diff --git a/Tusker/Screens/Onboarding/InstanceSelectorTableViewController.swift b/Tusker/Screens/Onboarding/InstanceSelectorTableViewController.swift
index 9d48ca6f..95635f01 100644
--- a/Tusker/Screens/Onboarding/InstanceSelectorTableViewController.swift
+++ b/Tusker/Screens/Onboarding/InstanceSelectorTableViewController.swift
@@ -159,7 +159,9 @@ class InstanceSelectorTableViewController: UITableViewController {
         }
         switch item {
         case let .selected(instance):
-            delegate.didSelectInstance(url: URL(string: instance.uri)!)
+            // we can't just turn the URI string from the API into a URL instance, because Mastodon only includes the domain in the "URI"
+            let components = parseURLComponents(input: instance.uri)
+            delegate.didSelectInstance(url: components.url!)
         case let .recommended(instance):
             var components = URLComponents()
             components.scheme = "https"