Cool Bluesky Apps I'm Testing

The development of 3rd party apps for Bluesky is in a fascinating spot right now. I’ve been testing quite a few of these apps (I might be obsessed) and wanted to share my thoughts on them.

First thing’s first, I want to give massive credit to all of these projects. Regardless of my personal tastes, these developers have created very solid experiences very quickly. Many of these apps are in beta or are just out of beta, so any bugs or quirks I've experienced I'm sure will be ironed out in no time. I’ll link to each project below along with the developers (if I missed someone please let me know and I'll ad them) and if you can support them in any way, I definitely suggest you do so.

Also, a quick disclaimer: I’m considering these “Bluesky projects” at the moment since they’re mostly using Bluesky’s AT Protocol infrastructure. There are some projects I’ll mention at the end that seem to be building their own AT Proto infrastructure, but more on that later.

FRONTPAGE.DIY

Frontpage.diy was one of the first alternatives I started using, and it’s got a special place in my heart for it. This one’s seeks to be an AT Proto-based alternative to Reddit/Hacker News. It’s web-only at the moment, but I can add it to my phone’s home screen as a PWA which is fine.

It’s pretty basic right now since there’s no “subreddits” equivalent yet (I think the plan is to call them Categories?). But the experience is coming together and the dev team (consisting of Tom Sherman, Will Corrigan and Damien Sedwick) are all super cool and active in the community.

Speaking of community, I can’t help but notice that the people who use the app regularly are pretty chill and helpful. We’re off to a good start, though once “categories” get introduced we’ll probably need some moderation features.

I have a personal disdain for Reddit, so this app is one that I really want to succeed and thrive.

SKEETS

Ah, Skeets. I don’t think I’ll ever take the name seriously. But I'm pretty sure it and Graysky were the first 3rd-party clients for Bluesky, so it gets a pass. And for most people, I’d say it’s excellent! It offers a nice UI and for a reasonable subscription you get useful features like Bookmarks and post drafts that you don't get on vanilla Bluesky.

I don’t use this as my daily driver because I really like Openvibe since it lets me interact with my Mastodon timeline as well. But if you’re a dedicated Bluesky person then I think this is a fantastic choice. Best of all, developer Sebastian uses the Skeets codebase to power his other apps. Spoiler alert: they are excellent.

PINKSKY

There’s a wave of Instagram alternative-style apps in development, and Pinksy is riding that wave with its own twist. From a visual perspective, it’s pretty basic since it basically just rips Instagram’s design. But considering it's "designed with the interface you already know," that seems to be the point. Helping Instagram people feel at home is a solid rationale.

With that being said, I still feel the design does the app a huge disservice because it has some great original ideas. The way it handles stories is particularly clever - it’s a fun twist that feels natural. Basically, it turns a person’s posts from the last 24 hours and displays them like stories. For posting stories, I would like the ability to modify the text of them (currently they just show up as image-only posts on Bluesky), but for a pretty fresh app, I’m willing to wait.

Props to the dev Ramon Souza for having an Android app already too. I think getting these projects to Android ASAP will help with adopting projects like these across the whole ecosystem. I also appreciate that the profile pages include links to the person’s Bluesky profile. Currently they only open the website though, and I would like it to open the main app, but again, this is a small thing I’m willing to wait for.

I also want to not that this is an app developed as a bit of a side project at the moment. But according to this writeup from TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez, the developer has a lot of ideas:

“For instance, he’d consider integration with other technologies, like Mastodon, Pixelfed, or Nostr, or running his own instance. But as he’s currently covering the costs of Pinksky, expansions would likely need to involve some sort of business model — like paying for premium features.”

The only real downside I’ve noticed is that I have to re-sign into the app a lot. Definitely a nuisance. But overall, I think Pinksy is off to a strong start and has a lot of great ideas. If you’re looking for an Instagram alternative, I think that for now this is the one.

I say “for now” because I have a favorite “Instagram clone” type app that’s currently in limited beta…

FLASHES

…and it’s called Flashes! This one’s also from Sebastian.

The only thing stopping me from recommending this app to everyone on the planet is the fact that the TestFlight beta has limited slots and they go very quickly. But if you can get in, you’re in for a treat. For my tastes, it's my favorite app on this list.

