In Mastodon, I end up using Home as a Firehose, and Subscribe to get notifications from the few accounts whose posts I never want to miss. But this just moves the problem sideways. Instead of being lost in the firehose of my Home feed, they end up lost in the firehose of my notifications.

I follow many accounts just to populate search (searches on Mastodon can only find stuff that's born on the service you use, or from someone followed by an account on your service).

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@TerryHancock
> You can do this with 'exclusive lists' in Hometown

Mastodon has lists, but they're kind of a bolt-on. A lot of apps don't fully support them, or bury them so deep in the interface I forget they exist.

What I'm wanting looks like all-follows being a built-in list, set as the default Home feed. Then, when it starts to become a firehose, being able to choose a different list to be my Home feed.

Would it be fair to say that lists are the functionality you want, and the issue is with client apps not making them easy to use?

I'm finding Ivory reasonably good for a similar workflow. I start with a Don't Miss list, then when that's finished go to Friends, then New Zealand, then News. I get to home about once a week, but never get close to catching up there.

I could see a UI that made this kind of workflow central.
@TerryHancock

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@isaacfreeman
> the issue is with client apps not making them easy to use?

I guess so. If the Home feed was a follow-all list, and there was an option to choose a different list as Home, that would do exactly what I need.

Any chance of getting that on the roadmap for @moshidon and other apps?

@TerryHancock

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In fact, I don't even know if it always makes sense for Home to be the default. For new accounts, it would be better for Local or Federated to be default, with the follow-all firehose introduced in the interface upon first follow. Progressive disclosure FTW!

#HatTip to @tchambers, whose recent piece on fediverse UX got me thinking along these lines

timothychambers.net/2025/06/24…

#FediverseIdeas

@moshidon
> You can edit which timeline comes first

How do I do that? I had a poke around the list manager and the settings, but can't see any way to make a list come up when I tap Home, instead of the standard follow-all.

@SmartmanApps
> Lists have an option to exclude from Home, so you just put everything in relevant lists, and exclude from Home as you want

Hey cool. I guess the idea is your have your friends in Home, people you enjoy talking to and want to do that more. Then Excluded from Home lists are for people you follow more for their topical posts. Nice.

@moshidon has this, but I might set up an alt account to test it out on. Been meaning to set one up for Disintermedia.

@TerryHancock

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@TerryHancock
> people who wouldn't want to converse, anyway. Since they're not in my "Home" stream, it preserves the more conversational nature of that feed

That makes a lot of sense. Separating parasocial follows from 2-way connections. Other fedi software, particularly the Friendica branch of the family, supports that distinction more explicitly. I just wish they had better UX.

@SmartmanApps

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> Mastodon only displays 4 lists in the web interface

If you have an Android I highly recommend @moshidon. I don't think it has that limit?

@tchambers Sure did. Now I'm learning about new ways of using lists that I had no idea were possible. There's probably a bunch of stuff I don't know, ironically, because I've been in the verse for so long.

This is a really good example of the 'elephant chained to a post' principle. I learned to fediverse on GNU Social, and my use habits are still shaped by the formative experience of using that. As well as the Mastodon and third-party apps of a decade ago.

For me it's Tech news sources - things I want to keep up with everyday - then excluded from Home is stuff that I don't necessarily need to keep up with every day (but are nice to read when I have time).

Also, everyone goes in a List anyway, and at any time I can exclude all of them from Home and see if there were any I missed. The whole thing gives you granular control over how much is appearing in your Home feed.