GoToSocial

Updated 1 November 2026

GoToSocial is a lightweight, secure, and private ActivityPub social network server, your gateway to the larger Fediverse.

With GoToSocial, you can keep in touch with your friends, post, read, and share images and articles. All without being tracked or advertised to!

Get a 7-day trial of ElfHosted GoToSocial!

How do I access GoToSocial?

GoToSocial is available:

• From your dashboard: https://your-username.elfhosted.com
• Directly: https://your-username-gotosocial.elfhosted.com

How to use GoToSocial

Setup admin account

By default, GoToSocial includes no accounts. It's necessary to create an account for yourself, using the GoToSocial CLI shortcut on your ElfHosted apps dashboard.

Create account

Run a variation of the following to create your account:

gotosocial admin account create \
  --username=<your username> \
  --email=<your email address> \
  --password=<your password>

Promote account

Promote your account to an administrator:

gotosocial admin account promote --username <yourname>

Restart GoToSocial

Promotion of an account requires a restart of the GoToSocial binary to fully take effect, so from the GoToSocial CLI, run:

pkill gotosocial

User Interface

Per the official FAQ:

GoToSocial is just a bare server for the most part and is designed to be used thru external applications. Pinafore in the browser, Tusky for Android and Feditext for iOS, iPadOS and macOS are the best-supported.

Anything that supports the Mastodon API should work, other than the features GoToSocial doesn't yet have. Permalinks and profile pages are served directly through GoToSocial as well as the settings panel, but most interaction goes through the apps.

Configure profile / instance

Your profile and instance settings are available at https://<your gotosocial url>/settings/

Backup / Export

Your GoToSocial data is stored in config/gotosocial, and can be backed up either by copying the config.yaml and the *.db* files manually, or with Backup in the ... menu on its card in ElfBot.

Assuming you used a custom domain name, then migrating your instance to another, non-ElfHosted GoToSocial installation is as simple as dropping the config and databases into the new instance, redirecting your DNS, and starting it up.

Use a custom domain

If you don't want to use the ElfHosted domain name, you can BYO domain and point it to your ElfHosted GoToSocial account.

Assuming your ElfHosted username is batman, and you have your own domain, awesomeburger.com, and you want social.awesomburger.com to point to your ElfHosted GoToSocial instance.

Create a CNAME record on your domain, pointing social.awesomeburger.com to batman-gotosocial.elfhosted.com.

Purchase the custom domain addon, and set the CNAME to social.awesomeburger.com.

Upon purchase, a LetsEncrypt certificate will be generated for your custom domain, and the necessary additional routes added to our loadbalancer.

It's now necessary to edit your GoToSocial config.yaml, and to update the host value to match your new domain. You'll also need to reinitialized GoToSocial after making a domain change, so delete any *.db.* files in config/gotosocial, and then restart GoToSocial from its card in ElfBot

How do I get support for GoToSocial?

1. For general use of GoToSocial, refer to the official site or to one of the links in the resources section below.

2. For specific support re your ElfHosted configuration / account, see the ElfHosted support options!

Sponsor GoToSocial ❤️

You can contribute directly to the development of GoToSocial using the following:

• OpenCollective

• LibrePay

GoToSocial resources

• GoToSocial (official site)

• GoToSocial GitHub

• GoToSocial Docs

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