This Free App Combines Bluesky, Threads and Mastodon Into One Channel
Replacing X is an ongoing project. Bluesky is currently the fastest growing network, but both Threads and Mastodon have seen growth spurts over the past few years. If you’re like me, there are people you want to follow in all three places.
Luckily, there are ways to do this. We talked about how to connect Mastodon and Bluesky and how to follow Threads users from Mastodon . However, both of these solutions depend on the people you want to actively follow by enabling or setting up the integration, and even then it’s just a bit of work. OpenVibe is the best answer for most people at the moment.
This free app for iOS and Android allows you to log into Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads, among other services, allowing you to view messages and notifications from all of these services in one place. When you install the app, you will be asked to sign in to your accounts for each service you want to use. From there, you can scroll through the combined timeline. The icon will tell you which network the message came from, and you’ll be able to like, promote, and reply to messages just as if you were in the native app.
There are some obvious potential complications here. First, if you follow the same person on three networks, you may see duplicate posts depending on whether the people you follow tend to cross-post. And you can’t cross-post posts—meaning there’s no easy way to share a Threads post with your Bluesky followers. Still, it’s nice to be able to view everything at once.
And there’s support for more than just a consolidated timeline: you can add a consolidated trending timeline that pulls from all your social networks, view the Bluesky Discover feed, or scroll through your Mastodon server’s local timeline. You can write posts and publish them on all social networks you have added. You can also turn off posting to a specific account if you prefer to stay private on that network.
This app is not perfect. First, there is no desktop version, although I was able to install the iPad version on my Mac. And using it requires careful thought about what network you’re interacting with. Still, if you’re tired of switching between three different social apps, it’s worth a try.