10 Hacks Every Bluesky User Should Know

If you're tired of X and Threads, it might be time to move to greener, or perhaps bluer, pastures. Lifehacker's own Joel Cunningham moved to Bluesky way back in 2024, and since then, a lot of our writers and editors have followed suit and are living it up over on the butterfly site. It turns out that, with the right platform, it's possible to like social media again.

Bluesky is quite unlike most other social media networks. You have a lot of control over who sees your posts and how they reply to them, plus you can block and mute users en masse and tweak moderation settings just so. If you're new to Bluesky, or if you've just been using the default settings, it's time to dig deeper into all the ways you can customize your experience.

Use starter packs to find people to follow

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

If you've just started using Bluesky, your feed will feel quite light, especially if you want to venture outside of the algorithmically driven Discover feed and look at what makes the app unique.

But there are ways to get past this issue. Bluesky calls them Starter Packs, and anyone can create and share them. Starter Packs are essentially lists of profiles that you can follow with just one click. A website like Bluesky Starter Pack is a great place to discover these packs, since it lets you search and filter based on your interests or even which accounts are the most popular. Open a Starter Pack and click the Follow All button if you want to follow everyone in the list. Or, you can open a Starter Pick and pick and choose people to follow individually.

Find and pin feeds

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Bluesky really encourages you to go outside of your typical network of mutuals, and that's why there's a Feeds section in the sidebar. Anyone in the community can build a custom feed, and you can subscribe to it with just a click. That means you don't have to stick to the usual defaults, like your Following feed, and can instead browse through posts however you wish.

Bluesky has a few algorithmically generated feeds like Discover and Popular with Friends, but the vast majority of feeds are custom-made. You can search for any topic, and when you like what you see, you can click Pin Feed to add it to the top of your scrolling window. Then, all you need to do is tap or click on a pinned feed to swap to it.

Try AT Protocol apps like Flashes and Deck Blue

Credit: Pranay Parab

Just like Mastodon, Bluesky encourages third-party apps. Developers can directly plug in to the underlying AT Protocol and create their own apps on top of Bluesky.

This means, yes, there is a TweetDeck alternative for Bluesky, in both a website form and as a Mac app (I prefer the Mac app, honestly). If you're more into photos, you can also try out Flashes or Pinksky, which recreate the Instagram experience by focusing on photos and videos.

Securely sign up for third-party apps using app passwords

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Bluesky doesn't have a traditional authentication system where you can sign into third-party apps by simply connecting them to your Bluesky account (like you can using your Google or Apple accounts). So how do you use all those third-party apps built on the AT Protocol? Simple: uniquely generated app passwords. Each Bluesky service or app will ask you for a unique app password that will only work for that particular service, and isn't the same as your main Bluesky password. This way, your Bluesky account won't be compromised even if the app has a leak, and you can quickly change the password or revoke access if you no longer want to use that service.

Go to Settings > Privacy and Security > App Passwords > Add App Password to create a new app password. Make sure to give it a unique name, so you can easily find it. You can delete an app password using the Delete button next to the service name.

Choose who gets to reply to you, and how

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

As social media platforms go, Bluesky offers perhaps the best moderation tools in the business. A prime example is how you can restrict replies to your posts.

Go to Settings > Moderation > Interaction Settings, and you'll find a plethora of options. You can open up replies to everyone, or you can even go nuclear and block anyone from replying to your posts.

Then there are the granular options. You can restrict replies to just your followers, people you follow, people you mention, or you can create a list of people who are allowed to reply to you.

While you're here, you can also disable the "Allow Quote Posts" feature, so others on the platform can't repost your posts directly on their pages.

Take control of your posts, even after they're in the wild

Credit: Bluesky

If someone has quoted your post and you would rather they didn't, you can quickly fix that. Go to the post, click the three-dots menu, and choose the Detach quote option. The post will remain as is, but your quote wll be removed.

Similarly, you can quickly hide replies to a post. Choose a reply, click the three-dots menu, and from here, you can choose to hide the reply for you, or for everyone.

Note that this won't prevent people who can see your posts from screenshotting them to share as images.

Use community-created mute and block lists

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

Bluesky has community lists to help you subscribe to new accounts, and also to block accounts en masse. You'll find many moderation lists for different types of posters online, either by searching on Bluesky or looking at third-party websites like ClearSky. This way, you can quickly block brands, grifters, or whoever else you might not want to see in one click. This is a great way to sort out at least the more infamous or nefarious profiles. To use a moderation list, open it, click Subscribe, and then choose either Mute accounts or Block accounts.

Follow any profile using RSS

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

We say it often at Lifehacker: you really should be using RSS. Just like Bluesky, it's another way to find or read new blogs and news without relying on an algorithm. And you can even follow Bluesky profiles in your RSS reader of choice, no setup required. Go to a Bluesky profile and add '/rss' to the end of the URL. Then, copy it and add it as a source in your RSS reader of choice. Easy peasy.

Repeat this for as many profiles as you want, sort them in easy to access folders, and you can now read posts and links from your favorite Bluesky profiles right in your RSS reader, so you can easily mix them in with your articles and blogs.

Use your own domain name as your username

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

This is one of my favorite features. Bluesky lets users and organizations change their handles to their own, custom domain addresses. A handle like "@lifehacker.bsky.social," which is written in the default format, can be changed to just say "lifehacker.com".

This works through a form of simplified self-verification (though Bluesky now also offers a traditional verification system). You'll need access to your domain manager to pull it off.

Go to Settings > Account > Handle and choose I have my own domain. Then, input your domain address. Bluesky will show you the DNS records that you need to update using your domain manager. Once that's done, click Verify DNS Record and wait for the handle to update automatically.

Post to Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon at the same time

Credit: Justin Pot

Even if you're on Bluesky, that doesn't mean you only have to use Bluesky. You can treat Bluesky as your home base, and still post your content to other networks like Threads and Mastodon at the same time, using an app like Croissant. It's a simple app that lets you connect your Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon accounts all at once, taking advantage of their fediverse connectivity. You can then use Croissant to draft your posts, and send them out to all three networks at once. You can schedule posts, too, which is helpful if you're using Bluesky in a professional capacity. Croissant costs $2.99/month, or $19.99/year.

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