Mastodon 5.0 Moves the Composer to Bottom-Centre and Puts Stable Release 'a Few Weeks' Out
Software / news
Mastodon 5.0 Moves the Composer to Bottom-Centre and Puts Stable Release 'a Few Weeks' Out
The project's October 19 design post lists what changed since the August preview and what was cut. Search, Settings, Messages and Notifications are still on the old interface.
Mastodon's 5.0 redesign was due on mastodon.social on October 20, with a first beta for server administrators to follow and a stable release expected "in a few weeks", according to the project's October 19 design post. Imani Joy, the project's Head of Design, wrote it. The post does not give a stable release date.
The biggest change for anyone who posts daily is the composer. It stops being a box embedded in the sidebar and becomes a pop-out that docks at bottom-centre and can be minimized without losing a draft.
What moved since the August preview
The August preview, "5.0: Laying the foundation", showed the composer at bottom-right. The October post says it was moved to bottom-centre, and that docking it bottom-left, keeping it embedded in the navigation and using a modal were all rejected.
| Element | August preview | October post |
|---|---|---|
| Composer position | Bottom-right | Bottom-centre |
| Visibility dropdown | Dynamic recipient names | Preset labels |
| Mobile new-post button | Sub-menu | Opens the composer directly |
| Sensitive content | Combined | Two options: sensitive media, content warnings |
The dropped recipient names are the change most likely to affect habits. The post says the contextual options were simplified to preset labels.
What else is in the post
The feed's posts were rebuilt from the ground up, and the design system now supports five colour themes. Three small additions are listed: hide a user's boosts from the post menu, follow or unfollow hashtags from a post, and two Advanced Settings options for hiding your own posts and boosts in your home feed.
Quote settings were regrouped so that fixed ones are separate from changeable ones. The post says visibility cannot be changed after publishing, while quote settings can.
The design principles are printed as three lines, the first being "Clarity trumps convenience."
What the redesign does not cover
Search, Settings, Messages and Notifications still need redesigns, according to the post. The team is unlikely to finish all of them in 5.1, and search and discovery is the named priority.
The German site mobiFlip, reporting on the August preview, carried more detail than the October post. It said Lists become "Custom Feeds", the "Quiet public" label leaves the interface while the function stays, and private mentions are renamed. It also repeated a Mastodon figure: 92 percent of users active on mastodon.social in the past year had created no list.
Those August details are not repeated in the October post, so whether they shipped unchanged is unconfirmed. The October post does not mention Custom Feeds.
- Created no list92 %
- Created at least one list8 %
Source: Mastodon figure as reported by mobiFlip, August 19, 2026
The 8 percent is the remainder of the 92 percent figure, not a number Mastodon gave.
Where this sits among releases
Mastodon 4.7 came on August 20, 2026, and its blog entry describes bug fixes, performance and interoperability work with other fediverse platforms. Other open-source releases covered on this site include OpenBSD 8.0 and Cloudflare's tsrs.
The next checkpoint is the first 5.0 beta for server administrators. The post gives no date for it beyond following the mastodon.social rollout.
Sources
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