Bluesky now has a chat tab in your notification area

Bluesky now has a dedicated tab for your notifications as part of the recently released app update 1.96. With the talk tab, it’s very easy to see your replies or conversations you’ve been tagged in on the platform.

Speaking of replies, update 1.96 allows you to easily access settings that allow you to control how replies to posts appear to you. Replies can be linear, meaning they show one post after another, or threaded, meaning they’ll appear in an indented thread (sort of like how they appear on Reddit). You can also sort responses by new, old, most popular, “hot,” and “random” (called Bluesky “Poster Roulette”).

If you choose to set a custom domain as your username, with 1.96, Bluesky will also keep your old .bsky.social domain from being taken over by someone else. I wish this feature was there when I was customizing my domain — when I did that, I created an alt account parked under my old .bsky.social name so it wouldn’t be taken over.