Abstract Topological physics has revolutionized materials science, introducing topological phases of matter in diverse settings ranging from quantum to photonic and phononic systems. Herein, we present a family of topological systems, which we term “strain topological metamaterials”, whose topological properties are hidden and unveiled only under higher-order (strain) coordinate transformations. We firstly show that the canonical mass dimer, a model that can describe various settings such as electrical circuits and optics, among others, belongs to this family where strain coordinates reveal a topological nontriviality for the edge states at free boundaries. Subsequently, we introduce a mechanical analog of the Majorana-supporting Kitaev chain, which supports topological edge states for both fixed and free boundaries within the proposed framework. Thus, our findings not only extend the way topological edge states are identified, but also promote the fabrication of novel topological metamaterials in various fields, with more complex, tailored boundaries.