Use Bridgy Fed to Connect Mastodon and Bluesky

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The great Twitter exodus of 2022 is still happening. It’s just a little… broken. Many power X users switched to Bluesky early on, setting the stage for a flood of people joining the service in 2024 . Meanwhile, a lot of tech-savvy people still hang out on Mastodon (at least I do ).

Bluesky and Mastodon are theoretically decentralized services, but users of one service cannot communicate with users of the other – or at least it was not possible until Bridgy Fed . This is a beta service that allows Bluesky and Fediverse-compatible apps like Mastodon to interact.

What is Fediverse?

Let’s go back a little. Mastodon is part of Fediverse , a collection of services that connect using the same protocol. Threads , another place where a lot of X users have found themselves, is starting to connect to the Fediverse ; WordPress blogs can also connect. This all points to a future where people can use any social network they like and follow people who prefer to use another, but with one problem: Bluesky, although decentralized, is not part of that network.

This is where Bridgy Fed comes in. With this service, individual users of any service can choose to “link” their accounts. I tested this with my friend and Lifehacker alum Eric Ravenscraft, who hangs out on Bluesky more than I do. This worked well: we can now see each other’s posts, like each other’s posts, and even communicate with each other across different networks.

Create a bridge account

Setting up a bridge couldn’t be easier: you just need to sign up for a specific account.

  • Mastodon and other Fediverse users need to find and follow the @bsky.brid.gy account (it’s easiest to just search for it – note that some instances of Mastodon may block the bridge).

  • Bluesky users need to follow the account @ap.brid.gy .

That’s it! Bridgy Fed will now create an account for you that users of the other service can follow. You can also find your account on another service and share it with friends.

It’s a little more complicated than I’d like – it would be great if the service sent you a private message telling you where your new “bridge” profile is, for example. However, I was able to find my own newly created Bluesky profile fairly quickly and also interact with Eric easily. This is what interaction with Mastodon looks like for me:

Credit: Justin Poth

And here’s what it looks like from Bluesky, for Eric:

Credit: Justin Poth

Replies appear in mentions as usual, as do likes. If all you want is to be able to organically interact with someone who is using a different network, this works well.

Not an ideal solution

While this solution works well, there are a few hangups. Mainly, this only works if both people connect their accounts. This means I don’t see comments from Bluesky users unless they’re bridged, and vice versa: During our little test, several other Mastodon users responded to my conversation with Eric, but Eric couldn’t see those replies. This makes sense if you know how the system works (only comments from bridged users are switched), but it’s hardly ideal and can lead to asymmetrical conversations. Unfortunately, the voluntary nature of the bridge service makes this inevitable.

There are other problems: firstly, Bluesky has a 300 character limit on posts, while Fediverse does not have a hard limit. As a result, some posts along the way are cut off.

I could have chosen more threads (as opposed to Threads), but suffice it to say that this is far from an ideal solution. You can and should read the documentation to find out more. However, for now it’s a really easy way for people who aren’t in the same decentralized social ecosystem to communicate with each other, and I love it. I will definitely ask friends I want to chat with on Bluesky to “link” their accounts.

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