--- title: 5.0: Laying the foundation | daily.dev description: Mastodon previews design changes coming in version 5.0, including a composer that opens as an overlay instead of being confined to the sidebar, a simplified... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/5-0-laying-the-foundation-oxpbfwr3t twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: 5.0: Laying the foundation | daily.dev og:description: Mastodon previews design changes coming in version 5.0, including a composer that opens as an overlay instead of being confined to the sidebar, a simplified... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/5-0-laying-the-foundation-oxpbfwr3t og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/oXpBFWR3T.png og:image:alt: 5.0: Laying the foundation og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # 5.0: Laying the foundation **[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 8 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Mastodon previews design changes coming in version 5.0, including a composer that opens as an overlay instead of being confined to the sidebar, a simplified dropdown-based visibility and quote-settings selector replacing the 4.5 modal, renaming 'private mentions' to 'messages' with their own composer and removal from timelines, single-column navigation, de-emphasized branding in favor of individual server identity, renaming 'lists' to 'custom feeds' with greater visibility, and reduced prominence for followed hashtags ahead of a planned overhaul in 5.1 or 5.2. The advanced web UI, local, and federated feeds remain available. The team is recruiting testers via an interest form. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What UI changes are coming to the Mastodon composer in version 5.0? In Mastodon 5.0, the composer moves out of the sidebar and opens as an overlay with more space, replacing a layout unchanged for 10 years. The visibility selector returns to a dropdown (replacing the 4.5 modal), quote settings are simplified into a toggle for 'Allow others to quote' with everyone/followers-only options, and the selector label updates to show mentioned users in followers-only posts. _Developers tracking fediverse client compatibility can follow Mastodon UI changes like this on daily.dev._ ### Why is Mastodon renaming private mentions to messages? Mastodon is renaming 'private mention(s)' to 'message(s)' throughout the UI in version 5.0 because feedback from Discovery Week and prior GitHub issues showed the term 'private mention' confused users. Direct messages get their own composer, accessed from the Messages page, a user's profile, or the main composer button, and will no longer appear in timelines or profile pages. _Anyone building on the Mastodon API can track terminology and UI shifts like this on daily.dev._ ### What is Mastodon's 'quiet public' visibility setting and how does it change in 5.0? 'Quiet public' is a sub-setting for public posts that hides them from search and discovery views without changing who can see the post. In 5.0 it is no longer a separate visibility option but is instead controlled by disabling a setting labeled 'Discoverable in public feeds & search results,' making its actual effect clearer to users who found it confusing in prior UI versions. _Developers integrating with Mastodon's visibility model can follow spec changes like this on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 3 discussions and 21 comments across lobsters, hackernews (as of 2026-08-19). **TL;DR:** Much of the discussion centers on a long-running request for rich text/markdown composing in the official web client, with people frustrated it hasn't been adopted despite existing in forks and being technically supported; separately, the messaging/visibility rename is generally welcomed as a clarity improvement. **Sentiment:** 30% positive · 55% mixed · 15% skeptical **The case for** - The renaming of confusing visibility terms like 'Quiet Public'/'Unlisted' to clearer language is seen as a genuine usability fix that will reduce accidental posting mistakes. - Some appreciate that DMs being mixed into normal timelines was a longstanding quirk and are glad it's being separated out. - One commenter called the update well-communicated and a good set of improvements overall. **The pushback** - Rich text/markdown input for composing posts is still missing from the official web client despite the renderer already supporting it, and a proposed patch was reportedly rejected. - Some feel Mastodon's resistance to adding markdown support is arbitrary and short-sighted given forks like glitch-soc, Akkoma, Misskey, and GotoSocial already support it. - At least one person liked the old DM-in-timeline behavior for casual private branch-off conversations and feels they're in the minority wanting to keep it. **By community** - lobsters (mixed): A long thread debates the lack of native rich text/markdown composing, while a separate side of the discussion welcomes the visibility/messaging renames as clarifying fixes. - hackernews (mixed): Minimal engagement, with only a brief, non-substantive quip about Mastodon's prospects. **Hottest debate:** Whether Mastodon's official client should finally support markdown/rich-text input given that rendering already supports it and forks have implemented it. **Open questions** - Why has the Mastodon project resisted adopting markdown input despite forks already implementing it successfully? - Will the internal storage format ever move from rendered HTML to a source format like Markdown? **Highlights** > Not only is it possible, it's already been implemented in forks of Mastodon, and I'm pretty sure it's been submitted as a patch to Mastodon that was rejected. They're just being contrarian at this point. Accepting that patch would have made it possible to use `>` for quoting, which would have replaced 90% of the use case for quote posts, which were a huge amount of work and still done wrong regardless. (they