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The Bluesky hater’s guide to using Bluesky

If it wasn’t obvious from some of my past posts, I don’t particularly care for Bluesky.

It bugs me that the most-favoured alternative to Twitter was to recreate what Twitter was like after Twitter had already started going rotten.

It bugs me that rather than using an existing, widely standardised protocol, they opted to create their own that—for most purposes—isn’t as open, and currently isn’t even as good, as ActivityPub.

It bugs me that, to this day, it still lacks basic features that Mastodon has had for multiple years.

I could go on. Regardless, a critical mass of people I know and care about have chosen to use it over other alternatives, so I—begrudgingly—find myself having to use it.

But what if you could use Bluesky without actually using Bluesky? 🤔

An amphimorpho looking to the side in puzzlement, with a paw on its chin in thought.

I say “Mastodon” a lot in this post, but what I should really say is “fediverse”, as there are lots and lots and lots of federated microblogging softwares that are all compatible with one another, like Akkoma and Firefish.

I’m using Mastodon as a shorthand for all of them, given it’s the most widely recognised of them.

Make some app passwords

You’re going to need a couple of app passwords for this.

Head over to the app passwords section of Bluesky’s settings and create a couple. Give them useful names and paste the passwords somewhere safe for now. You can’t see them again after closing the dialog box where they appear.

Crossposting to Bluesky

Skymoth is a tool that takes Mastodon posts and crossposts them on Bluesky. It’s an easy set-and-forget way of putting things on Bluesky.

An amphimorpho looking alarmed and grimacing.

…with the following caveats.

  • Skymoth is limited to only sharing ‘public’ posts.
  • It cannot update edited Mastodon posts, as Bluesky doesn’t support post editing.
  • Bluesky’s character limit is lower than on most Mastodon instances, meaning longer posts will get split up.
  • Bluesky doesn’t support any text formatting, so crossposting from Mastodon instances with Markdown or HTML support probably won’t work very well.
  • It can only crosspost images. Bluesky didn’t support video until literally last week, and it still doesn’t support audio posts or polls like Mastodon does.
  • Except images with transparency and animated GIFs, which Bluesky doesn’t support.
  • Threaded Mastodon posts won’t be threaded on Bluesky.
  • Content warnings from Mastodon won’t appear on Bluesky.
  • Custom emoji from Mastodon won’t appear on Bluesky.

I previously used my own script to do crossposting, but just use Skymoth, it’s better.

Taking it to the bridge

So you’re posting to Bluesky. That doesn’t really help with keeping up with people who are using it, though.

So you’ll also want to get set up with Sky Bridge. Sky Bridge is a service that translates from Bluesky’s AT protocol to the ActivityPub protocol used by Mastodon, allowing you to view Bluesky feeds, profiles, etc. from within a Mastodon client.

It does some subtle nice things too, like translating Bluesky’s sensitive content ratings into Mastodon content warnings.

Bluesky has actively funded Sky Bridge’s development before, so you can be reasonably confident that they’re happy with them doing this.

An amphimorpho smiling warmly with multiple love hearts floating around it.

Sky Bridge is made by fellow British furry and nonhumanity-enjoyer Videah, which is a sure sign of it being quality software.

Wait, a Mastodon client?

Yes, a Mastodon client!

Using Sky Bridge isn’t going to get you very far if you’ve only ever used Mastodon’s web interface. What you need is a multi-account client.

If you want to stick to something browser-based, I can recommend Phanpy. It’s a neat, polished little client that reimplements Mastodon’s single and multi-column experiences, but adds a bunch more customisation and quality of life improvements, like inline replies. And it’s free!

On macOS and iOS, if you have the money, the standard setter is by far Ivory, created by the developers formerly responsible for the multi-award-winning app Tweetbot, before it was savagely murdered by Elon Musk.

For Windows and Android… I have no clue.

Using a client does mean potentially sacrificing features that are specific to your Mastodon instance, if it’s been customised. Your mileage may vary.

That’s pretty much it

Not much more to say there. If all went well, you should now be able to both read Bluesky, post to Bluesky, and get mentions and notifications from Bluesky—all without actually having to use Bluesky’s website or a different client specific to Bluesky. Bluesky.

END.


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11 comments

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  1. ShezHsky@blimps.xyz

    @batbeeps nice, thanks for the easy run-down!

  2. batbeeps@chitter.xyz

    I had to update the list of caveats to add more Mastodon features that Bluesky doesn't support. lol. lmao.

  3. DarkOverord@blimps.xyz

    @batbeeps Re: "For Windows and Android… I have no clue."

    Windows I use Sengi - https://nicolasconstant.github.io/sengi/
    Android I use Tusky - https://tusky.app/

    If that's worth anything

  4. DarkOverord@blimps.xyz

    @batbeeps GRANTED I realise Sengi is Web based so OS doesn't matter lol

  5. KayOhtie@blimps.xyz

    @DarkOverord @batbeeps I love Tusky, but it does come with the caveat that you almost certainly won't get push notifications without installing a UnifiedPush platform. In my case, I prefer gCompat-UP Distributor (I think is the full name) because it doesn't have the same per-instance rate limiting that ntfy does. Ntfy is cool, but their core instance rate limits to the point that even moderate furry instances can have notifs cut off after a certain point each hour.

    And running a third-party instance where you'd get push notifications for sure requires compiling and Play Store-distributing a custom build.

  6. KayOhtie@blimps.xyz

    @DarkOverord @batbeeps Can also use Nextcloud to distribute them but that's a little more involved than I feel is necessary x3 But could be kinda cool for an instance that allows SSO via the instance to sign into a small-storage Nextcloud.

  7. DarkOverord@blimps.xyz

    @KayOhtie @batbeeps Huh, I've never had an issue with Tusky's push notifs when my PC's off (as Sengi's stealing my notifications then lol) o:

  8. Rejax@blimps.xyz

    @DarkOverord @KayOhtie @batbeeps I get zhe push notifications eventually usually. But zhey're often hours late

  9. lucasmz@hachyderm.io

    @KayOhtie @DarkOverord @batbeeps you can set a custom ntfy server like ntfy.envs.net on settings FYI that's what I do

  10. Lilium_Mortem@floofy.tech

    @batbeeps Sorry to ask this so long after the article has been written
    This method has some serious caveats that I can't see myself looking past.

    The fact that you have to use a second account on a mastodon client just. It kinda defeats the purpose of not making a bluesky account In the first place. If I'm going to have a second account that requires monitoring as well why not just make a bluesky account?

    Why can't this cross posting tech also crosspost a bluesky feed to a bot or something that I could follow on fedi with this account?

  11. batbeeps@chitter.xyz

    @Lilium_Mortem The intent there is that if you’re already using a Mastodon client that supports multiple accounts, you don’t need to use an entirely new and separate client to use Bluesky.

    There are tools that let you directly follow individual Bluesky accounts on the fediverse, but they—correctly—require individual consent. Every Bluesky user you might want to follow would have to separately sign up for a bridging service before you could follow them.

    Cross posting a person’s posts to a different platform without their consent is almost certainly a violation of some terms of service somewhere (if not just ethically dubious).

    Having it be a separate account/feed avoids that problem because to Bluesky it’s a Bluesky account following Bluesky’s users. All the bridging is happening between Bluesky and the client you’re using.