The PixelFed Guide: Following an account and Searching posts.

When you follow someone, you will see any future posts from them in your Home feed. You can follow people across the fediverse. That is, Pixelfed users on your own server, on other PF servers, but also accounts on any server (e.g. Mastodon) on the fediverse.

Note: If you follow a non-pixelfed user you will ONLY see their posts which contain images. If it is a text only post you will not see it in your Home feed.

Follow from a post

If you see a post in one of your timelines, hover your mouse on the users account name at the top of the post. Click the blue follow button to add them to your followers. They will be notified that you have started following them.

If you hover over the account, and you are already following them, you will see a button saying “Following”. If you click this you will then unfollow the account. The user will NOT be told you have stopped following them.

Searching

If you know a user's account name on the fediverse, type it in the Search bar at the top of any page. Press the enter key to validate the name and then click the account for a summary. You can then click the blue follow button. The user will be informed that you have started following them.

You can search using the account ID, or web address on their server.

Example:

• @bumble@pixelfed.scot

• https://pixelfed.scot/@bumble

  Searching in Pixelfed is very poorly implemented at the moment. When using the web interface, the search bar at the top of the screen is used to search for accounts to follow

  

  Search using a hashtags

  If you click on a hashtag on an existing image, Pixelfed will show you all the posts on the server with the same hashtag.

  However, if you want to type a hashtagto search for, you must manipulate the web address in your browser!

  As an example, if you are using pixelfed.social as your Pixelfed server, change the address bar to:

  https://pixelfed.social/i/web/hashtag/trees

  where 'trees' is the hashtag you are looking for.

  You can then use the Follow button to have posts with this tag appear in your own timeline in the future.

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