Sign in to Bluesky

The Bluesky app (mobile and web) supports custom PDS hosts. The hosting provider option on the sign-in screen accepts any PDS hostname.

Sign-in flow

1. Open the Bluesky app or bsky.app.
2. Choose Sign in.
3. Tap or click Hosting provider and choose Custom.
4. Enter the PDS hostname, for example pds.example.com.
5. Enter the handle (for example alice.example.com) and the account password set during pds init.

The app logs-in to your Cirrus PDS. On success, it loads the timeline.

How the app talks to Cirrus afterwards

Once signed in, the Bluesky app will use your Cirrus PDS for all API calls. This is transparent to the user: the app’s UI and features work the same as with bsky.social. The only difference is that behind the scenes, the app talks to your Cirrus PDS instead of bsky.social’s PDS.

Using an app password instead

To avoid putting the main account password into the app, create an app password and sign in with that:

pnpm pds app-password create

The CLI prints the password once (format xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx). Use it on the sign-in screen in place of the account password. See Create an app password for the full flow.

Trouble signing in

“Could not connect to PDS” — verify the PDS hostname. https://pds.example.com/xrpc/com.atproto.server.describeServer should return JSON.

“Invalid handle or password” — make sure you’re loggin-in with your handle, not your email address. Verify that the handle resolves to the expected DID (pds status) and that the password matches the bcrypt hash in PASSWORD_HASH. If the password was lost, set a new one with pds secret password (it pushes a new hash to Cloudflare).

The app signs in but the timeline is empty — the account is brand new and follows nobody. Follow accounts to populate the timeline.

For more, see Troubleshoot common errors.