mstdn.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A general-purpose Mastodon server with a 500 character limit. All languages are welcome.

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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.

:android: On Android try Tusky, Fedilab, Megalodon, Tooot

:apple_inc: On iPhone/iPad, try Toot!, Ice Cubes, Ivory, Mona

@feditips I am using tusky at the moment - this might be really cheeky to ask, but are there pros and cons to each one? Not knowing entirely what is available from mastodon means that I'm not sure which of the apps is really delivering the best functionality or even if it's what I'm looking for. I just took the first recommendation I was given so I might be missing out on lots of stuff I didn't even know existed.

@shanti @feditips +1 would be very nice to have such an overview