Here are some cool things you can do with Bluesky

So, you finally decided to give Bluesky a chance. The social network has come a long way since the early days of invite-only sign-ups and recently surpassed the 15 million user mark. Along the way, it has gathered many familiar features from the publishing platform, such as direct messages, pinned posts, and the ability to post videos up to 60 seconds long.

But there's a lot more to it than that, and I'm not just talking about the story. (Yeah, Bluesky has tradition(and that's probably the most classic thing about twitter.) It also has a number of features and settings that you won't find in x or Threads, such as the ability to choose your own algorithm or moderation tools. These serve not only as a quick way to make the platform feel lively, but can also create the feeling that you, the user, are in control of your experience.

Here's an introduction to how to catch up with Bluesky.

The Bluesky Follow Feed is a simple chronological feed of posts from people you follow. But you can also customize whether it shows replies, forwards, quote posts, and/or samples of your custom feeds; Setting all of this to “off” means that your follow feed will only show posts from people you follow. You will find these options in Settings > Next Feed Preferences.

The platform also allows you to decide how you would like to view reply threads by going to Settings > Thread Preferences. Here, you can sort by oldest, newest, most liked answers or sort them randomly. (Bluesky also calls this “Cartel Roulette.”) There's an option to prioritize people you follow in a reply thread, as well as an experimental Thread Mode option to display replies as nested Reddit-like threads.

While Bluesky offers two algorithmic feeds to get you started: “Discover” and “Popular with Friends,” things start to get a lot more fun when you access custom feeds. Bluesky himself has created a few, but most custom feeds are created by users.

These feeds are powerful and make it easy to find people who share your interests, view only certain types of content, or sort your own posts. Do you want a feed of cat photos? you understood it. Interested in seeing which of your posts have performed the best? you will want the “My Bangers” feed.

To view custom feeds:

• Touch the three lines icon at the top left to invoke the sidebar.
• In the sidebar, select Feeds.
• Search for a feed or scroll through it to choose the one you like.
• Click or tap individual feeds to preview them.
• To follow a feed from the Feeds page, click on the individual feed, select the three dots in the top corner, and then select Save to my feeds. It will now appear at the top of your Feeds list.
• To follow a broadcast from the Bluesky home screen, tap Pin to Home at the top. It will now appear as a tab at the top of that screen.

Another easy way to find Bluesky accounts to follow is Starter Packs. These are pre-packaged lists of accounts, often chosen around a theme. The Bluesky team has created a few of these, but there are also thousands of user-created lists containing accounts that often post about specific topics or are part of certain groups. (The edge He even has one; you can find it here.)

Bluesky hasn't made the Starter Packs searchable yet, so the only way to find them is by searching outside the platform (like this directory), detect them when other users publish them or receive them from you. Once you find a starter pack you like, simply click Follow all at the top of the screen to follow them all or select the Continue button for individual accounts if you're feeling picky.

And if you want to create your own Starter Pack, it's not difficult: Bluesky has the right instructions. here.

Like Mastodon, Bluesky is a federated platform, except it uses the AT protocol instead of ActivityPub. As such, you can choose your own domain name suffix for its identifier. You will need to own that domain or get it from another service, such as Threads. A word of warning, though: once you've done this, your domain name/id combination will now be free for someone else to take. (blue sky says (However, any tags or mentions with your old handle will still point to your account.)

To change to a custom domain:

• Select Settings > Change driver.
• Choose I have my own domain.
• Enter your domainand select Copy domain valuewhich copies the text string to the end of the record.
• Navigate to your domain registrar (the company you purchased the domain from) and look for an option labeled Manage DNS or similar.

• Add a TXT record and enter the log information you collected from Bluesky. Note: This process differs between domain name providers, so you may need to look up instructions, like the ones I've linked here for popular registrars. go daddy and square space.
• Once you have saved the record, wait a few minutes, return to Bluesky and select Check DNS record. A green banner will appear in the Change Identifier box to let you know you've succeeded.

Like x and Threads, you can pin posts to the top of your account. Here's how:

• Navigate to the post you want to pin.
• Select the three points under the post.
• Select Pin to your profile.

Bluesky moderation is supported by Labelers, which are third-party services that may label accounts or content, either for informational or moderation purposes. Tags are wide-ranging and can be used to hide things like posts with GIF, crypto scammer accounts, brand accountseither phobia triggers.

But it goes much further. Some use it as a convenient way to show or see pronounsfind fans of your favorite sports teamsand even play text-based games through Labelers like this TTRPG. Each differs in its use and usually offers instructions for its use. Also, Bluesky currently doesn't have a built-in way to find taggers, but there are lists and tools for that.

To use a tagger once you've found one you like:

• Navigate to your Bluesky page.
• Select Subscribe to Labeler.

If you have a list of labels to customize, choose an option for each:
Off: to keep the tag off.
Show badge– To view the label when it is applied to content or accounts.
Hide– to hide content or accounts with that tag.

If you decide you want to change those selections later, you can do so by going to Settings > Moderation and selecting the Label Maker Advanced section.

Bluesky allows you to create passwords for other applications to use. This is useful if you like using applications, such as Graysky third party client – who take advantage of the Bluesky API but don't want to give them their permanent password. This is how you can do it.

• Navigate to Settings > App Passwords (Low Advanced).
• Select Add app password.
• Enter a name for the password or use the one generated by Bluesky.
• If you want to allow the app to use direct messages, check the box Allow access to your direct messages box. Note: You cannot change this option later; you can only delete the password and create a new one for that app.
• Select Create app password.