Bluesky has been making waves recently, and the chances are you've heard the noise.

Although it launched back in 2021, the platform saw a massive surge in popularity following the US presidential elections in November 2024, as millions of users withdrew their support for X (and its owner) and began looking for an alternative.

As of the time of writing, Bluesky has over 24 million users, with one joining the platform every single second. With its promise to allow users to pick-their-own algorithm, and with a wide-open API, Bluesky has encouraged developers to extend the platform with third-party tools.

Here’s a run-down of some of the most useful ones we’ve come across, with a focus on helping you migrate across to the platform and enhancing your experience on it. At the end we’ve included some wild and wonderful ones that might just brighten up your day.

1. Migration

It’s always a strange feeling joining a new platform because social media only really feels social when there’s people on it to talk to. 

A great thing to start off with after setting up your account is to import the accounts you follow on X (Twitter), by finding them over on Bluesky.

We really like Sky Follower Bridge because it’s a simple - and free - Chrome extension that lets you find your tribe with ease.

It might take a few minutes, but it will find the accounts and recommend them to you - rather than bulk following them on your behalf - because there’s always the chance one or two aren’t correct.

2. Starter Packs

Starter packs are one of Bluesky's standout features, allowing users to create shareable lists of up to 150 accounts that others can bulk-follow with just one click.

The packs cover a wide range of topics, skill areas, locations, and more, making them an excellent way to discover like-minded individuals and engaging accounts that match your interests.

We put together a fantastic starter pack of our own, with 150 developers, tech professionals and leaders who have spoken for us over the years so you can get plugged into the WeAreDevelopers Bluesky community in a click.

Go and check out the starter pack now and follow our amazing list of speakers.

While we’ve ensured your starter pack is as diverse as the tech industry, we also recommend you check out the diversifying tech starter pack, to find people from under-represented communities within the industry.

3. Feeds

Bluesky takes a unique and flexible approach to custom feeds, allowing anyone to create and share their own

These feeds pull together content from multiple accounts based on themes, interests, or topics, giving users a personalised way to consume content. 

One of the most useful ones we’ve found for Bluesky newcomers is the mutuals feed. Once you’ve followed a few accounts you’ll start to see some appear in this feed, as others return the favour.

It’s a great way to form connections and start conversations with others there, so you get to know some of the people you’re connected with. 

4. Lists

Lists are an interesting one. At first, it wasn’t clear that their purpose was, when we already have start packs and feeds. However, they sit somewhere between the two. They curate accounts in a list, but do not display their contents, or allow mass following.

Instead, we’ve seen lists being used as a way to help others find problematic accounts, such as trolls or accounts spreading far right-wing propaganda or behaving in a toxic way.

It’ll be interesting to see how the lists feature evolves or whether this will be their primary purpose on Bluesky.

5. Labellers

With some creative extensions you can add nice little details to the Bluesky UI.

Developers Labels was created by a Brazilian developer going by danielhe4rt, and lets you add labels next to your name, showing your tech skills, interests or role when you appear on other’s timelines.

Another clever tool lets you add your pronouns in the form of labels, to help encourage respectful communication on the platform. The fact that the platform can be extended so easily to include features like this really does feel refreshing.

6. Clients

When X's API pricing skyrocketed in 2023, it became increasingly difficult for client app builders to offer X as a service, making it awkward for anyone looking to run accounts across several platforms because X was so much more expensive to integrate than the rest.

While the default Bluesky client is solid, third-party clients like deck.blue offer enhanced features such as multiple feeds, and the ability to control differing block and mute words for each one.

The average user might not need this unless they’re using Bluesky a considerable amount, but it’s particularly handy if you’re spending most of your time on a desktop machine.

7. Schedulers

As with the last point in this list, schedulers either went away, stopped supporting X, or got more expensive in recent years.

The Bluesky ecosystem has already produced lots of useful schedulers, from simple applications that only handle scheduling, to more involved tools with multiple features handling delayed posting, drafting and others.

We recommend you start off checking out Bluesky Later. Why? Well, first of all it's open source, so you can get involved and help improve it. Secondly, we just love its simplicity.

You log in, line up your posts, and wait for them to be sent - as requested - when the time is right. The only downside? You’ll need to leave the tab open to make sure they get posted when they should. It’s a small price to pay for such a helpful tool.

8. Metrics

Finally, as you get settled on the platform you may want to measure your performance. Metrics tools can help you track your follower growth, but also analyse engagement on your posts if you want to know what your followers resonate with.

Bsky Analytics is a totally free-to-use tool, and allows users to get an overview of their analytics for their account such as new followers, their follower growth, and a GitHub commit-style graph showing how consistent you have been with posting.

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9. Algorithm

Finally, one of the most interesting aspects about Blueksy is the fact that the platform has been designed around the idea that users will shape their own algorithm, rather than it being decided for them like on other platforms.

Of course, the average non-techie person would not know where to start with shaping their own algorithm, so it's lucky that tools like Graze exist. Graze is a simple UI-based algorithm designer, helping you refine all aspects of it from who you follow, mute words and block lists, and more.

10. Let the Fun Begin

There are so many creative and interesting tools being created by the Bluesky community, we needed to share some of the most fun ones in a category of their own.

Remember those shareable graphics that went around Twitter/X a few years ago, showing who the sharer had interacted with the most. Well, it’s back… but on Bluesky, in the form of skircle.me.

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Get your Bluesky account (and your personality) roasted with Bluesky roast. What makes this difference is it doesn’t go too hard, and gives you a few compliments along the way (very fitting for the Bluesky vibe, right?).

With BlueSky Receipts you can see a few interesting stats about your account in the form of a shop-like receipt.

Dave Bagpuss Forsey created both SwearSky - a hilarious live feed of the latest swearwords posted on the platform by users - and NiceSky, which shows users a video of the Michael Rosen ‘Nice’ meme every time the word is used by a user on the social media site.

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Other projects focus on creative visualisations of the content on the platform, with EmojiRain collecting together posts featuring emoji and presenting them as water droplets dripping down the screen, and Rainbowsky visualising which colours get mentioned the most.

Developers get creative and build some pretty amazing things when you give them free access to an API, right?

Conclusion

It’s so refreshing to see an entire ecosystem grow around a platform in the way that the development community has on Bluesky.

From useful extensions of the platform and tools to help users migrate and find their tribe, to fun, brilliantly-pointless and creative experiments and experiences, it’s a great time to be building for Bluesky and we hope we helped you discover a little more of what’s out there.