implemented it as top-posting) > — [technomancy on lobsters · 4 points, 1 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/m0okh1/mastodon_5_0_laying_foundation#c_anctuy) > > I have no idea what its text entry thing is like (I don’t use Mastodon) Honestly, you should stop there. You're incorrectly speculating about something you don't know. This feature has already been implemented. It's live, it works, people use it everyday (3rd party Mastodon instances have added it themselves). It's natively supported by ActivityPub, so it works across the network (it uses HTML for message bodies). The difficulty is more social than technical - convincing the flagship Mastodon project that it's worth adopting the feature. > — [kornel on lobsters · 1 points, 1 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/m0okh1/mastodon_5_0_laying_foundation#c_y6cxnh) > > I never got what this was for or why it was enabled so often. Before it was called "Quiet Public", a name many people strongly disliked, it was called "Unlisted", and it was, at least for most people I know, the default posting mode. A Mastodon post with the Unlisted visibility: - can be boosted ("reblogged", "retweeted") - can be accessed by an anonymous user via URL - appears on your public profile - does not appear in aggregate feeds like Local and Federated - does not appear in inline tag ("hashtag") feeds - indicates that it does not wish to be indexed by search engines I think "Public but not indexed" is a much better way to express this than "Quiet Public", and I applaud the Mastodon project's decision to listen to their entire userbase who didn't like the short-lived name change. > — [mtset on lobsters · 1 points, 1 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/m0okh1/mastodon_5_0_laying_foundation#c_we9kh7) > Reactions in the Fediverse: . My own reaction, speed-reading a few hours ago: not only a good set of improvements, this is also a _well-communicated_ set. I'm amongst the people who previously thought that the public/private UX was good enough; that if a mistake was made, it was the end user's mistake. I believed that, as a user who _had_ made stupid mistakes, more than once – accidentally publishing what I intended to be private, despite usually prefixing a supposedly private post with the word "privately". It looks better, now. I'm less likely to make stupid mistakes. > — [fuzzy on lobsters · 7 points](https://lobste.rs/s/m0okh1/mastodon_5_0_laying_foundation#c_vnzqgm) > I actually liked the DM system in Mastodon as it made it easy to have a private branch-out convo, but I suspect I'm in the minority on this. > — [calvin on lobsters · 3 points](https://lobste.rs/s/m0okh1/mastodon_5_0_laying_foundation#c_x0pgel) **Source threads** - [lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/m0okh1/mastodon_5_0_laying_foundation) · 54 points · 19 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354555) · 8 points · 2 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49347374) · 8 points · 0 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Mastodon 4.5](https://daily.dev/posts/mastodon-4-5-hrfw1f6oy) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Mastodon 4.6](https://daily.dev/posts/mastodon-4-6-6qqeqbck4) · Lobsters · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [Mastodon, a decentralized alternative to X, plans to target creators with new features](https://daily.dev/posts/mastodon-a-decentralized-alternative-to-x-plans-to-target-creators-with-new-features-15yypwbgw) · TechCrunch · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Mastodon 4.6 released](https://daily.dev/posts/mastodon-4-6-released-hiebcqhks) · LWN.net · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Mastodon adds email newsletters so people who don’t want an account can still follow creators on the open social web](https://daily.dev/posts/mastodon-adds-email-newsletters-so-people-who-don-t-want-an-account-can-still-follow-creators-on-the-rvgxnrrs5) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#ui-design](https://daily.dev/tags/ui-design), [#mastodon](https://daily.dev/tags/mastodon), [#fediverse](https://daily.dev/tags/fediverse) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/5-0-laying-the-foundation-oxpbfwr3t) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"5.0: Laying the foundation","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/5-0-laying-the-foundation-oxpbfwr3t","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/5-0-laying-the-foundation-oxpbfwr3t"},"datePublished":"2026-08-19T07:44:45.224Z","dateModified":"2026-08-19T19:16:41.861Z","description":"Mastodon previews design changes coming in version 5.0, including a composer that opens as an overlay instead of being confined to the sidebar, a simplified...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/5531768802e0f0bcd571ef6abfcec024?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/5531768802e0f0bcd571ef6abfcec024?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Lobsters","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Lobsters","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--tl8v_Fku--/f_auto,t_logo/v1698841318/logos/lobste.jpg","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/5-0-laying-the-foundation-oxpbfwr3t","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"open-source,ui-design,mastodon,fediverse","timeRequired":"PT8M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lobsters","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"5.0: Laying the foundation"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/5-0-laying-the-foundation-oxpbfwr3t#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What UI changes are coming to the Mastodon composer in version 5.0?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"In Mastodon 5.0, the composer moves out of the sidebar and opens as an overlay with more space, replacing a layout unchanged for 10 years. 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