Best Free Android Apps: Tusky – lightweight client for Mastodon

Mastodon is a free and open source microblogging platform similar to Twitter, but with user privacy and decentralization in mind. It’s one of many protocols that interacts with the Fediverse of protocols like Pleroma, GNU Social, and others. Unlike Twitter, Mastodon is not one social network.

Getting started with Mastodon can be confusing for newcomers. Mastodon is a federated service. This means its similar to email. You can create an email account with many different providers. And that’s the same with Mastodon. The service lets you sign up to one of many sites that run Mastodon software, called instances. A user can communicate with other Mastodon users on different instances.

Anyone can run a server of Mastodon. Each server hosts individual user accounts, the content they produce, and the content they are subscribed. Every user can follow each other and share their posts regardless of their server.

Sign up to Mastodon is simple. Just supply a username, email address and password and you’re set.

You can use Mastodon with a web browser. But on an Android device it’s better to use a dedicated client.

Tusky is a lightweight client for Mastodon.

Features include:

• Support for photos.
• Videos.
• Lists.
• Custom emojis.
• Most Mastodon APIs implemented.
• Multi-Account support.
• Dark, light and black themes with the possibility to auto-switch based on the time of day.
• Drafts – compose toots and save them for later.
• Optimized for all screen sizes.
• Designed according to material guidelines.
• Filters sync in both directions between Tusky and your instance.

Tusky is written in Kotlin and Java. Learn Kotlin with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn Java with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

Tusky is a well designed Mastodon client that works seamlessly. It implements all essential features but doesn’t support push notifications.

Tusky is published under an open source license (GNU General Public License v3.0) which is refreshing for Android.

Eligibility criteria

For an Android app to be awarded our love, it must satisfy the following criteria:
	High quality with a good set of features, stable in operation and mature software;
	No charge to use the app;
	No intrusive ads in the program;
	Open source and proprietary software can be included;
	Apps where additional functionality is available for a payment can be included where appropriate.