(These instructions are for using Lemmy in a browser. If you are using an app, some steps may differ.)

How to Join Lemmy

To use Lemmy, you need to be a member of one instance from the list at https://join-lemmy.org/instances. You will still be able to see content from anywhere, but the instance you choose will determine:

  • What URL you use to log in to Lemmy,
  • What content shows on the homepage when you select “Local” or “All”,
  • Who moderates your instance, and
  • What rules you agree to when you sign up.

Choose an instance that matches your interests, language, and region. (If you want more information about an instance, you can tap its “Join” button, which will show you its current homepage in the main view and its description in the sidebar. You can also check the tables here and here.) Please avoid joining instances that are already crowded (1K+ users/month). If an instance gets overcrowded, it can start running slowly or experiencing downtime, so choosing an uncrowded instance will give both you and others a better Lemmy experience.

Once you have decided on an instance, tap its “Join” button to open it and then tap “Sign Up” in the upper-right corner. Fill out the form and wait for your account to be approved.

When your account is approved, log in and customize your profile and settings. If you change your language settings, select “Undetermined” in addition to any languages you speak so that you can still see posts and comments that are not tagged as being in any particular language.

How to Find and Subscribe to Communities

There are four ways to find communities through Lemmy:

  1. To browse communities that others in your instance are already subscribed to, tap the “Communities” tab at the top of the page and choose the “All” scope. Tapping on a community name will open it through your instance.

  2. To browse communities across all instances, visit https://browse.feddit.de/. Tapping on the community’s name will open it, but probably not through your instance (in which case the page will say that you are not logged in). Instead, follow these steps:

    a. Copy the community’s URL or remote name. You can use the copy button next to the community name, you can open the community outside your instance and copy the URL from your address bar, or you can open the community outside your instance and copy the remote name (which will look like !community@instance.tld) from the sidebar.

    b. In your instance, tap on the “🔍 Search” button in the upper toolbar.

    c. Make sure that you have chosen “All” for each of the four filters: “Type”, “Scope”, “Community”, and “Creator”.

    d. Paste the community’s URL or remote name into the search field and tap “Search”.

    e. One of the results should be the community shown as an icon, a name, and a subscriber count. If you do not see it, or it is buried too deep in the search results, try changing “Scope” to “Local”. If that does not work, you may need to wait a bit and try again.

    f. Tap on the community in the search results to open it in your instance.

  3. If you want an experience similar to Reddit’s r/all, visit https://lemmy.directory/home/data_type/Post/listing_type/All/sort/Hot/page/1, which aggregates from these communities as described here. As in Option 2, you can copy and search for a community’s URL to open it in your instance and subscribe to it.

  4. If you don’t see a community by browsing, subscribe to https://lemmy.ml/c/findacommunity and make a post about what you’re looking for.

Once a community is open in your instance, subscribe to it by tapping on the “Subscribe” button at the top of the sidebar. It will then appear in the “Subscribed” section of your “Communities” tab, and its posts will show on your home feeds.

Can’t find a community you’re looking for? If your instance allows it, you can create the community yourself by tapping “Create Community” in the upper toolbar.

  • KNova@links.dartboard.social
    11·
    2 years ago

    If this gets refined a bit with input from the community, I’d recommend adding it to the join-Lemmy repository and making it a part of the official join-Lemmy.org site so instance admins can point to a single location. Also makes it more likely users will see it when checking out Lemmy in the first place

  • Ulu-Mulu-no-die@lemmy.world
    7·
    2 years ago

    That’s very helpful!

    My 2cents: I would expand on “Please avoid joining instances that are already crowded”, new users might not know which ones they are.

    I mean, from the perspective of redditors used to subs counting millions of users, no server on lemmy appears crowded, so I think actually giving numbers could help, something on the line of, please join servers with less than 1K users, if it makes any sense.

    Or maybe actually suggesting specific names of instances that are more general purpose and not overcrowded yet, I personally joined lemmy only yesterday and I would have no idea of which they are, my only “parameter” was choosing a server with less than 500 users because I saw lemmy.ml saying they were overloaded, so I chose lemmy.world instead.

    Other users may not pay that much attention so I believe the more specific the guide is on this, the better for everyone.

    • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      Image description: An image of the admin control menu that appears when clicking on .... beside a post. Many options relating to moderation are displayed. One showing a pin icon labelled “Local” is highlighted in yellow.

  • KNova@links.dartboard.social
    6·
    2 years ago

    My feedback:

    • How to Join Lemmy

      • Explain why users might want to join an instance that isn’t crowded.
      • Explain how users will know when their account is approved

    • How to Find and Subscribe to Communities

    • library_patron@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
      2·
      2 years ago

      Explain why users might want to join an instance that isn’t crowded.

      Done. See if the explanation looks okay.

      Explain how users will know when their account is approved

      I actually don’t know—how does that work? (I joined lemmy.blahaj.zone, where registration is open.)

      explain the community link form in bullet point two: !community@instance.tld

      Done, but I thought I had heard that this was less reliable than using the URL. Does it doing it this way work consistently?

      might want to just say there are three ways to find a community, and then link to https://lemmy.ml/c/findacommunity as the third option

      Done. Again, let me know if you see any further tweaks to make.

  • Kory
    6·
    2 years ago

    I find this concise and very well explained. Great work!

  • andrew@radiation.party
    4·
    2 years ago

    Super helpful, there’s definitely some product ux flow work to do, but with volunteers as developers there’s only so much one can expect

  • Katana314@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 years ago

    In the interest of informativeness:

    Once you have “subscribed/joined” an outer-instance community, I was confused about how to reach it from my instance’s homepage. In Lemmy.world’s instance, I went to Communities, and had to swap from “All” to “Subscribed”. Wonder if other people might appreciate that in the guide, but perhaps that’s the sort of thing that changes per installation.

    • library_patron@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
      2·
      2 years ago

      Sentence added to the second-to-last paragraph. Let me know if it looks okay or it you think it could use some edits.

      (AFAIK, this is not something that varies by instance.)

  • PriorProject@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 years ago

    @library_patron@lemmy.blahaj.zone, how would you feel about adding the lemmy.directory communities page alongside the feddit browser?

    https://lemmy.directory/post/34207 explains how they have attempted to discover and subscribe to all communities in the lemmyverse which makes that community browser a useful alternative to the feddit browser and the all feed a useful place to browse the firehose to find active communities with interesting posts.

    • library_patron@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
      3·
      2 years ago

      Good idea. Tentative edits made. I currently have the link sorting by “hot” rather than “active”, since I think that’s closer to how r/all works (?), but I’m not sure which option is best—thoughts?

      • PriorProject@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 years ago

        I have no opinion on sorting, I gave a link with the default sort. Your choice of hot seems entirely reasonable to me.

        Unrelated, thanks for maintaining this. It’s my only saved post on Lemmy right now, and I’m spamming it almost half a dozen times a day as “how do I sign up for communities” or “I can’t find a community on my instance” questions flow into the big metalemmy communities. It’s an awesome and comprehensive answer I think will help a lot of folks.

        • library_patron@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
          3·
          2 years ago

          Thanks so much! I’m glad it’s turning out to be useful, and I’m glad there are people like you staying on top of all those questions.

  • SQL_InjectMe@partizle.com
    2·
    2 years ago

    How do I subscribe to a kbin community (or “magazine”)? I’ve tried entering the url in my instance like https://partizle.com/c/eve@kbin.social or searching like you’ve described but it can’t find the community. Is that because the instance I’m a member of (partizle) doesn’t federate with kbin?

  • hyperhopper@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 years ago

    This is not working for me. Does my instance have to federate with another instance for me to subscribe to their communities?

  • KNova@links.dartboard.social
    1·
    2 years ago

    My feedback:

    • How to Join Lemmy

      • Explain why users might want to join an instance that isn’t crowded.
      • Explain how users will know when their account is approved

    • How to Find and Subscribe to Communities

  • library_patron@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
    1·
    2 years ago

    Since people are pinning this, I’ve removed the description text, but I’ll include it here for context:

    With the ongoing large influx, I was thinking that it might be nice to have some instructions for new users pinned across instances’ front pages, not only to be more welcoming and help with the learning curve, but also to maybe direct people to less popular instances. Something like this post, but more detailed. I wrote this draft—any thoughts on the idea or the instructions?