How to Sync Your Twitter and Mastodon Account Realtime

Here are some tips to sync or crosspost between Twitter and Mastodon Account.

Admin

Updated on: November 18, 2022

After Elon Musk took charge as the new CEO of Twitter many of the users decided to opt-out form Twitter and shifted to a new platform Mastodon.

Users found that Mastodon is one of the best alternatives for Twitter. Mastodon is almost similar to Twitter but Mastodon is an open-source social network that can’t be controlled by any one organization. Twitter allows 280-character for Tweets whereas Mastodon offers 500-character for Toots. On Twitter, you can Like, or Retweet to your followers; on Mastodon you can Favorite, or Boost to your followers.

Cyber Kendra is also on Mastodon. You can find it at techhub.social/@cyberkendra

You can also read Scott Feeney's blog which has a nice discussion of subtle differences between Twitter and Mastodon that make for a healthier conversation.

What is Mastodon?

Mastodon is a free social media service that functions much like Twitter. It is a decentralized, open-source, ad-free platform initially developed by German software developer Eugen Rochko. It is essentially made up of thousands of different servers, or “instances”, run across the world.

How To Sync Posts from Twitter to Mastodon & Viceversa?

If you don't like to move from Twitter and want to use both Twitter and Mastodon at the same time then this is also possible. ⌣ Thanks to the open Application Programming Interface (API) of Twitter.

What you need, is a way to sync between them, that lets you share the content from Twitter to Mastodon and Mastodon to Twitter.

Here are some of the best ways to sync your content from your Twitter account to your Mastodon account & vice versa, without doing anything. In this way, you can be active on both platforms.

1. Mastodon-Twitter Crossposter: This is an app for crossposting between Mastodon and Twitter. The app is made so that multiple users can connect to it using the OAuth interface from both Twitter and Mastodon and choose options on how the crosspost should work.

Features of Crossposter

Post from Twitter to Mastodon

You can choose between posting only your tweets, or also posting retweets and quotes.
You can choose between posting retweets and quotes as links or as the old-style RTs, starting by RT @[email protected].
Quotes bigger than 500 characters are automatically split into two toots, one replying to the other.
Your own threads can also be crossposted!
No other replies will be posted. There's no risk of filling your Mastodon timeline with replies to people that are not there.
Images and videos are crossposted to Mastodon. The best quality that fits Mastodon will be crossposted!
Image and any other media descriptions from Twitter are completely crossposted to Mastodon
Possibility to add a content warning to all tweets being posted to Mastodon
Infer content warnings: if your tweet begins with a line containing "content warning" it will be posted behind a content warning on Mastodon. More information about which formats are supported can be seen below at the Experimental Content Warning recognition
Blocklists or Allowlists: Only crosspost tweets containing one word from a list or do not crosspost tweets that contain at least one word from a list

Post from Mastodon to Twitter

Any toot bigger than 280 characters will be posted with a link to the original toot. (Be careful, if you post your private toots, your followers might not be able to see the original post!)
Mind your privacy: you can choose which privacy levels you want to crosspost. Only posting public toots, for instance.
Images and videos will be crossposted over to Twitter
Images and video descriptions from Mastodon will be crossposted to Twitter, in medias where Twitter support descriptions
Choose how to handle toots with content warnings; crosspost only the CW, only the content, or both! If only the CW is crossposted, the tweet will also include a link to the original toot, so your followers can read the content on Mastodon if they want.
If your image is marked as sensitive, the rest of the toot will be crossposted, together with a hint that there are images attached and a link to the original post.
You can choose between posting boosts or not.
Your own threads can also be crossposted, respecting to the choices you made regarding your privacy.
No other replies will be posted. There's no risk of filling your twitter timeline with replies to people that are not there.
Blocklists or Allowlists: Only crosspost toots containing one word from a list or do not crosspost tweets that contain at least one word from a list

The crossposter will never follow anyone or post anything but the content you selected to be crossposted.

If you decide to crosspost from Twitter to Mastodon, remember to turn on notifications when people mention you to avoid not seeing interactions!

2. Using of IFTTT Service: IFTTT is one of the best connectivity platforms, which runs online digital automation platforms that it offers as a service. Their platforms provide a visual interface for making cross-platform if statements to its users. IFTTT derives its name from the programming conditional statement “if this, then that.”

Here are steps on how you can automatically post content on both of the platforms.

The steps are for Twitter to Mastodon, you can change steps and steps for mastodon to Twitter.

Sign-up for an IFTTT account.
Connect the Twitter channel
Connect the Feed channel
Create a new applet
Use the Feed channel, ‘New Feed Item’
(although you could filter your posts here if you like)
Use your user's personal atom feed (e.g. https://mastodon.social/@cyberkendra.atom)
Use {{EntryContent}} as your tweet content
Save it, you’re done!

Note: Change mastodon.socialto your mastodon server and to your cyberkendra user id.

Some Self-Host Tools!

3. Mastodon Twitter Sync: This tool is developed by Klaus Purer, it synchronizes posts from Mastodon to Twitter and back. It does not matter where you post your stuff - it will get synchronized to the other!

Synchronization Features

Your status update on Twitter will be posted automatically to Mastodon
Your Retweet on Twitter will automatically be posted to Mastodon with an "RT username:" prefix
Your status update on Mastodon will be posted automatically on Twitter
Your boost on Mastodon will be posted automatically to Twitter with an "RT username:" prefix
Your own threads (your replies to your own posts) will be synced both ways

You can read all the details regarding the installation and usage of the tool from its GitHub Repo.

4. MastodonToTwitter: MastodonToTwitter is a real-time cross-poster tool that uses streaming APIs. This tool is developed in python by Amaury Carrade. You can run this tool on Docker and Heroku also.

You can read all the details regarding the installation and usage of the tool from its GitHub Repo.

5. Moa Bridge: This is a flask app written in python and can be run with proxied via WSGI. The great thing about the MOA is, it preserves image alt text and handles boosts/retweets.

MOA is also available web-based and you can visit https://moa.party to access the MOA.

You can read all the details regarding the installation and usage of the tool from its GitLab Repo.

Bonus Tips: Finding Twitter Friends On Mastodon

You can easily look for your Twitter friends to get connect on Mastodon, with the help of Twitodon. All you need is to log in to both their Twitter and Mastodon accounts on Twitodon. After doing so, the service will look through the people you follow on Twitter and check if they have used Twittodon previously.

The next step is to download the “matching users” list in the CSV format and import it into your Mastodon account. Follow these steps to import the user’s list in Mastodon

Go to your Mastodon account import page
Click on “browse’ and select the file you downloaded, it’ll be named new_mastodon_follows.csv.
Select “Merge” to add new contacts without removing the old ones and click on upload.

The best thing about Twitodon is that it gives users the option to revoke Twitter’s access to their accounts. This option separates your Twittodon account from your Twitter account. Doing so is also pretty easy as the revoke access button appears right after a successful login to Twittodon using a Twitter account.