Flashes this 12 months introduced an Instagram selection constructed on most sensible of the Bluesky social community. Now to be had at the App Retailer, the app gives a unique option to browse the visible posts on Bluesky. As an alternative of viewing them in a timeline-like feed, very similar to X, the app attracts inspiration from photo-based social networks, like Instagram.
What you’ll publish
The app, constructed by means of Berlin-based developer Sebastian Vogelsang, runs at the similar underlying protocol that powers Bluesky, the AT Protocol (or ATProto for brief). That implies it’ll have the similar necessities round posting pictures and movies as you’d to find on Bluesky without delay.
At first, that supposed give a boost to for posting as much as 4 pictures and movies of 1 minute in period, however as of the Bluesky model 1.99 replace launched on March 10, customers had been in a position to add movies as much as 3 mins in period.
How Flashes is like Instagram — and the way it’s other
Flashes is fairly very similar to Instagram, because it gives a scrollable feed of pictures and movies, person profiles, or even picture filters to fortify your pictures when posting.
As an alternative of getting to begin your community from scratch, Flashes’ customers are in an instant tapped into the broader Bluesky group, which now has over 37 million customers. Despite the fact that now not all of Bluesky’s customers are on Flashes, their pictures and movies might be displayed within the app, because it necessarily filters the Bluesky feed for visible content material.
While you publish on Flashes, it creates a publish that looks on Bluesky as neatly. (For this reason, chances are you’ll need to make a secondary Bluesky account if you wish to stay the 2 networks separate.)
As well as, the app permits you to browse your individual Bluesky feeds and choose between Bluesky’s over 50,000 customized feeds, together with the ones that target specific subjects — like artwork, birds, gardening, or cat pics, for instance — or the ones devoted to express codecs, like Bluesky’s video feed.
As you browse throughout the posts in Flashes, you’ll like, repost, and respond to them, simply as you’ll on Bluesky. The ones interactions may also seem in Bluesky’s app, whilst Bluesky customers’ interactions will display up in Flashes.
Photographers searching for a spot to exhibit their paintings will admire Flashes’ “Portfolio” function.
To toggle this surroundings on, you’ll head to the “Complicated” tab in your person profile, then faucet on “Flashes profile.” Right here, there might be an strategy to allow Portfolio, which helps you to curate which pictures will have to seem in your Flashes person profile.
You’ll be able to additionally customise your person profile additional by means of opting to turn or disguise likes, lists, and feeds, or the usage of different media filtering choices.
The best way to get began
To make use of Flashes, you’ll first want a Bluesky account. If you have already got one, you’ll check in with the ones credentials.
If now not, you’ll select to join a Bluesky account from throughout the Flashes app. The app defaults to putting in your account at the major Bluesky server, bluesky.social, however extra technical customers can choose to arrange a customized web hosting supplier as an alternative.
To create your account, you’ll wish to supply an e mail cope with, password, and date of beginning, then settle for the phrases of use, because of this you comply with Bluesky’s Neighborhood Pointers and Phrases.
As soon as signed in, you’ll in an instant get started surfing the photographs and movies shared in your Bluesky timeline or some other Bluesky feed, or publish your individual media.
A subscription is also coming
Vogelsang hopes that Flashes will assist pull in additional customers to the Bluesky group, together with those that aren’t as taken with a Twitter/X-like enjoy. As an alternative, the app appeals extra to other people searching for open choices to Meta’s Instagram.
It’s now not the one app construction on this area, on the other hand. Some other app running on identical studies is Pinksky. In the meantime, customers of Mastodon’s social community might want Pixelfed, which makes use of the fediverse’s ActivityPub protocol underneath the hood as an alternative of Bluesky’s ATProto.
Through the years, Vogelsang needs so as to add extra options to Flashes, like push notifications, give a boost to for a couple of accounts, bookmarks, and extra modifying choices.
Plans so as to add subscriptions with top class options are within the works, which might assist fund Android and internet building. Those paid tiers may additionally supply top class get entry to to Vogelsang’s third-party Bluesky app, Skeets, and his video-focused app, Bluescreen.
Different deliberate options come with iPad structure enhancements, give a boost to for longer movies, posts which can be most effective visual for a restricted time (like Tales), albums, and batched symbol switch from different platforms. Ultimately, the developer wish to evolve Flashes to be its personal AT Protocol-based platform, whilst nonetheless being suitable with Bluesky’s community.
The app is a unfastened obtain from the App Retailer and calls for iOS 17 or upper to run.
