Pinafore

Note: Pinafore is unmaintained. Read this. Original documentation follows.

An alternative web client for Mastodon, focused on speed and simplicity.

Pinafore is available at pinafore.social. Beta releases are at dev.pinafore.social.

See the user guide for basic usage. See the admin guide if Pinafore cannot connect to your instance.

For updates and support, follow @pinafore@fosstodon.org.

Browser support

Pinafore supports the latest versions of the following browsers:

• Chrome
• Edge
• Firefox
• Safari

Compatible versions of each (Opera, Brave, Samsung, etc.) should be fine.

Goals and non-goals

Goals

• Support the most common use cases
• Small page weight
• Fast even on low-end devices
• Accessibility
• Offline support in read-only mode
• Progressive Web App features
• Multi-instance support
• Support latest versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari
• Support non-Mastodon instances (e.g. Pleroma) as well as possible
• Internationalization

Secondary / possible future goals

• Serve as an alternative frontend tied to a particular instance
• Offline search

Non-goals

• Supporting old browsers, proxy browsers, or text-based browsers
• React Native / NativeScript / hybrid-native version
• Android/iOS apps (using Cordova or similar)
• Full functionality with JavaScript disabled
• Emoji support beyond the built-in system emoji
• Multi-column support
• Admin/moderation panel
• Offline support in read-write mode (would require sophisticated sync logic)

Building

Pinafore requires Node.js and Yarn.

To build Pinafore for production, first install dependencies:

yarn --production --pure-lockfile

Then build:

yarn build

Then run:

PORT=4002 node server.js

Docker

To build a Docker image for production:

docker build .
docker run -d -p 4002:4002 [your-image]

Now Pinafore is running at localhost:4002.

docker-compose

Alternatively, use docker-compose to build and serve the image for production:

docker-compose up --build -d

The image will build and start, then detach from the terminal running at localhost:4002.

Updating

To keep your version of Pinafore up to date, you can use git to check out the latest tag:

git checkout $(git tag -l | sort -Vr | head -n 1)

Exporting

Pinafore is a static site. When you run yarn build, static files will be written to __sapper__/export.

It is not recommended to directly expose these files when self-hosting. Instead, you should use node server.js (e.g. with an nginx or Apache proxy in front). This adds several things you don't get from the raw static files:

• CSP headers (important for security)
• Certain dynamic routes (less important because of Service Worker managing routing, but certain things could break if Service Workers are disabled in the user's browser)

Having an nginx config generator is currently an open issue.

Developing and testing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to run Pinafore in dev mode and run tests.

Changelog

For a changelog, see the GitHub releases.

For a list of breaking changes, see BREAKING_CHANGES.md.

What's with the name?

Pinafore is named after the Gilbert and Sullivan play. The soundtrack is very good.

Fork gotchas (bawnet) — read before touching components or the -nc build

Two bugs that each cost a day (2026-08-06, ops/features#30 has the full forensics):

1. Never write attr={cond ? value : undefined} in a Svelte 2 template. For property-backed attributes it compiles to a direct property write, and a.target = undefined stringifies to target="undefined" — a NAMED browsing-context target: sapper's click handler refuses the anchor (no client-side routing) and the browser opens a top-level window — inside the Nextcloud iframe that is a frame-break. Use '' as the "absent" arm (see SettingsListButton.html). Upstream's aria-hidden={x ? 'true' : undefined} (IconButton) is setAttribute-path and aria-only — left as is.

2. The inline script has its own build with its own env substitution. bin/build-inline-script.js (rollup) knows nothing of webpack's DefinePlugin. Any process.env.X that can reach the inline bundle (it imports themeEngine → basepath.js) MUST be added to that file's replace values, or the entire inline script dies in the browser on line 1 ("process is not defined") — killing the boot theme and window globals (__themeColors) that runtime code dereferences. This was invisible for a day because the sapper bootstrap is a separate script tag: the app worked, only the inline script's features were dead.

Related build rule: bin/postprocess-nc.js rewrites ATTRIBUTES in exported HTML only — never JS text (compiled bp() owns runtime URLs; text rewrites become double-prefixers), and it prunes export/apps/ (404-crawl wreckage the exporter generates by following bp()-prefixed links).