and add the media description in. Or, if you notice a typo in a media description you can correct it now without needing to delete and re-draft the post.
Add follow request banner on account header
For those that have the Require follow requests option set on their account, now if you visit the profile of somebody that has sent you a follow request there will be a prompt in the banner to allow you to authorize or reject that request.
Improvements to search results
Ensure exact match is the first result in hashtag searches
Now when searching for a hashtag that may have more popular variants, if there is a search result that is an exact match for what you searched for it will be given precedence in the results.
Change account search to return followed accounts first
Now when searching for accounts if the search results include a mix of users that you follow and users that you don’t follow the users that you follow will appear higher in the search results.
That sums up the updates that I think are relevant to the average user. There are a lot of updates to things on the back end and administration side of things. If you read over the patch notes and think there’s something else that should be included here, reach out on Mastodon and let me know.