Fediverse Report – #127
Apps and clients I’m paying attention to
The summer months I’m experimenting with some different content for the weekly report articles. For more information on that, see this accompanying post. Today I’m taking a look at all the different client apps for the fediverse that I’m paying attention to. This is not meant as a recommendation on which client you should use; my experience is that people’s preferences for clients are highly individualistic. The best client for you is simply the client that you enjoy using the most. This is an overview of some the clients for the fediverse that do something differently, and stand out because of that. Part of the reason for making this list is that I do not have the time to keep a close eye on literally every client in the fediverse, and I’m curious to hear from readers if they feel like I missed some.
Microblogging
Phanpy (Web, Progressive Web App)
Phanpy is one of the most innovative clients for any social media platform. The Catch-up feature takes all the posts from your home timeline and gives you the ability to sort and filter them in any way you want. You can filter posts by replies, reposts, followed hashtags, sort them by date or engagement numbers, or group them by author. Another unique feature is the ‘boost carousel’, where boost are delegated in the timeline to a separate horizontal-scrolling ‘carousel’.
One thing that stands out to me about Phanpy is how these standout features have not really seen adoption by other clients, neither for the fediverse nor for Bluesky. Phanpy does have a crowd of hardcore fans (I’m one of them), but it seems to mainly resonate with power-users.
Ivory (iOS, iPadOS, macOS, paid)
Ivory is made by the small company Tapbots, who also created popular Twitter client Tweetbot. Ivory focuses on design, and has some additional features such as account statistics as well. Ivory is a popular client for Mastodon, even though it has a monthly subscription. That makes it also a client worth watching: is the Mastodon ecosystem large enough to support a small team of three developers? Tapbots recently announced that they are building a Bluesky client, and they were frank about needing another revenue stream besides Ivory.
Fedilab (Android, F-Droid)
Fedilab is one of the older clients for the fediverse, that supports multiple accounts on a variety of fediverse platforms. It can be used in combination with Mastodon, Pleroma, PixelFed, PeerTube, Misskey, Friendica and even GNU Social. There are few other clients that I know of that focus on supporting a large variety of fediverse platforms, which indicates both the technical challenge of doing so with none of the platforms supporting the client-to-server part of ActivityPub, as well as it being unclear if there is a real demand for it.
Mastodon (Android, iOS)
The apps developed by the Mastodon organisation itself. Mastodon now has a full-time iOS developer as well as an Android developer, and the app is always up to date with Mastodon’s latest features, such as Mastodon’s recent work on quote post implementations. An ecosystem of third-party clients for Mastodon could proliferate partially because Mastodon was strapped for developer resources and the apps did not always get the highest priority. Third-party clients for Mastodon are often created by hobby developers, who now have to compete with Mastodon having full-time paid developers on their app, making it more important for other clients to show a clear value-add above the Mastodon client developed by the organisation itself.
Some other microblogging clients worth pointing out: Whalebird, (desktop client for Windows, Linux and macOS, supporting multiple platforms), IceCubes (free, open-source iOS app), Tusky (the most popular third-party Android app for Mastodon with half a million downloads), Trunks (web, Android and iOS, that has some cool additional timeline filtering features) and Elk (a popular web client for Mastodon)
Another thing that stands out to me is how there do not seem to be clients targeted specifically for Misskey that are popular. Clients like Kimis, Kaiteki and Milktea seem to have little use or no recent updates. The MissCat app might be more popular, but it is not available in the EU so it is hard for me to judge.
Multi-network clients
Openvibe (Android, iOS)
Openvibe is a multi-network client for Mastodon, Bluesky, Nostr and Threads. It combines posts from these networks (provided you have an account on that network) into a single timeline, and you can post directly to all the different networks at once. Openvibe is the most popular of these multi-network clients, and is also the best funded of the clients on the new social networks: early in 2025 Openvibe announced an $800k funding round. The company expects to introduce a subscription plan at a later point to generate revenue.
SoraSNS (iOS)
SoraSNS is another multi-network client, that supports Mastodon, Misskey, Bluesky, Pleroma and Nostr. It also has a algorithmic timeline with the algorithm running locally on your phone. SoraSNS has more of such experimental features, such as analytics per-post and AI summaries.
Reader clients
Surf (Android, iOS, in beta)
Surf describes itself as a ‘browser for the open social web’. The app, made by Flipboard, integrates various platforms: Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and RSS are supported. It centers around creating feeds for topics, and users can share these feeds with each other (either via Surf or as a custom feed on Bluesky). Surf stands out for pushing the boundaries on what a social media client can look like, and for the large amount of control that users get over which content they want to see.
Tapestry (iOS, iPadOS, in beta)
Tapestry is made by Iconfactory, the company behind popular Twitter client Twitterfic, and raised funds via a Kickstarter, raising $177k. It is a reader client that combines a large variety of sources: RSS, Mastodon, Bluesky, Tumblr, podcasts, YouTube and more. Tapestry places all these sources into a single chronological timeline. The funding model for Tapestry is what stands out: making high-quality apps is not cheap, but getting a large enough paying user base to sustain development is hard. Iconfactory could lean upon their previous work to get a solid Kickstarter to fund development.
Rest of the fediverse
PeerTube is developing their own mobile apps, and have just completed a fundraiser of €75k for further features. I’ve covered the app in other places in more detail, and for here I think it’s noteworthy that no other major PeerTube app has gotten traction over the years.
For the Threadiverse, there are a variety of clients for Lemmy, with some of the most popular ones being Voyager, Thunder, Mlem, Jerboa and Photon. My sense is that the Threadiverse clients do not differ much in features, and mainly differ in platforms and terms of design. The main standout feature at this point seems to be support for PieFed, but a variety of clients (including Voyager, Mlem and multiple more now support PieFed). It points to an ecosystem where clients are aware of each other, and new innovations get rapidly copied by other clients, bringing them effectively to the entire ecosystem. If there are unique features in Threadiverse clients that you think I should pay attention to, let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear from you.
Fediverse News and Links
- Move Slowly and Build Bridges is the new book by Robert W. Gehl, in which Gehl documents the story of the fediverse and how everyday people have build a ‘noncentralized alternative social media system’ over the years. The book is now available for sale online, with physical copies shipping soon. I’ll definitely write more about the book once I’ve read it, so stay tuned!
- Mastodon is adding an in-app donation request for the funding of Mastodon. Mastodon is rolling out this feature very carefully (only their own mastodon.social and mastodon.online servers for now), but they are already thinking about how to expand the feature and make it available for other server admins as well.
- Some polishing updates for WordPress ActivityPub as their blog post explains how they are working towards more social integrations with the rest of the fediverse, with more coverage by WeDistribute.
- How To Improve Your Privacy and Security on Mastodon is a highly extensive guide on Privacy Guides that goes into in-depth detail on all the possibilities people have on Mastodon for better security and privacy.
Fediverse Report – #127
A closer look at ecosystem of clients for the fediverse.
connectedplaces.online (connectedplaces.online)
