Mastodon is overhauling its user profiles in a bid to make its decentralized social network feel more familiar and less intimidating to people accustomed to X or Threads. The redesign targets one of the platform’s most visible surfaces, aiming to better serve both individuals and organizations while smoothing out long-standing usability pain points.

Built on the open ActivityPub protocol, Mastodon surged in visibility after Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, now X, as users looked for alternatives not controlled by a single company. Its federated model lets people choose servers with their own rules and moderation styles, and even move their accounts elsewhere. That freedom, however, comes with complexity: newcomers must pick a server, decipher local and federated timelines, and navigate a more cumbersome follow system. Growth has stalled around hundreds of thousands of monthly active users, down from the peak of the Twitter exodus.

In recent months, Mastodon has been chipping away at those barriers, simplifying onboarding and adding familiar features like Quote Posts and curated “Collections” to help people discover accounts to follow. The latest push focuses on profiles, where the service believes it can both clarify how Mastodon works and make the network feel more polished.

The new profile layout replaces the old split between “posts” and “posts and replies” with a single Activity tab and a dropdown menu. Users can toggle replies and boosts on or off to customize what appears, while hashtags now sit prominently at the top, letting visitors filter an account’s posts by topic with a click.

Mastodon is also rethinking how pinned posts work. The unpopular carousel is gone; instead, one post is featured at the top of the profile, with a “View all pinned posts” button revealing the rest. Custom profile fields, often used for links, pronouns, or professional details, are now displayed side by side to save vertical space and can be edited on iOS and Android as well as the web.

To help newcomers understand Mastodon’s distinctive handles, which include both a username and a server name, the service has added an explanatory pop-up. Users can hide the Media or Featured tabs, or exclude replies from Media to better showcase creative work. Visual clutter is reduced by removing the “following you” badge and tucking optional personal notes into an overflow menu.

Profile editing has been consolidated into a single settings area, where people can manage featured hashtags, links, and other details. Link verification, Mastodon’s decentralized answer to identity checks, is easier to find, and users can now crop and add alt text to profile and header images.

The redesign is rolling out first to the mastodon.social server and others running the nightly build, with broader availability planned as part of the upcoming Mastodon 4.6 software release.