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Joe Steinbring

A social media client for Mastodon, GoToSocial, and Bluesky

AeroSloth

A native app for Mastodon, GoToSocial, and Bluesky that reads and writes across several accounts at once, on macOS, the iPad, Android, and Wear OS. It is still in development.

Not released yet
AeroSloth in a Mac window: a navigation rail beside a timeline of posts from several networks, the first with a photograph of a waterfall.
AeroSloth in a Mac window: a navigation rail beside a timeline of posts from several networks, the first with a photograph of a waterfall.
AeroSloth on macOS. Every screenshot here is the app itself, with sample accounts and posts.

Screenshots

At a glance

Project statistics

Platforms
4
Networks
3
Packages
6

Purpose and direction

The goal

AeroSloth is a social media client for the three networks I use: Mastodon, GoToSocial, and Bluesky. It reads and writes across all of them from several accounts, in one unified timeline or one network or account at a time, and it can send the same post to several accounts at once, checking each network’s limits first. It is a native app rather than a website: one Flutter codebase for macOS, the iPad, and Android phones and tablets, folding phones included, with a small companion for Wear OS that shows notifications on the watch and answers them with quick replies. Sign-ins stay in each device’s secure storage, and the cache of what it has already loaded is encrypted. Much of the rest happens on the device too: translating posts, drafting alt text for photos, and ranking a For you feed by what I boost and like. An iPad or an Android phone pairs with a Mac on the same network to share settings, filters, mutes, and drafts, with no cloud account in between. I use it myself, and what it needs next comes from that, so it is still changing; it is in beta now, on its way to the App Store and Google Play.

Connected to my experience

Technologies used

Select a technology to read more about my experience with it and how I use it.

Explore the technology stack

MastodonMastodon’s API, through an adapter that serves GoToSocial too; posting limits, polls, and quotes follow what each server supports.GoToSocialTested against JWS Social, my own GoToSocial server, which speaks Mastodon’s API with differences of its own.LeafletThe composer’s location picker, on OpenStreetMap, which attaches a credited map image to a post.GitVersion control, with each feature on a branch of its own.