A big update to Tuba, the GTK4/libadwaita Fediverse client, has landed – along with an experimental version for Android.
Tuba 0.11.0 is the first major update to the social app in a year and brings full support for Mastodon quotes. Quoting posts, whether others can quote your posts and revoking consent from those who have are all supported in the composer.
While the app had offered it own approach to “quote tweet” sharing of other people’s posts, support for Mastodon’s “consent-based” version means you quote respecting the needs of other users of the decentralised social media site
Mastodon Collections are curated lists of accounts (built around a topic or theme) and shared with a link – not unlike BlueSky’s Starter Packs.
In this release, if your instance supports them, you can browse Collections, follow individual accounts (there’s no ‘follow all’ option be design) and create and edit your own, inside of Tuba.
Tuba 0.11.0 adds UnifiedPush support. On desktops with a UnifiedPush service available and the service enabled, it’ll keep the connection alive, rather than Tuba running in the background to listen for notifications.
Elsewhere, Hashtag Lists let you create custom timelines from multiple hashtags, add custom thumbnails to video or audio attachments in the post composer, and create posts with both attachments and polls (supported instances).
Other smaller, notable changes in Tuba 0.11.0:
- Profile notes show full content and are easier to edit
- Uses
AdwShortcutsDialogfor keyboard shortcut cheat sheet - Compact spacing at narrower window sizes
- Saved media toast shows “Open Folder” button
- Custom emoji picker rewritten
- Haiku OS support
- Font size slider replaces buttons
- Warns when boosting a post with attachments but no alt text
- Featured and Media (and media replies) profile tabs can be disabled
In all, a welcome update for what remains the most featured and user-friendly Mastodon app for Linux desktop. This is certainly a big release, so to revel in all of its nitty-gritty-glory, do check over the full release notes.
Tuba’s nightly Android builds
Tuba is now available for Android, but the builds are in a formative state. The app’s own release notes mention there are “much better options” for using Mastodon on Android.
But, in working on an Android port, “annoyances and UX papercuts” that affected Linux mobile were found and solved. Even if you or the rest of the world stick with those “much better options” on Google’s mobile OS, the effort still brings benefits.
However, you won’t find Tuba in the Play Store or F-Droid – not yet. Instead, you can download nightly builds from the GTK4Android website.
Where to get Tuba 0.11.0
You can install the latest version of Tuba from Flathub. There is an official Snap Store build but, as of writing, that hasn’t been updated.
If you’re happy without the changes mentioned in this post, you can install an older version of Tuba on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and up from the repos using sudo apt install tuba. Riding Ubuntu 26.10 daily builds? v0.11.0 will be in the stonking archives shortly.
Otherwise, head to the official Tuba website. That has download links and details on all available Linux packages and formats, as well as a downloadable Windows installer if you fancy using the client on the dark side of your dual-boot setup.