You Can Create Bluesky Style Starter Packs on Mastodon
Every once in a while, a company comes up with an idea so good that every competitor ends up copying it. This is the case with Bluesky starter packs , which are now starting to spread on other social networks. Starter packs are lists of accounts and topics that make it easy for you to fill your feed with people and things you really want to see. Following Bluesky’s lead, Threads announced last week that it was building the feature into its platform , and now third-party developers are bringing it to Mastodon as well.
This is great news: it’s difficult to find new and interesting accounts on Mastodon due to the decentralized nature of the social network. However, there are plenty of great accounts out there that are relatively obscure, and with these starter packs you can view them all in one place.
Integration of starter packs with Mastodon
Mastodon starter packs can be found on FediDevs , a site created to help people find Mastodon developers. Since this is not an official Mastodon feature, you will need to grant FediDevs access to your Mastodon account. The site is pretty transparent about these permissions, and they’re reasonable: it requests read-only access to accounts and search, as well as read-write access to subscriptions. With these permissions, FediDevs can see which accounts you follow and help you follow multiple accounts at once.
Once your account is linked to FediDevs, you can start browsing the different starter packages on the site. Take a look at the Apple and Adjacent Tech Starter Pack if you’re interested in following accounts that post Apple-related content.
FediDevs also allows you to create your own starter packages. Go to the “Create Starter Packs” section and start collecting your favorite accounts. Instead of starting from scratch, you can see all the accounts you follow when you create a new starter pack. This way, you can quickly add multiple accounts and avoid having to manually search for new accounts each time. Please note that you can only add accounts that are set to be discoverable, which respects people’s privacy. Use the search bar to find other accounts, and when you’re done, click the “Done” button to launch the starter pack.
Editing and changing starter packs is quite easy – these options appear under the three dot button under the title. You can monitor all accounts in any starter pack with one click. My only complaint is that the site displays each profile as a large card, making it tedious to scroll through long lists. Not everyone wants to keep tabs on hundreds of accounts without looking at who’s on those accounts, and to do that I wish there was a way to either display multiple smaller cards in a row or just view compact lists.