Connecting Mastodon to Goji

Mastodon is not one website but thousands of independent servers that talk to each other. Your account lives on one of them — mastodon.social, or a server for your country, industry or interest — and you connect that server specifically. Everything below happens on your own server's website, whichever one that is.

What connecting Mastodon gives you

• Automatic posts. Each new article is posted to your timeline with its headline, summary and a link.
• Reach across the network. Followers on other servers see your posts too, because that is how Mastodon works.
• Access you control. You create a token yourself and can revoke it at any time, without changing your password.
• Any server. There is no approved list — if you can sign in to it, you can connect it.

Before you start

You need to know your server's address. If your handle is @[email protected] then your server is mastodon.social. Sign in there in a browser rather than in a phone app, because the setting you need is not always exposed in apps.

How to create an access token

1. Sign in to your Mastodon server in a browser.
2. Go to Preferences → Development.
3. Choose New application.
4. Give it a name, such as "Goji". The website field can be left as it is.
5. Under scopes, make sure write:statuses and write:media are ticked. Untick anything you do not want to grant — a posting tool has no need for follow or admin scopes.
6. Save, then open the application you just created and copy Your access token.

The token is equivalent to a password for the permissions you ticked, so keep it private. If it leaks, delete the application on your server and the token dies with it.

How to connect it in Goji

1. Open Channels and choose Mastodon.
2. Enter your server address — just the domain, such as mastodon.social.
3. Paste the access token.
4. Save. Goji verifies the token with your server straight away.

A note on post length

Most Mastodon servers allow 500 characters, but servers may set their own limit, and some allow far more. Goji reads the limit your server reports and trims the post to fit rather than letting it be rejected, so a long headline and summary will be shortened with the link preserved.

If something goes wrong

• The token is rejected. It was copied incompletely, or the application was deleted. Create a new application and copy the token again.
• Posting fails with a permissions error. The application was created without write:statuses. Scopes cannot be edited afterwards — create a new application with the right ones.
• The server was not found. Enter the domain only, with no https:// and no trailing slash and no @.

Common questions

Can I connect accounts on several servers? Yes. Create a token on each server and connect each one.

Does it matter which server I am on? Only for the limits and rules that server sets. Connecting works the same everywhere.

Will posts reach people on other servers? Yes, through anyone who follows you.

How do I revoke access? Delete the application under Preferences → Development, or disconnect the channel in Goji.