Is this the whole fediverse?

No, and that matters. This is mastodon.social, the largest single instance. The fediverse spans thousands of servers, each with its own trends, and no central index exists.

Why is Mastodon's trending list so slow?

By design. The software requires a tag to spread across many separate accounts, and instance moderators can review trends before they are promoted, which makes coordinated pushes much harder than on centralised networks.

Yes. It comes from The public trends endpoint of mastodon.social, refreshed through this site's pipeline. Nothing is invented or simulated, and if the source cannot be reached the saver reports that instead of drawing something plausible.

Does it cost anything or need an account?

No. Every screensaver here is free, runs in the browser and needs no sign-up. This one uses a public API that requires no key.

Trending On Mastodon Screensaver

The Trending On Mastodon screensaver ranks hashtags trending on mastodon.social by how much they have been used over seven days. Mastodon requires a tag to be used by many distinct accounts before it will promote it — specifically to make brigading harder — so what appears here has genuine spread. It runs in the browser with nothing to install; press ESC to exit.

How the Trending On Mastodon screensaver works

The saver reads The public trends endpoint of mastodon.social, refreshed through this site's pipeline.

No account and no key: the request goes straight from your browser, or from this site's own refreshed copy of the feed where the source does not allow browser access.

Values are drawn on a canvas that resizes with the window, so it works on a laptop or a wall display.

If the source is unreachable the saver says so on screen rather than showing stale numbers as though they were current.

A worked example

Each row is a hashtag with a bar scaled to its weekly post count, and the number of distinct accounts using it today alongside. The account count is the honest measure of reach: a tag with many posts from few accounts is one enthusiastic person, and Mastodon's own algorithm discounts exactly that.

Settings & tips

Accent and Background recolour the display without changing the data.
Add it to a Multi-view grid to watch it alongside other live savers.
Press ESC at any time to leave fullscreen.

Frequently asked questions

Is this the whole fediverse?: No, and that matters. This is mastodon.social, the largest single instance. The fediverse spans thousands of servers, each with its own trends, and no central index exists.
Why is Mastodon's trending list so slow?: By design. The software requires a tag to spread across many separate accounts, and instance moderators can review trends before they are promoted, which makes coordinated pushes much harder than on centralised networks.
Is this real data?: Yes. It comes from The public trends endpoint of mastodon.social, refreshed through this site's pipeline. Nothing is invented or simulated, and if the source cannot be reached the saver reports that instead of drawing something plausible.
Does it cost anything or need an account?: No. Every screensaver here is free, runs in the browser and needs no sign-up. This one uses a public API that requires no key.

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