I recently moved three Mastodon accounts from one instance to another and it was very easy to do. The official documentation is pretty clear, but I thought I would document how I did so that I can read through it in my own words next time I want to move instance.
Although there are some attempts to make it possible to move your old posts across to the new instance, I really don’t care about that. Social media is ephemeral to me. I have this blog for stuff I want to keep longer term. Let all the old posts burn.
With that in mind, the steps are pretty easy:
- In your old account go to preferences > Import and export > Export
- Download CSV files of the accounts you follow, mute, and block etc
- Create a new account on the instance you want to move to
- Set up your display name, bio, and photo
- In your new account go to preferences > Import and export > Import
- Upload the CSV files one by one
- In your new account go to preferences > Account and look for “Moving from a different account”
- There is a link there which takes you to a page where you have to create an alias to your old account
- In your old account go to preferences > Account and look for “Moving to a different account”
- There is a link there which takes you to a page where you enter your new account details
Once you do all that, it takes a few minutes for all your followers to move across and that’s pretty much it. You might lose some followers because their instance didn’t get the memo, but that seems to be fairly rare.