You don't need to use the official Mastodon apps, they're not the best way to use Mastodon. The official apps only arrived last year, and they were intended as "Fisher Price My First Mastodon" things with a restricted set of features.
Third party apps have been around longer than official ones, and include way more features. You can sign in with the same account on all apps.
On Android try Tusky, Fedilab, Megalodon, Tooot
On iPhone/iPad, try Toot!, Ice Cubes, Ivory, Mona
@feditips I've been happy using a browser with the web interface.
I use the advanced option when I want columns for tracking different hashtags. But usually I like the single column view so images are larger.
Just curious - what features have the apps got that make folks want to use them instead? Thanks!
@ahimsa_pdx @feditips I’m brand new here but I will say the app understanding that I want to follow someone off-server and just letting me do it, instead of telling me to go copy and paste their address into my own server search, gets rid of one of the WEIRDEST and most tedious aspects for someone coming from Twitter/Tumblr/anyone without multiple servers.
You can follow someone off-server and just do it on the web and on the app. However, servers don't always know about every address on every other server.
Copy/pasting the address means your server is guaranteed to find the right person to follow. It's like a backup way of following someone if you can't do it directly.
It's technically the same thing as copy-pasting an email address into Gmail or whatever, people just aren't used to doing it on social media.
By the way, if you are wondering why this place is on multiple servers, there are some very good reasons for it:
https://fedi.tips/why-is-the-fediverse-on-so-many-separate-servers/
@feditips @ahimsa_pdx oh, I love the servers — tho I will check this out and see if there are benefits I haven’t thought of! — I think it’s a great way of curating your own experience and it’s also great to have more different mods (like - the instance I’m on mutes assholes of specific criteria so we don’t see them at all, which — you mean I don’t even have to acknowledge they exist??).
I just didn’t expect the back & forth and my adhd self kept losing the tab!
@winged @feditips I understand, I made a lot of mistakes when I started - everything from trying to log in on the wrong server to trying to click the follow button on some other server. I'm more used to things now and do the copy/paste without thinking.
But if using an app reduces some of that confusion then I can see why it would be worth it!
PS. I used to be software engineer but after ME/CFS I have loads of cognitive issues and it's difficult to predict which things will cause confusion