I really like being able to pick which of my Bluesky feeds I’m viewing at any given time. I even created a dedicated list of photography-centric accounts to be my "main feed" in the app. There's also a new “Portfolio” feature that I think is really neat for real photographers, where you pick your 6 favorite photos and show them off on your profile page in a dedicated section.

This app feels like Instagram if it was given a fresh redesign that focused on photos rather than Reels (though to be clear this does support videos, it just looks and feels so snappy and new).

I had stopped using Instagram in 2020 (pick a reason out of a hat and it's probably right), and this app took me back to a time when the platform was young and fresh. To a time when I enjoyed sharing what I was seeing or doing while putting a fun filter on it. Maybe that's reason enough to love using Flashes. Or maybe it's just that it hasn't been flooded by videos I didn't ask for.

BLUESCREEN

Speaking of videos, Sebastion also has a video-focused app called Bluescreen! This one is more of a TikTok rip than an Instagram one, but I’m okay with that. I like having apps that are focused on doing a few things really well, and this app fits that bill perfectly.

Similar to Flashes, I feel like this app’s design is a fresh redesign of TikTok if it were focused on enjoyment rather than engagement. It’s probably the most basic of the developer’s three apps in terms of feature set, but there's beauty in that minimalism. I find I'm not left wanting for much, just something to scroll through the video feeds (similar to Flashes you can switch between feeds pretty easily).

Overall this one is solid and I’m very interested in where it goes!

The only other video-focused app I’ve tried is Skylight Social. This is another beta that I’m testing, and I like what they’ve got so far. As an aside, seeing developer Tori comedically post about the Google Play Store submission process is very funny!

While I would really like a dark mode that works on the Profile pages, it is otherwise a beautiful and polished experience. This one I also have to occasionally sign back in again, but a fix just came in so I don’t think that’ll be an issue anymore. The video upload flow is simple and quick, although I’d like if when typing in usernames that they’d autocomplete.

These are a bunch of nitpicks that come with being a beta tester though. Massive kudos to devs Tori and Reed for building a fun app!

ATLAS

I wanted to bring up Atlas even though I haven’t tested it much because. Atlas is another image-focused app currently in beta, but instead of emulating Instagram it seems to be going more for Pinterest. I like that we have this variety of clients here, but it’s hard for me to judge this one since I’m not a Pinterest person. The dev seems very sweet (I'm not a native Japanese reader, so I’m trusting Google to understand their posts), so I wanted to make sure they got a shoutout too!

FUTURE AT PROTOCOL PROJECTS

For this last section, I wanted to shoutout two upcoming projects that are AT Proto based rather than Bluesky-based. The first one is the app-formerly-known-as Reelo, which just changed its name to Spark! This one is based around videos and photos as I understand it. The other one is Switsh, which is based mainly around photos. I wanted to bring these two projects up because, even though I haven’t tested them, I’m very excited for them.

They are building out their own AT Proto relays as I understand it. I think developing without dependence on Bluesky's resources is a great way of hedging bets. Bluesky PLC is doing an okay job right now, but things could always turn south. And I think apps like this have a better chance of withstanding such a change better than most of the ones on this list.

But that's just me talking with my limited knowledge of how AT Proto works. I'd better leave the deep thinking about such issues to the likes of Laurens and other smart people.

I’m a hobbyist at best when it comes to these things. But I really enjoy testing them, so as soon as betas come out, I’ll do my best to be in them!

Wrap up

As I write this, there’s more apps here than I remember testing, which probably means I have ADHD (or I just really like testing new apps… or both). And while they’re all in the early stages, I think these developers are all bringing their own ideas to the table and that’s what’s important to me.

There’s no point in outright cloning Instagram or TikTok or Reddit or whatever when they weren’t perfect to begin with. Each of these dev teams have their own things that they want to improve and add to the experience. As they all progress, this will make each of them distinct and appeal to different types of people, and that helps all of us.

Anyways, if I got something wrong or you know of an app I didn't test, here’s my Bluesky account. Otherwise I hope you give these apps a go! ✌️

P.S. Shoutout to Paul from Ivory-developer Tapbots for hiding in plain sight.