Catstodon

Introduction

This Mastodon fork is based on the glitch-soc Fork of Mastodon, historically with changes made to suit CatCatNya~. Some changes may be contributed back to glitch-soc.

To install, take a look at glitch-soc.github.io/docs/. The instructions and features are the same, except for the differences outlined below.

Contributing guidelines are available here.

Note: Use the main branch only for forks. The develop and stable-develop/* branches are experimental, have no stable state, and are only used for testing changes e.g. the staging instance or temporary test instances. For production, it is suggested you run:

• any of the stable/* branches or stable tags
  • do note, however, that these branches/tags have a similar support cycle to upstream, and therefore also to vanilla Mastodon!
  • New Catstodon-exclusive features will only be introduced to the main branch. The stable branches will not get backports of new features once main diverges from them significantly.
• the main branch, which is comparable to "nightly" versions in vanilla Mastodon.

Differences

• Some files are adjusted specifically for the CatCatNya~ instance, and you may want revert/change them. Specifically, these:
  • sounds/boop.mp3
  • sounds/boop.ogg
• The rate limits for authenticated users have been relaxed a bit. Vanilla Mastodon, and by extension glitch-soc, sadly has rate-limits that make it possible to run into these rate-limits during normal usage.
• The API endpoint /api/v1/custom_emojis is no longer affected by AUTHORIZED_FETCH, allowing anyone to copy custom emojis.
• Allow higher resolution images. (4096x4096 instead of the previous limit of 3840x2160)
• Allow posting polls with only one poll option (if MIN_POLL_OPTIONS is set to 1 on your instance).
• Emoji reactions on statuses (with both Unicode and custom emojis, same as for announcements), a feature originally developed for Nyastodon. Ended up as a Catstodon-maintained patch after its initial two Pull Requests to glitch-soc, but was handed over to Essem's fork, Chuckya and is now pending its fourth attempt of merging into glitch-soc.
• Lifts the "only federate local favourites" restriction on favourites/likes and emoji reactions.
• Cherry-picks the activity filter branch from Sakurajima Mastodon.
• Adds the ability to disable the suspicious sign in detection entirely.
  • Useful for situations where the instance may not have up-to-date IP information, such as when the period of IP address retention is set to a low value (see Previous differences now merged into vanilla Mastodon)
• Environment variable MASTODON_USE_LIBVIPS is true by default.
  • This is a minor change, but it requires all systems running Catstodon to run a recent libvips version (8.13+), except if this variable is explicitly set to false.
  • Vanilla Mastodon intends to deprecate ImageMagick anyway, so sooner or later, this change will cease being one.
• Allow dashes in emoji shortcodes
  • This is simply to allow custom emoji compat with other fedi software.
  • Original patch by hazycora: 2dde7a25a4
• Allow appending ?unrestricted_preview=true to post links to bypass CWs and sensitive-markings of media for link previews.
• In the compose form, the character counter is now always below the text field.

Contributions to glitch-soc Mastodon

• Fixed incorrect upload size limit display when adding new a new custom emoji. (Pull request)
• Standalone share page: Dispatch fetchServer for maxChars. Fixes the bug where the standalone share page did not display the correct maximum character amount. (Pull request)
• [Glitch] Fix /share not using server-set characters limit (Pull request)
• Everything merged into vanilla Mastodon

Contributions to Vanilla Mastodon

• The period of retention of IP addresses and sessions was made configurable. (Pull request)
• Fix /share not using server-set characters limit (Pull request)
• Security: Domain blocks & rationales ignore user approval when visibility set as "users"
  • GitHub Security Advisory
  • CVE-2025-27399
  • Commit (with improvements by ClearlyClaire))