In many ways, Mastodon reminds me of things I really liked about Twitter. It has all kinds of people posting about topics I'm interested in and it can surface the wackiest posts in a way that appeals to me. A slew of great third-party apps is another of the reasons why I find myself using Mastodon more than any other Twitter alternative. While Ivory seems to be the preferred Mastodon app for most Apple users (and I like it too), increasingly I find myself gravitating towards another app—Mona.
For me, the joy of using third-party clients for social media lies in the ability to tweak things to my liking. This is why Apollo was my favorite Reddit client and now, Mona is my favorite Mastodon client for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Mona lets you customize a lot of things and its latest update added the ability to schedule posts, too.
Mona has a generous free tier
Mona allows you to post, follow people, participate in polls, retoot (Mastodon's version of retweeting), and access a large number of its customization tools for free. This may sound normal, but lots of other third-party Mastodon apps restrict way too many features in the free tier. If that's not enough, Mona has a unique 14-day free trial where you don't get charged at the end of the trial. You can try all of its Pro features for two weeks and not worry about canceling it.
If you wish to upgrade, Mona has a one-time fee ($11.99 for one platform and $19.99 for all Apple platforms that it supports) to unlock all Pro features. There is no recurring subscription here, which will appeal to many people.
You can schedule posts
Mona 6, the newest update to the app, allows you to schedule toots on Mastodon. This is a crucial feature for people who use Mona to showcase their work: It's a good idea to space out your posts so that more people can see it. Mona's scheduling is easy to set up and works well on its Mac and iPhone apps.
Share toots as screenshots
Many of my friends can't be bothered to join Mastodon, but they really enjoy some of the fun posts I see on the social media platform. For these people, I love using Mona's built-in screenshot tool that quickly snaps any post, copies the image to the clipboard or lets me share directly to messaging apps. This is much faster than manually taking screenshots of posts.
Automatically convert long posts to threads
If you've typed up a long message that exceeds Mastodon's 500-character limit for a single post, Mona will automatically convert it to a thread. The app also numbers each post in a thread so people know how long your thread is and can trace its beginning and end if they need to.
A ton of available automations
Mona supports Apple's Shortcuts actions, which lets you automate many things. You can set it up to automatically create posts based on certain triggers and combine this with the iPhone 15 Pro's Action Button for even faster execution. The developer, Junyu Kuang, has listed the following actions on its App Store page as part of the Mona 6 update:
Send posts with a scheduled date
Get, reschedule, or delete scheduled posts
Send posts with media or poll attachment
Send replies to a specified post, so you can create a thread of posts with customized automation
Get character limit of certain account
Split text for threading
Get, add, modify, or delete server-side filters linked to your Mastodon accounts
Check if the Mona app is running (so you can alter the Action button's behavior when Mona is running)
Get the post or profile currently displayed in the Mona app
Open the in-app post composer or search view
Adjust settings for video autoplay (e.g. when you are using a certain Focus mode or when battery level is low)
Get and set image caption (e.g. combining with a third-party caption-generating action)
Get accessibility text of accounts or posts
Take screenshots of certain posts
You can tweak how the app looks and works
Mona gives you an unprecedented level of control over its interface. You can go to the app's settings and select Tab Bar to see all of the buttons in its bottom bar. You'll be able to reorder, show, or hide any element here. You can also rename any of these buttons and change its icon, which is a level of freedom that few apps offer. You can also go to the General page within Mona settings and tweak many more things including text size, whether you see people's badges, if you want to automatically expand long posts, and much more. The Post Actions settings page is also worth visiting for setting up quick actions under any post on your feed.