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? 🤔
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.
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.
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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