More good news for those looking to exit Meta’s social app ecosystem in favor of a more open alternative: An independent developer has built a photo-sharing app for Bluesky called Flashes. The easy-to-launch app is powered by the same technology that powers Bluesky, the AT Protocol, and is built using code from the developer’s first Bluesky client, Skeets.

When launched, Flashes will tap into growing consumer demand for alternatives to Big Tech’s social media monopoly. This trend has led to the adoption of open source, decentralized apps like Mastodon and Bluesky, among others, including the recently launched Pixelfed mobile appsbuilt on Mastodon’s ActivityPub protocol. This is also, in part, what motivates the transition of TikTok users to The Chinese app RedNote before the US TikTok ban — that is, US users have signaled that they’d rather use a foreign rival app than return to Meta at this point.

Flashes itself is based on Berlin developer Sebastian Vogelsang’s app, Skeets, his initial foray into creating consumer-facing apps for the growing social network, Bluesky, which is now leading the way. 27.5 million users.

While Bluesky offers its own official mobile client, Skeets differentiates itself by focusing on the needs of iPad users as well as customized accessibility features for the blind and visually impaired. well user, because that is one of Vogelsang’s areas of expertise.

Late last year, Vogelsang also realized there was potential to create apps using the same code base that would serve Bluesky users who were more interested in visual content, such as photos and videos. Since Bluesky already supports this type of media, it is only necessary to reconfigure the Skeets app so that its design and user interface will be similar to other photo sharing applications, such as Meta’s Instagram.

“I was thinking about the idea of ​​having a base social graph and then having different apps choose from that graph what they want to show,” Vogelsang told TechCrunch. “I find it very interesting, because before we had these separate networks.”

He said that Flashes will help to get new potential users of Bluesky who have not yet joined the social network because they do not see themselves as a “Twitter Person.”

“This could give them an entry point into the network, into the whole protocol,” Vogelsang said.

However, the developer emphasizes that Flashes is not intended to be an Instagram clone, nor will it offer all the same features.

At launch, Flashes will support photo posts of up to four images and videos of up to 1 minute in length, just like Bluesky. Users who post on Flashes will also have their posts displayed on Bluesky and the comments on the posts will also be returned to the app as if it were a Bluesky client. It will also support Bluesky direct messages.

To make this work, Flashes simply filters the current Bluesky timeline for posts with photos and video posts. (In the future, Vogelsang also plans to add metadata to Flashes posts so that Bluesky users have a way to keep their feeds in the main Bluesky app without being flooded with photo posts if that becomes a problem. )

Flashes didn’t take long to create because they reused existing Skeets code. The app can also be marketed to Skeets existing user base, which has now downloaded the app about 30,500 times to date.

Vogelsang said he’s now working to integrate subscription-based features from his two apps so users don’t have to pay twice for premium features, like Skeets bookmarks, draft, muting, multiple push notifications, and more specific to Flashes. (Both apps are free to use without a subscription, we should note.)

Later, Vogelsang said he wanted to launch a video-only app, too, called Blue Screen.

The developer hopes to be able to launch Flashes to the public in a few weeks with a TestFlight beta coming before that. Interested users can follow Flashes’ account on Bluesky for more updates.