Your Bluesky account unlocks so much more than a feed of posts from the people you follow. That account is a passport. It gives you access to a whole world of new apps and tools, and you never have to sign up for any of them the normal way. In this post I want to show you some of these apps, explain how the whole thing works, and share why the more I dug into this, the more excited I got about something people are starting to call the Atmosphere.
One account to rule them all
Think about how many accounts and passwords you have created over the years. A login for this app, a different login for that one, a third for something else. Every time you try a new app, you start from scratch. New username, new password, and then the slow work of finding all your friends again.
Now imagine one account that gets you into all of them. That is the idea here, and Bluesky is the key.
Here is the way I have come to think about it. Your Bluesky account is your passport. Each new app is a different country. Normally, visiting a new country means applying for a whole new identity at the border. In the Atmosphere, you just show your Bluesky passport and walk right in. Same name, same face, same friends, everywhere you go.
Why the apps you use now are closed off
To understand why this is a big deal, look at Meta. Love them or hate them, they built an ecosystem. Instagram and Facebook talk to each other. They work together, along with whatever else Zuck buys and then makes worse. (Can you even open Instagram anymore without eleven ads before you see a single friend’s photo?)
That connection between Facebook and Instagram is convenient, but it is closed off. Meta owns it, Meta controls it, and nothing outside of Meta gets to join. The rest of the apps on your phone are the same story. Each one is its own little island. Your accounts do not talk to each other, your friends do not carry over, and the company on the other end owns your data and can change the rules whenever it wants. There is nothing you can do about it except quit and start over somewhere else, which is exactly what a lot of us did when we left X for Bluesky. Some feel unable to leave X, locked in no matter how the app changes. The Atmosphere hopes to fix and prevent that from happening to you in the future.
So what is the Atmosphere?
The Atmosphere is an open ecosystem that anyone can build an app on. Not a walled off garden owned by one company. An open field that anyone can build in, and that your one Bluesky account gives you the keys to.
Picture logging into Substack, Letterboxd, Instagram, and LinkedIn all with the same account. Picture the friends you follow on Bluesky being able to find you on any of those apps automatically, because it is all the same identity underneath. Imagine getting tired of the Instagram app (not hard) and just opening a different app instead, one that still shows all your friends’ photos, still lets you post, and still has everything you posted before, all sitting right there.
That is what the Atmosphere makes possible. If you do not like the direction the Bluesky app is heading, you are not stuck. There are other apps you can use to access the exact same followers and posts. Think back to Twitter, where some people used the official app and others used TweetDeck. Two different doors into the same house. The Atmosphere takes that idea and blows it wide open. The number of apps you can use is not limited to two. It is endless, and they are not just copies of Bluesky. Anyone can build anything.
Let’s look at some of the more useful apps already out there.
Sill
How many people do you follow on Bluesky who share articles worth reading? News, science, pop culture, sports. There are dozens of great pieces scattered through your feed all day long. How many do you miss? How many do you mean to come back to and then forget?
Sill was built to collect and organize all of those links for you. When you sign into Sill with your Bluesky account, it already knows who you follow and what lists you follow, so there is no setup. It can pull together only the articles posted by people you follow, sorted by which ones are getting the most reposts. Or it can show you every article shared by people in that NBA list you follow, sorted by newest first. That alone makes it handy, but there is more. You can see which articles are trending across the whole network, bookmark pieces to read later, get a daily digest emailed to you, and set custom alerts for anything you want, from a popularity threshold to a specific keyword.
Who this is for: If you click a couple of article links a day from your Bluesky feed, Sill automatically gathers them into one clean place so nothing slips by.
Popfeed
You probably have one app for rating movies and shows, another for books, and maybe a third for music. Each one specialized in a single thing. Each one with its own login you had to create and its own list of friends you had to hunt down and add.
Popfeed rolls films, TV, video games, books, and music into a single app where you can rate, review, and share all of it in one place. Comment on other people’s reviews. Build curated lists to share. Set a reading challenge with a friend. Discover something new. You can import and sync from Letterboxd and Goodreads, so you are not starting from zero, and you can see all your Bluesky friends’ reviews right away. And unlike most of the apps on this list, which live on the web only, Popfeed can be downloaded from the App Store.
Who this is for: Anyone who watches, reads, plays, or listens and wants one spot to rate, review, and share it all.
