If you follow many different types of accounts on Vivaldi Social, the main Home timeline can feel like a huge smorgasbord of content. To focus on one topic or group of people at a time, divide the accounts you follow into Lists.

To create a list:

1. Go to the Lists page.
2. In the text box that says “New list title” give your new list a name.
3. Click “Add list”.

To add people to Lists:

1. Open the list.
2. Click on “Show settings” > “Edit list”
3. Enter the usernames of the people you want to add to the list.
4. Click on “Add to list” next to their name.

Alternatively:

1. Visit the user’s profile.
2. From the account menu, select “Add or Remove from lists”.
3. Select which lists you want to add the user to.

Lists’ timelines can be accessed from the menu column on the right side of the page.

Like any social media or public communication channel, Mastodon, including our Vivaldi Social instance, isn’t immune to spam and other bad actors. Luckily, it has many useful settings you can toggle on and off to make your experience on the Fediverse more pleasant. One of them is preventing users that you don’t follow from sending you a direct message.

To enable the setting:

1. Go to Preferences > Notifications > Other Notification Settings.
2. Enable “Block direct messages from people you don’t follow”.

Posts with tall images will require you to scroll more to get to the next post in the feed and if there are many posts like that, you’ll end up scrolling a lot. That’s why they’re cropped by default. If the content seems interesting you can click on the image to see it in full.

If you prefer to always see images in their full size and don’t mind scrolling, you can disable the cropping. To do that:

1. Go to Preferences > Post Layout.
2. Disable “Crop images in non-expanded posts to 16×9”.
3. Click “Save Changes” at the top or bottom of the page.

Not everyone needs to be able to keep track of what we post on social media. That’s why in Vivaldi Social you have the power to decide, who is able to follow your account.

To enable manual follow approvals:

1. Go to Preferences > Profile.
2. Tick the box for “Require follow requests”.

Then every time someone wants to follow you, you’ll get a notification and you can either approve or decline their follow request.

If you follow a lot of people on Vivaldi Social, then after a while you might start to wonder, why did you start following one person or another. Luckily, Vivaldi Social has a neat little feature that allows you to add notes to accounts, so that even after months and years, you can check the account and get a reminder.

And don’t be afraid to be honest in these notes. They’re only visible to you.

To add a note to an account:

1. Go to the person’s profile.
2. Look for the Note section.
3. Enter a note about the account.

If you follow a lot of accounts on Vivaldi Social, posts from your favorites may get buried in all the content. To make sure you never miss a post from a specific Mastodon account, enable notifications.

To enable notifications for an account:

1. Go to the account’s profile on Vivaldi Social.
2. Make sure you follow the account.
3. Click on Notify me when @username posts between Unfollow and account menu buttons.

Then whenever there’s a new post, you’ll find a notification about it on your Notifications page.

In Tip #155 we showed you how to filter posts in various public timelines based on the languages you speak. This time we’ll tell you how to fine tune in which languages you see posts from users you follow.

To change language subscription per user:

1. Go to the user’s profile.
2. Click on the Menu button near the Unfollow button.
3. Select Change Subscribed Languages.
4. Tick the boxes for languages you want to see posts in.

If you select none, you’ll see posts in all languages they post in.

By default, anything you post on Vivaldi Social is publicly visible for everyone to see, but you can change posting privacy both for a specific post and for all future posts.

To change post visibility per post:

1. When composing a post, click on Change post privacy on the menu below the text field.
2. Select the option you prefer:
   •  Public – visible for all
   •  Unlisted – visible for all, but not shown in public timelines
   •  Followers only – visible only to people, who follow you
   •  Mentioned people only – visible only to users you mention in the post

To change the visibility setting for all posts:

1. In Vivaldi Social, go to Preferences > Other > Posting Defaults.
2. For Posting Privacy, select the option you prefer:
   • Public
   • Unlisted
   • Followers only

Vivaldi Social and other Mastodon instances are all about sharing your ideas and cool things you’d like others to know about. Vivaldi’s Team Blog as well as Blogs and Themes by our amazing Community members are definitely worth sharing.

To share content from vivaldi.com and vivaldi.net:

1. Make sure you’re logged in to your account on Vivaldi Social or another Mastodon instance where you have an account.
2. Open the blog post or theme you want to share.
3. Below the blog post/theme click on Mastodon among the Share options.
4. In the dialog that opens, enter the link of your Mastodon instance.
5. Review and, if you wish, add something to the post.
6. Click Publish.