Bluesky, currently home to the best of the “X-pats,” allows you to use your personal domain name as your username. In other words, you can change your username from “@prawnay.bsky.social” to “@pranayparab.com.” The problem with this is that it leaves your old username open to be claimed by anyone: If you didn’t claim it immediately after making the switch, then another person could take your old username. This is inconvenient for those who have the same handle across multiple social networks, especially if your account is prone to impersonation.
With Bluesky 1.96, the social network will safeguard your old username if and when you decide to switch to your own domain name. The company says that it will indefinitely reserve your most recent bsky.social handle, so you won’t have to worry about trolls or impersonators taking over your old handle when you verify yourself with your domain. Now that this feature is here, I’ll be switching my Bluesky handle to my own domain name as soon as possible—without worrying about someone stealing my original handle.
Streamlined notifications and other features
Credit: Pranay Parab
The 1.96 update also brings many other improvements to Bluesky. For starters, you’ll see a new “Mentions” tab in the app’s notifications page. This will allow you to quickly see who mentioned you in comments and easily reply to them. The old notifications interface used to show follows, reposts, likes, and mentions all on the same page.
Speaking of replies, with this latest update, you can now choose how replies appear on Bluesky. You can pick between a linear view (the default) and a threaded view, which makes it easier to follow multiple layers of comments. You can also choose to sort replies in chronological or reverse chronological order, prioritize most popular replies, or choose a totally random order.
Finally, Bluesky is getting unspecified visual improvements, and the service has now been translated to support three more languages—Khmer, Nepali, and Romanian.