Blento
Blento feels like a cross between Linktree and an old MySpace page. Their pitch is that you can build your own website the fun way. I would call it more of a personal page. It works by adding cards. You place each card where you want it, size it, and color it however you like, and a card can be almost anything. A link to your Instagram or YouTube. Music from Spotify or another player. A countdown, a favorite gif or image, a movie review. It is easy to pick up because there are plenty of prebuilt cards. You choose one, fill in the info, and in a few minutes you have a landing page that shows people where to find you online, or that just lets you express yourself.
Who this is for: People who want a Bluesky-friendly version of Linktree, or a fun landing page to send friends to.
Leaflet and Offprint
Both of these are Substack-style apps, but I think they are great even if you never plan to call yourself a writer. Ever have a long thought you want to post but do not feel like chopping it into a string of 300-character posts? Write it out in Leaflet or Offprint as a quick blog post, and because everything here is connected, it can post straight to Bluesky for you. Some features cost money, but those are things like email newsletters and post analytics, which most people do not need. The free tier covers everything required to share longer pieces. Why not try it?
If you are a writer, the paid subscription unlocks email newsletters to your subscribers, more customization for your site, and more (with additional features on the way). There is another upside worth mentioning. Even if you already post on Substack, it is worth cross-posting here. Your writing then goes out into the Atmosphere where other people can stumble onto it through new-post and trending-article lists. On Substack you are a needle in a haystack, hard to find. As an early writer in the Atmosphere, you have a real chance to stand out, get noticed, and grow an audience.
Offprint is the more straightforward Substack alternative. It is clean and minimal, and if you have used Substack you will feel right at home. I have taken a liking to Leaflet, which sits somewhere between Substack and something that feels more creative and customizable. I would try both and see which one clicks for you.
Who this is for: People who want to post longer than 300 characters, start a blog, or move over from Substack.
Standard Reader
Standard Reader gives you an easy way to subscribe to publications. Say one person writes their blog on Leaflet and another writes on Offprint. Because both are part of the Atmosphere, you can read them both in Standard Reader, side by side, no matter which app they were written in. You can search for topics you care about and discover new publications to follow, see what is trending across the Atmosphere, browse recommendations, and save pieces to read later.
Who this is for: People who enjoy reading and want one central place for their subscriptions and for finding new writers.
Germ Network
This is Signal for Bluesky. You chat from your Bluesky handle using end-to-end encrypted messaging. Germ is a downloadable app, available now on iOS with Android coming later. Once you sign in with your Bluesky account, you can see which of your Bluesky friends are already on Germ and message them easily. I have used other messaging apps that make you hand over your phone number, and I never liked putting my number out there for people to see. You do not have to worry about that with Germ. You can even set up “burner cards” to control exactly what someone sees when you message them.
Who this is for: People on Bluesky who want a more secure way to message friends.
AT-store
AT Store is a directory of Atmosphere apps. Games, social, video, photo, food, and close to 50 categories in all, so you can browse around and find something useful. Want a photo app to replace Instagram? Try Grain, Flashes, or Spark. Want to livestream? Stream.place. Want a TikTok alternative? Skylight. Want something like Strava? The Distance. There is an app I still need to test out called Margin that allows you to highlight text or annotate any website and it saves it all for reference. Let me know if you would like me to write a review for that one! All of these apps let you sign in and start using them with the Bluesky identity you already have.
Why this gets me excited
The more I have dug into the Atmosphere, the more excited I get, and I think it comes down to who is in control.
Right now, the internet works like a row of toll booths. Substack wants your subscription. PayPal takes its cut. Instagram decides what you get to see. Every app is owned by a company, and behind that company are investors who want the numbers to go up, which usually means more ads and a worse experience for you. You do not get a say. If a CEO decides to make your favorite app worse, your only real option is to quit and start completely over somewhere else, or be stuck in a place you no longer enjoy.
The Atmosphere flips that. No single company owns the room. If one app gets greedy or heads in a direction you hate, you walk to another one and take everything with you. Your name, your posts, your followers, all still there. You are not beholden to one CEO’s mood, because the whole thing is open and anyone can build on it. The Atmosphere is giving the internet back to the people. Back to us.
Think of every video game where you had to create a character before you could play. Every new game, more time spent building a new one from scratch. In the Atmosphere, you already made your character the moment you signed up for Bluesky, and that character works everywhere. Close Bluesky, open Popfeed, and it is like walking into the bar in Cheers. Everyone already knows your name, because none of us are starting over. We are all building on the same open ground.
Everything is still in its early days, and it will keep getting better as more people build. But the shape of it is already clear, and it is a lot more open, and a lot more fun, than what we have been handed.
Welcome to the Atmosphere.