One of the biggest holdouts for news junkies and sports fans on Bluesky is no more. Starting this week, users can get push notifications whenever a specific account posts, just like on X.
As announced by Bluesky’s own account on Bluesky (where else?), the new Activity Notifications feature is now live, and thankfully it works exactly how one would expect: tap the bell icon on any profile, and you’ll be able to choose between alerts for new posts only, or posts plus replies if you feel like you don’t get interrupted enough with notifications throughout the day.
📢 1.104 is rolling out with new ways to personalize your notifications!• Activity Notifications: Get push alerts from your favorite accounts• Repost Notifications: See when someone likes or reposts something you’ve reposted• New Notification Settings: Fine-tune which notifications you receive — Bluesky (@bsky.app) 2025-07-07T17:45:54.883Z
This is the kind of basic real-time functionality that helped Twitter become essential for breaking news and live coverage pretty much from the get-go, and it’s something that Bluesky has repeatedly promised to double down on.
That goes for sports, too. Bluesky has said expanding its sports presence is “a top priority,” but the platform hasn’t exactly been ready for it. At least not in the way fans or reporters are used to. As noted by The Verge:
“So far, ESPN reporter and Woj heir Shams Charania hasn’t brought his free agency coverage to the platform yet (to go with X, Threads, and the ESPN app), but now that it has push notifications for specific accounts, maybe he will.”
Even more notifications settings, and a fold-in
Today’s update also brings much more control over what notifications you see, and who can trigger them. Want to mute likes? Only get notified about new followers from people you follow? Filter out repost alerts entirely? You can now get all of the above.
More info in our blog here: bsky.social/about/blog/0… — Bluesky (@bsky.app) 2025-07-07T17:45:54.884Z
It is worth mentioning that the old “priority notifications” toggle has been folded into the new system, so if that was already on, your setup won’t change unless you tweak it manually.
And here’s one final change: you can now get notified if someone likes or reposts a post you reposted, which might also help bring that live social-network-y vibe that some might say has been lacking on the platform.
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