Whalebird (Mastodon client)

A simple desktop app for Mastodon and (most) compatible Fediverse servers. I’ve used it with GoToSocial, Pixelfed, Sharkey (see note) and Akkoma, but can’t get it to log into Snac. (I can also log into a Friendica server, but I haven’t done enough with my account to get a sense of how well it works with it.) It works easily with multiple accounts, and just sets up a narrow sidebar with icons for each account you’re signed into. It’s also easy to switch between timelines, notifications, lists, etc. because that’s also a narrow sidebar.

It’s better suited for following mostly text than photos, only showing thumbnails in the timeline, but it does zoom in on images when you click on them.

One nice thing: When you’re viewing a timeline, there’s a drop-down menu with toggles to turn boosts and replies on and off as needed!

The biggest downside is that it doesn’t support editing posts, at least not yet.

It’s a bit of a memory hog for what it does (it is an Electron app after all). If I’m going to load a whole web engine, I’d rather just install my instance’s website, or Elk or Phanpy, as a PWA and get more functionality. Again, on low spec hardware like the PineTab 2, it seems like it’s just a little bit faster than running either of those apps in Falkon (which is the fastest app-capable browser I’ve used on that machine).

Since it’s built on Electron, it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, but doesn’t feel like a native app on any of them. It is available in the Microsoft and macOS app stores.

Tips and Tricks

Don’t use the Flatpak on Linux. It’s still available on Flathub, but it’s way out of date since Whalebird’s Flatpak maintainer had to leave. The RPM works fine on Fedora, you just have to update manually. There are also Debian and AUR packages for x86_64, and a standard tarball for both x86_64 and arm64. (I tried to build the AUR package on Arch/ARM, but couldn’t get the right Electron dependencies installed.)

Signing into Sharkey was a little tricky because the website form doesn’t show you the auth code and the browser doesn’t seem to be able to send it to the app (though it wants to). On a hunch, I copied the code from the URL after granting permissions, pasted it into Whalebird’s form, and it worked!

https://calckey.world/auth/RANDOM_LOOKING_CODE?mastodon=true&redirect_uri=urn%3Aietf%3Awg%3Aoauth%3A2.0%3Aoob

Posting photos threw me for a bit of a loop when I didn’t see a button to return to my draft after adding alt text. After clicking “Apply” on the description, you just click outside of the box containing the photo, same as when you’re viewing one that someone else has posted.

Lists work on at least Mastodon and Akkoma, but not on GoToSocial at the moment.