Connecting Bluesky

Last updated: 2 September 2026

Bluesky is the fastest account to connect to Cosmoose, and it is the only one that works differently from the rest. Every other platform sends you to its own sign-in screen. Bluesky has no such screen for apps like ours, so you make a password for Cosmoose yourself and paste it in. Three fields and it is done.

What you need: your Bluesky handle, and an app password you make in Bluesky. Not your account password. Never your account password.

1. Make an app password

Open Bluesky app passwords and press Add App Password. You can also get there by hand: Settings, then Privacy and security, then App Passwords.

Bluesky Privacy and Security settings, with the App passwords row below two-factor authentication — Settings, then Privacy and security. App passwords sits right under two-factor authentication.

The Bluesky App Passwords screen with the Add App Password button — One button on the whole screen. That is the one.

Name it Cosmoose, so you know which one to revoke later.
Tick Allow access to your direct messages. Cosmoose reads your replies and DMs into one inbox, and without this box it can see neither.
Press Next. Bluesky shows you the password once and never shows it again. Copy it now.

The Add App Password dialog named Cosmoose with the direct messages checkbox ticked — Name it Cosmoose and tick the direct messages box. This is the step people miss.

Bluesky showing a generated app password, characters covered — Copy it here. Press Done and Bluesky will not show it to you again.

It comes out as four groups of four characters with dashes between them, like abcd-efgh-ijkl-mnop. If what you are holding is longer than that, or has no dashes in it, it is your account password and it is the wrong thing.

2. Connect it in Cosmoose

In Cosmoose open Settings, then the Accounts tab, and press Connect Bluesky. Two fields appear.

Your handle. The whole thing, including the part after the dot: yourname.bsky.social. If you set a custom domain as your handle, use that instead. Leave the @ off, or leave it on. Either works.
App password. Paste the one you just made.

Press Connect. Cosmoose signs in to Bluesky as you before it saves anything, so if it says connected, it really is. Your handle appears under Connected accounts a second later.

3. Why a password instead of a button

Most apps you connect show you a screen on the platform itself, where you press Allow and never type a password into anybody else's box. That is the better pattern and we use it everywhere it exists.

Bluesky's app password is the equivalent it offers today, and it is genuinely narrow. It can post as you and read your messages. It cannot change your account password, cannot change your email, cannot delete your account, and it does not survive you revoking it. Every Bluesky scheduling tool works this way, ours included.

4. When it will not connect

Almost always one of four things.

The handle is missing its ending. yourname is not a handle. yourname.bsky.social is. Cosmoose adds the ending for you if you leave it off, but only when your handle is a normal Bluesky one and not a custom domain.
The password has invisible characters in it. Copying from a phone or a password manager can drag along characters you cannot see, and Bluesky then rejects a password that looks correct on your screen. Cosmoose strips the common ones. If it still fails, make a fresh app password and type it by hand.
The password was already used and revoked. App passwords are one per tool. If you deleted the one you are pasting, no amount of retyping brings it back. Make another.
You pasted your account password. Cosmoose refuses anything that is not in the four by four shape, on purpose. Your account password opens your whole account, and no tool should ever hold it.

Bluesky answers all four of these with the same sentence about an invalid identifier or password, which is why the list above is worth working through in order.

5. Turning it off

Two ways, and you can use either.

In Cosmoose: Settings, Accounts, Disconnect. The app password is deleted along with the connection. We do not keep a copy.
In Bluesky: Settings, Privacy and security, App Passwords, and delete the one named Cosmoose. It stops working immediately, including for us.

The second one is the important one. It means you never have to trust that we honoured the first.

6. What Cosmoose does with it

Posts what you schedule, and reads your replies and direct messages into your inbox so you can answer them in one place. Nothing else. It does not follow accounts for you, it does not like posts on your behalf, and it does not post anything you did not write.

Your app password is stored in the one table in our database that no browser session can reach, on a row that belongs to your account, and it is only ever sent to Bluesky. What we store and why is in the Privacy Policy.

7. Still stuck

Email support@cosmoose.io and tell us what the screen said. Include your handle. Never include the app password, and if you already sent it to anybody, delete it in Bluesky and make another.