Bluesky later: Schedule Bluesky post in the future for FREE

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few days, you surely have heard about the US election. Due to the result, many people I follow on Twitter have moved to Bluesky for reasons I'll let you figure out yourself - it's not hard to understand.

While I created an account on Bluesky a while back, I haven't been really active on it. Not only because there weren't many people there, but it also lacked some features like GIFs! But that's no longer the case. And since I've been thinking of leaving Twitter due to the annoying billionaire, I decided to hang out more on Bluesky and cancelled my Twitter Pro account.

So far it has been a nice experience. These are the features I like the most:

• I can use my domain nico.fyi as my handle! 🤯
• The starter pack created by the community is really helpful to get started. ❤️
• No ads! 🎉
• API is free! 😋

But there's one thing I'm missing. I want to schedule posts for the future because I don't want to flood my followers with too many posts in a short period of time. And since this feature isn't available yet and the API is free, I decided to create a scheduler to do that.

Introducing Bluesky Later. An open source web app that allows you to schedule posts for the future on Bluesky. It has two modes: Browser mode and Self hosted mode.

Browser mode

The browser mode is the easiest way to use Bluesky Later. You can use it immediately here for free. It's a single page app that runs entirely in your browser. The credentials and the scheduled posts are stored in the browser's IndexDB. The only caveat is that the scheduled posts are posted at the scheduled time as long as the browser tab is open and you are connected to the internet.

If you want, you can deploy it yourself to your own GitHub Pages by cloning the repository and setting the repository variables. Read more about it here.

Self hosted mode

Unlike the browser mode, the self hosted mode is a bit more complicated. You need a server to host the API server and the front end. But you don't need to keep the browser tab open to post the scheduled posts. The API server will run in the background and will post the scheduled posts when the time comes.

I have created a docker-compose.yml file so that you can easily deploy it to your own server. Read more about it here.

Cloud version

I am hesitant to make a cloud version of Bluesky Later because I believe this feature is much better suited for the official app. I'm not completely sure, but I think the team is working on it. But if you don't want to host it yourself or keep the browser tab open, hit me up on Bluesky. If there is enough interest, I might consider making a cloud version.