No, you should not need multiple logins for separate instances. What client are you using?

You need to get to the communities from the lemmy.world instance and subscribe from there. There’s a userscript someone made that will automatically redirect links from other instances to your instance, you can get it here.

You can also just manually enter the URL if you know the community and instance. For example the Android community on lemdro.id accessed from lemmy.world is https://lemmy.world/c/android@lemdro.id

Edit: I will say, this is one of the biggest issues I currently have trying to use mastodon and lemmy. The fact that links by default don’t redirect to your instance, even on the instance itself is baffling to me. I shouldn’t have to use an extension to ensure I can stay on my instance, and not have to manually look someone up if I click on their profile on mastodon.

I had this yesterday but manages to figure out my problem last night.

It seems that when you first signup you’re give what is effectively read-only (or guest) access to Lemmy via Lemmey.World - this is so you can see what instaces exist ans which you’d want to join.

Once you join an instance, in my case sopuli, you need to log into that instance on your app and run your searches etc.

Liftoff (app i use) allows me to search from L.W or sopuli, if i search from L.W i can’t interact with anything, if i search from sepuli I’m able to post confusing answers!

Thanks for the replies. I’m using Liftoff rather than browser (I already have violentmonkey installed for various scripts so thanks for the heads up for that one).

It gets more confusing to me. Clicking the link https://lemmy.world/c/android@lemdro.id took me straight there & I could subscribe …but searching for that URL in Liftoff didn’t work. And searching for another lemdro.id community also returns nothing: https://lemmy.world/c/samsung@lemdro.id.

Logging in on PC browser & using Lemmy search returned no results. The only way I could subscribe to https://lemmy.world/c/samsung@lemdro.id was to sign in to lemmy.world on PC then directly input that url in another tab & subscribe.

The communities state to use the following format from your home instance to search & subscribe example !apple@lemdro.id

Searching in this format using Liftoff or PC browser gives no results (search = Communities, All. Community = All. Search term = !android@lemdro.id). The only way I can do it is as above, going directly to the URL in a browser.

Frustrating as hell. I know the infrastructure is struggling under the influx of new users but the lack of working search & the absolute ball ache to subscribe will put off so many reddit refugees

Cheers. All other suggestions showing me the error of my ways are very welcome

Others seem to be having trouble too. Leaving this here as in case others stumble across it:

The only way ive found to force search/subscribe to work is to log into your lemmy account in a browser (desktop or phone). Open another tab then go directly to the desired instance URL open the sidebar & subscribe. You will then be able to open the community from your subscription page in your app.

The URL is in the format:

https://your_lemmy_ instance_here/c/community_name_here@instance_hosting_community_here

In my case to reach !plex@lemmy.ml it would be: https://lemmy.world/c/plex@lemmy.ml

Or !apple@lemdro.id would be https://lemmy.world/c/apple@lemdro.id

Yes you will need multiple accounts to log in to each instance individually, though you can access other instances from your own instance, but that comes with the caveat that the instances you are trying to access should be federated with each other.

This is as far as I know … If anyone knows more feel free to add.