I won't be able to use the flag EXPERIMENTAL_FEATURES=profile_redesign for a while. I do not have time to redesign ours. I really think the Mastodon core team has made some poor choices lately, UX anti-patterns are popping up again. Last time, they changed post visibility under a modal that required up to six clicks and added unnecessary cognitive strain. I even sent a PR suggestion, but they rejected it.

Right now we have "Posts" and "Posts and replies" in tabs, but in the experimental profile redesign there's a "Posts" toggle that contains "Replies" and "Posts" toggles underneath it. It adds extra clicks and combines interface elements under one toggle, which just creates more friction. What's wrong with traditional tabs?

I wish they'd stop breaking what already works well. Honestly, as a long-time front-end developer, I don't understand some of these design choices. Hopefully, these experimental features will mature a bit before they make it to stable.

Issues opened:
https://github.com/ronilaukkarinen/mastodon-bird-ui/issues/183
https://github.com/ronilaukkarinen/mastodon-bird-ui/issues/182

Will hold off for now.

#MastoAdmin #Mastodon #MastodonBirdUI #BirdUI

Wow, there are a lot of breaking changes in the latest Mastodon nightly. I'm a bit surprised by some of the UI choices being made. I haven't been able to refactor all the code in Mastodon Bird UI yet, and I already have quite a bit of technical debt. This won't make my life any easier. I hope I get some breathing room before 4.6.0 is released.

#Mastodon #MastoAdmin #MastodonBirdUI #BirdUI

Auf der linken Seite ist Bluesky, auf der rechten Seite das Mastodon Theme meiner Instanz. Ich liebe es einfach.

#Design #Themes #MastodonBirdUI

 We've successfully upgraded our Mastodon server to v4.6.0-alpha.3+mementomods-2026-01-24, along with Mastodon Bird UI 4.0.0-alpha.0-4.

This update includes today's latest daily build with 107 new commits from upstream since alpha.2 (2026-01-11).

What's new in Mastodon core - These are the changes Mastodon Team have introduced us in the latest nightly version we are running:

🔒 Security
- Updated lodash to v4.17.23 (security fix)
- Multiple security patches merged from upstream

✨ New Features
- Collections: "My collections" page, featured collections, collection endpoints
- Profile redesign (in Mastodon core theme only): verified badges, account name tyling, profile fields redesign
- New UI components: Callout, Toggle, MiniCard, form fields

🎨 Theming system
- New file-based theme system with data-color scheme and data-contrast attributes
- High-contrast styles added to common stylesheet
- Updated embedded styling and error pages for new theme infrastructure

🐛 Bug Fixes
- Fixed quote cache invalidation
- Fixed cross-server conversation tracking
- Fixed keyboard navigation in media modal
- Fixed directory showing load more button incorrectly
- Fixed quote approval policy being reset on status update
- Fixed delivery worker error counting
- Fixed isDarkMode utility

🔧 Other updates
- Bumped to v4.5.5
- Removed deprecated ImageMagick usage
- Updated Node.js to 24.13
- Various dependency updates and translations

🐦‍⬛ Mastodon Bird UI 4.0.0-alpha.0-4:
- Migrated to new file-based theme system
- Added semantic token overrides for light theme
- Fixed missing search icon in dark theme
- Release: https://github.com/ronilaukkarinen/mastodon-bird-ui/releases/tag/4.0.0-alpha.0-4

Check out the source code of our fork: https://github.com/mementomori-social

Mastodon Bird UI 4.0.0-alpha.0-4 is still a work in progress in the nightly branch. It's not 100% ready, but it's stable with today's Mastodon alpha.3.

As always, if you notice anything unusual or buggy, please reach out to me or any of the admins. Enjoy your time here, and feel free to message me with any questions or thoughts. 

#MementomoriSocial #Mastodon #MastoAdmin #MastodonBirdUI #BirdUI

A major update is coming soon for my Mastodon instance and for Mastodon Bird UI. Here's how the system is changing from the old version (pre-v4.6.0-alpha.3):

Old system:

- The HTML used a data-user-theme="mastodon-bird-ui-dark" attribute.
- Mastodon Bird UI used selectors like html[data-user-theme="mastodon-bird-ui-dark"] to apply styles only when that theme was active.
- Multiple themes could exist in one stylesheet, applied conditionally through these selectors.

New system (v4.6.0-alpha.3):

- The data-user-theme attribute no longer exists.
- The theme is now defined by which stylesheet file is loaded through themes.yml.
- If your stylesheet is loaded, your styles automatically apply.
- The only HTML attributes now are: data-color-scheme="dark|light|auto" for the user's color preference and data-contrast="normal|high" for the user's contrast preference

What this means for Mastodon Bird UI:
- Bird UI currently wraps everything in selectors like html[data-user-theme="mastodon-bird-ui-dark"] to apply styles only when that theme is selected.
- In the new system, these selectors must be removed entirely. If the Mastodon Bird UI stylesheet is loaded, its styles should apply directly. The loaded file itself now determines the active theme.

https://github.com/ronilaukkarinen/mastodon-bird-ui/issues/177#issuecomment-3795167051

#MastodonBirdUI #CSS #MastoAdmin #OpenSource #BuildInPublic #BirdUI #Mastodon

Pre-released Mastodon Bird UI 4.0.0-alpha.0-3: https://github.com/ronilaukkarinen/mastodon-bird-ui/releases/tag/4.0.0-alpha.0-3

tl;dr: It now includes a build system and is much lighter than the previous versions. Only compatible with Mastodon 4.6.0 alpha versions.

#MastodonBirdUI #BirdUI #OpenSource #Mastodon #MastoAdmin

@caterpillar Thanks! It's used by a few hundred instances now, most notably Vivaldi's.

After leaving Twitter, I just wanted to bring back that 2019 feel. Some UI and UX patterns have already been proven to work, and it's great (unlike Twitter was) Mastodon is open source so I can customize it.

I've also submitted some suggestions to the core, since the only thing I'm still missing is the compose box, the rest I've built into my fork.

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/27102
https://help.mementomori.social/mementomori.social/instance-features
https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-social-latest-update-built-in-translate-and-themes/

#BirdUI #MastodonBirdUI #MastoAdmin

If you're using the nightly or alpha version of Mastodon (from the main Git branch), the only functional Mastodon Bird UI version is under the branch dev-build-system-css-theme-tokens. There's no release or release candidate yet. While the modularization work is still in progress, the theme is already functional and much lighter thanks to the new build system.
https://github.com/ronilaukkarinen/mastodon-bird-ui/tree/dev-build-system-css-theme-tokens

#MastodonBirdUI #MastoAdmin #BirdUI

I've now used mobile browser for mastodon again after some time. Things I miss from moshidon: Swiping between list panes and list pane item for following multiple hahstags in one pane.

Is there any setting to enable those in mastodon web?

#mastodon #MastodonBirdUI