Okay, so this won’t exactly be a big list at the time of this initial post, but I wanted to get this started and hopefully we’ll be able to add to it over time. This topic is for anyone that doesn’t like the vanilla Mastodon web interface (even with @Sirs0ri’s fantastic userscript on top!) and wants something a little different. Well, I’m here to tell you that there are some options.
One thing to note on these is that each client is somewhat opinionated and reflects the views and tastes of their developers. They are not 1-to-1 replacements for the Mastodon UI, they are alternatives to it. Elements may be handled differently, be in different places, or just outright missing, so be aware that each one will have (or not have) some features that the others don’t. It will take a little trial and error to find one that fits your sensibilities!
- Elk (elk.corteximplant.com): Elk is an alternative front-end that has been in development for a little while, and lucky for you, we have one setup already for our CORTEXIMPLANT Mastodon instance! It has a really clean look and feel, allows some color and theme customizations, and has some other interesting features worth checking out.
- Phanpy (phanpy.social): This is another (somewhat opinionated) web front end that looks somewhat similar to Elk, but it has a few different features and has a really nice look and feel to it, and has some nice features like conversation threading and pop out conversations. It also has configurable multi-column support and a “tabbed” interface, although the interface to set them up and display them seems to be slightly less than intuitive (at least it was for me). It’s definitely worth a test drive. This one seems to be in fairly active development, so it’s worth checking back every now and again to see if it has new features to try out.
- Trunks trunks.social: Trunks is a Mastodon client that is available across all platforms - iOS, Android, and Web. The developer tries to keep the experience the same across all the devices, and this one supports a multi-column mode as well as a single-column mode. Additionally, it has some neat features like digest mode, threading, and “remember last read” features to help keep control of your timeline. This one is also pretty actively developed, so also worth checking in with from time to time to see if that new “killer feature” that you’ve been waiting for has been added.
- Semaphore semaphore.social: Semaphore is a simple front end UI similar to Phanpy and Elk, but really kind of latches on to the “less is more” category. Of particular note here are the “Wellness” settings, which can help turn off a lot of the distractions and even set grayscale themes to help minimize eye-strain and help one focus on the actual information being shared. Definitely worth checking out. Thanks to @mello for the tip! Note: it seems that Semaphore is no longer being actively maintained, so you may want to check out the next entry instead if you like what you see with Semaphore.
- Enafore enafore.social: This is a more up-to-date fork of Semaphore, with better support for other Fediverse clients like Akkoma, glitch-soc (Mastodon fork), and others. If you like Semaphore, I would definitely check out Enafore!
So these are all the alternate web UIs for Mastodon that I know about currently. Know of some other ones? Please feel free to add them in the comments so that folks know where to look in the event that they find that they just don’t like the base Masto interface anymore. 
