Today, Ben McCarthy and I are launching Indigo. It’s a full-featured client for both Mastodon and Bluesky, available on iPhone, iPad and macOS. Go get it on the App Store!
At the time we began work on this app in the fall of 2024, there was a consensus opinion that you couldn’t combine these two networks. Two text-based social networks, each with their own distinct characters (both in terms of the people and features!), could not help but fall apart under scrutiny.
But Ben and I disagreed with that consensus. With enough thoughtful application, we really felt we could represent the best each service has to offer. For me personally, the motivation was powerful: I was fully invested in Mastodon, but I keenly missed the people I’d followed on Twitter who had migrated to Bluesky instead. I was never going to use two apps to follow both networks. Especially since, while we have truly terrific Mastodon apps, the Bluesky app landscape is barren, missing vital features like cross-client timeline sync.
With Indigo, I really do feel like we’ve nailed the tension between services. Ben’s design makes clear what network you’re viewing in a combined timeline. And where you follow the same person on both services, we show their crossposts with a native group that streamlines your viewing experience, and allows you to respond to both posts jointly. Over a year-and-a-half of development, we came across and resolved so many of those rough edges that cropped up; too many to mention here. The result is, I truly feel, a unique and powerful client that looks great, and will hopefully be loved by many people!
Because making it damn near killed me. I’ve been shipping indie software for almost 20 years, and Indigo has been, by far, the greatest technical challenge I’ve ever faced. I’ve been working on it daily for this time almost without pause, on top of my full-time day job. There were moments where I felt I had to give up on it because I couldn’t reach an acceptable quality standard. I took so many approaches to The Timeline Problem™ that I’ve lost count, writing thousands of lines of code, then tweaking, tweaking, and then throwing it out to try a different approach.
The Indigo we’re shipping today is going to be the worst version; this is what I keep telling myself. It works very well overall, but my eye spots issues even now. It prompts the age-old question of “how good is good enough?”, and I deeply hope the answer is “this good”. It’s time to put my keyboard down and find out.