Yes, Bluesky Has TweetDeck
Many who once used the Bird app seem to be migrating from X (formerly Twitter) to Bluesky. A large wave of people have finally left Elon Musk’s social media app, hoping to recapture some of the magic of old Twitter . While the official app and website are a great place to get started with Bluesky, there are a number of third-party clients that do the job even better, like TweetDeck did for Twitter. These are the best Bluesky clients I have ever encountered:
TweetDeck Alternative for Bluesky
TweetDeck has been the Twitter client of choice for power users. In TweetDeck, you can set up a multi-column view to track more than one timeline at a time. The app also had useful features such as automatic timeline updates, making it ideal for tracking real-time events or scheduling posts. For Bluesky, all these features are available in Deck Blue . It has a customizable multi-column view, lets you decide how often the timeline is updated, and also lets you hide certain types of posts from your feed.
Deck Blue locks some features behind a paywall. You can pay a minimum of $1 per month through Patreon to get access to scheduling posts and the ability to add up to four accounts. Not everyone will need these features, which is why the free tier remains very useful.
Mac app for Bluesky
If you prefer not to use Bluesky in your Mac’s web browser, you can use the Mac app instead.Sky.app is my favorite option. Sky’s biggest advantage is its keyboard shortcuts. You can use the Command-Number keyboard shortcuts to switch between all the tabs in the Bluesky left panel. Command-2 will take you to search, Command-3 to notifications, and so on. The app also lets you hide replies from your subscription feed, choose to view translations (via Google Translate) in a pop-up window rather than opening a new browser tab, and choose to display the latest search results at the top.
At the moment, Sky isn’t overloaded with features, meaning that at times you’ll feel like you’re using the Bluesky website in app form. For example, when you try to open the app’s settings, it instead redirects you to the Bluesky settings page.
Cross-posting to several social networks simultaneously
The great X-odus has left us with a slew of social networks trying to replace what Twitter once was. The three main contenders still remain – Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon. If you want to cross-post on these three social networks at the same time, you can use Croissant . My colleague Justin Poth wrote about this app and how you can get the most out of it. Croissant costs $2.99 per month or $19.99 per year, which means this app is best for small business owners who rely on these social media platforms to reach their audience. If you just want to post to Mastodon and Bluesky, consider linking the two accounts , or try an alternative app like Openvibe , which allows you to view a single timeline from all three social networks.
Alternative mobile apps for Bluesky
I like to use Graysky on iPhone or Android as an alternative to Bluesky. The app by default does not use your channels from the Bluesky website or official apps, but instead allows you to select and add various custom channels. You can use this to your advantage by using Graysky to view different types of content than the official app. Graysky doesn’t have a lot of settings you can customize, but it does have a professional tier that lets you add custom themes and view DeepL translations for $10 a year. While Graysky is a decent app, its developer is currently working with Bluesky, so the future of this app is unclear.
If this bothers you, you can try Skeets on your iPhone or iPad. The app has many settings, including font size, auto-playing GIFs, opening YouTube links in the app, and more. My favorite feature is the bookmarks, which allow you to save useful Bluesky posts. The official app doesn’t support this feature yet, but Skeets has it built in. It also allows you to extract text from images to quickly create alt text for uploaded photos. Skeets is free to use, but some features are locked into a $3/month subscription.