Update — June 2026
Since the original article explored how Mastodon Refreshes App for Android as Twitter Falters, the official Android app has continued its steady evolution. The app reached version 2.12 in May 2026, with the changelog highlighting a brand-new design for profiles, the ability to disable admin notifications, and improved handling of notifications from unsupported server versions. An earlier February 2024 update had already added long-requested features such as lists, a reworked home tab, and QR-code profile sharing — narrowing the gap with mainstream social apps. Read the official Mastodon blog post on the February 2024 Android update.
On the broader competitive landscape, X (formerly Twitter) has continued to struggle. X lost 33 million monthly active users between 2023 and 2025, and its advertising revenue fell from $4.4 billion in 2022 to roughly $2.5 billion in 2024. Mastodon, by contrast, recorded approximately 10.5 million registered accounts across all instances as of April 2026, and generated €2.2 million in revenue in 2024 while doubling its full-time staff from three to six employees — a sign of modest but meaningful institutional growth. In 2024 it also signed its first commercial contracts, including a hosting deal for the European Commission’s Mastodon instance.
Monthly active users tell a more complicated story: after peaking at 2.6 million in November 2022, Mastodon’s MAU settled to between 750,000 and 1 million as of early 2026 — a smaller but more stable core audience. Competing decentralized alternative Bluesky grew far faster, reaching over 5 million monthly active users by late 2025, meaning Mastodon now faces competition not only from X but from newer fediverse-adjacent rivals as well.
As Twitter struggles to limit the number of accessible tweets and faces issues with its Tweetdeck app, the open-source Twitter alternative Mastodon Refreshes App for Android was released with significant updates. The new app, released on the weekend, has been redesigned using Google’s Material Design language and offers unique features such as tab bars, settings, and a compose screen. Mastodon founder and CEO Eugen Rochko has announced that the social network’s monthly active user base has grown to 1.4 million users. This figure is 19% higher than previously reported and shows that Mastodon is still popular despite a drop in users since late last year when the website experienced a peak in popularity following Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. The update affects the mobile apps, web version, and third-party clients of the social network. The new Android app from Rochko offers users dozens of ways to customize their experience in the settings screen, such as changing the default posting language, setting reminders to add alternative text to their media uploads, and hiding the “boost” and “favorite” counters. The “boost” counter is Mastodon’s equivalent of Twitter’s retweet feature. Additionally, users can access information regarding the server they’re connected to and view its rules. Mastodon’s decentralized social network allows users to join a server that is connected to other servers across the network. Each server is managed by its admin(s) and follows its moderation guidelines. To further enhance the user experience, the Android app’s refreshed user profile section now displays all the featured content that was missing from the app, such as pinned posts, featured hashtags, and endorsed users, as noted by Rochko. Mastodon now allows users to filter content based on phrases or keywords, as well as customize when the filters should be applied. Additionally, users can opt to pause notifications for a period of time if they need a break. Furthermore, Mastodon has made it easier for users to verify their profile by providing a link that can be placed on their website that points to their profile. Although this verification process does not grant users a “blue badge” as on other social networks, it does help to authenticate someone’s identity across the web. The refreshed app for Mastodon is available on the Google Play Store, but there are other options for Android users as well. Popular alternatives include Tusky, Megalodon, Fedilab, Tooot, and more. iOS users have an even wider selection including apps like Woolly, Mammoth, Radiant, and Ivory, which have grown in popularity since the Twitter acquisition by Elon Musk and the subsequent API changes that put many Twitter apps out of business. An update to Mastodon’s official mobile app has a greater effect on Android users than on iOS users due to the fewer third-party options available on Android.
