Mastodon introduces Collections, its take on Bluesky starter packs for account discovery

Mastodon is getting its own version of Bluesky’s Starter Packs with Collections, a new feature coming in Mastodon 4.6 that lets people bundle and share recommended accounts. Mastodon has openly said it reviewed public feedback around Bluesky’s feature before building its own take, especially around consent and removal controls. If someone adds your account to a Collection, you will be notified, able to review it, and remove yourself if needed. Users can also opt-out entirely by disabling the existing “Feature profile and posts in discovery algorithms” setting, which makes their account ineligible for Collections.

Collections will launch with a much smaller limit than Bluesky’s Starter Packs, supporting up to 25 accounts instead of 150. Mastodon says that lower cap is meant to keep the feature more focused and reduce the kind of spammy behavior seen with larger packs. Collections can include a short description, a single hashtag topic, and an optional sensitive content warning. They can be set as Public or Unlisted and shared by link, though broader search and discovery features will come later once more Collections exist and Mastodon has a better sense of how people use them.

Mastodon is also not adding a “Follow all” button at launch, saying feedback from Bluesky showed that mass following old or stale packs could lead to a weaker feed, while bulk unfollow creates its own complications. For now, the company is treating Collections as a cautious version 1 release, with more changes possible based on community feedback. Collections will begin rolling out on mastodon.social in the coming week before becoming available to all servers with Mastodon 4.6, which also includes a profile redesign for mobile, a new Activity tab, and updated onboarding explainers.