Mastodon – Simplified Federation!

Name: Mastodon – Simplified Federation!
Rating: 4.3659 (41 reviews)
Author: rugk

Simplifies following or interacting with other users on remote Mastodon instances in the Fediverse. It skips the “Enter your Mastodon handle” popup and takes you to your own “home” instance, without entering your Mastodon handle on remote instances.

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Mastodon – Simplified Federation is a Chrome extension that streamlines your experience across Mastodon and other Fediverse platforms. It eliminates the need to repeatedly enter your Mastodon handle when interacting on remote instances by automatically redirecting you to your own "home" instance. This not only saves time but also ensures your Mastodon handle remains private by never exposing it to third-party sites.

Compatible with Mastodon, GNU Social, Friendica, and Pleroma, this add-on runs quietly in the background once configured, enhancing your federated social networking without additional effort. Open-source and community-driven, it encourages contributions like translations and code improvements to continually improve the user experience in the decentralized social web.

Add-on Social Media Productivity Privacy & Security Open Source

By:

rugk

Daily users:

1,272 -10

Rating:

4.37

(41)

Version:

2.2.1 Last updated: 2025-02-10

Version code:

5890538

Creation date:

2018-08-15

Risk:

Permissions:

storage
webRequest
notifications
http://*/*
https://*/*

Size:

139.47KB

URLs:

Website ,Privacy policy

Full description:

Source:

Firefox Browser Add-ons

Updated:

a day ago

Ranking

# 2,688 ▼ 7

Other rankings

#156 in Feeds, News & Blogging ▼ 2

#323 in Social & Communication ▼ 1

#23 in donation keyword 20

#23 in handle keyword 25

#32 in todo keyword 17

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User reviews

Users find the add-on simple, effective, and helpful in improving Mastodon's federation usability, often calling it a killer app. However, multiple reviews report functionality issues on popular instances like mastodon.social and no support on Android Firefox. Some mention needing to restart or toggle features for them to work properly. UI quirks and privacy concerns about permissions also appear repeatedly. Despite these problems, many users praise the extension's overall positive impact on the Mastodon experience.

Pros

Makes Mastodon and the Fediverse more seamless and usable in-browser
Simple and effective user experience enhancement
Helpful in improving second biggest UX flaws in Mastodon federation
Useful enough for users to describe it as a killer app
Works well on many instances and as advertised for some users

Cons

Does not work consistently on certain popular instances like mastodon.social
Incompatibility or non-functionality on Android Firefox
Extension sometimes requires restarting or toggling for certain features to work
Issues with some UI quirks, like disappearing input when using keyboard shortcuts
User concerns about extension injecting classes into every page, raising permission and privacy questions

Recent reviews

by Bu*****, 2025-05-19

by be*****, 2025-04-22

by st*****, 2025-03-09

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Extension safety

Risk impact

Risk impact measures the level of extra permissions an extension has access to. A low risk impact extension cannot do much harms, whereas a high risk impact extension can do a lot of damage like stealing your password, bypassing your security settings, and accessing your personal data. High risk impact extensions are not necessarily malicious. However, if they do turn malicious, they can be very harmful.

Mastodon – Simplified Federation! requires some sensitive permissions that could impact your browser and data security. Exercise caution before installing.

Risk impact analysis details

Critical Allows access to all websites, posing a significant security risk as it can monitor and modify data from any visited site.
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Risk likelihood

Risk likelihood measures the probability that a Firefox add-on may turn malicious. This is determined by the publisher and the Firefox add-on reputation on Firefox Browser Add-ons, the amount of time the Firefox add-on has been around, and other signals about the Firefox add-on. Our algorithms are not perfect, and are subject to change as we discover new ways to detect malicious extensions. We recommend that you always exercise caution when installing a Firefox add-on.

Mastodon – Simplified Federation! is probably trust-worthy. Prefer other publishers if available. Exercise caution when installing this add-on.

Risk likelihood analysis details

High This extension has low user count. Unpopular extensions may not be stable or safe.
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Low **** ********* *** ***** **** **** * ****** **** ***** ********** *** **** ****** ** ** ****** *** *****
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