Bluesky is rolling out private bookmarks, a long-requested feature that gives people a way to save posts without signaling that action publicly. Called Saved Posts, the tool adds a small bookmark icon beneath each post—right next to the familiar heart—so you can stash content and revisit it later from a new “Saved” section in the app’s main navigation.
On Bluesky, likes are public by design. That transparency suits the open social ethos, but it creates friction when you want to collect research threads, sensitive tips, or simply keep your interests to yourself. Private bookmarks neatly solve that tension without changing how likes function or how feeds rank content.
How Saved Posts work
Tap the new bookmark icon on any post to add it to your personal Saved list. Unlike likes, these saves are visible only to you. The Saved area lives in your primary navigation, offering a clean, chronological library that isn’t polluted by everything you casually hearted while scrolling.
For early Bluesky adopters who used a red pushpin emoji in replies as a DIY saving system, the company has built a migration tool to convert those threads into proper bookmarks. It’s a small quality-of-life touch that nods to how the community has been using the platform in practice.
Why private bookmarks matter
Public likes can limit honest engagement. Reporters often prefer to privately gather posts for verification or future reference. Researchers and creators want to keep work-in-progress collections out of view. And plenty of users simply don’t want to advertise every curiosity or guilty pleasure. Surveys by the Pew Research Center have consistently found that a majority of social media users tailor their activity to manage how they’re perceived, which makes a private save option more than a convenience—it’s a trust feature.
Competitors have come to similar conclusions. Instagram’s “Saves” quietly became one of the most important creator signals, a point Meta has emphasized in its creator education materials. X moved to hide likes for most users after acknowledging that public hearts could chill engagement with contentious or stigmatized content. Bluesky is taking a different route: it keeps likes public to preserve transparency while introducing a parallel, private pathway for curation.
A pragmatic workaround to protocol limits
There’s a technical wrinkle behind the scenes. Bluesky runs on the AT Protocol, which prioritizes portability and openness but does not yet offer a standardized way to store private user data. To ship private bookmarks now, Bluesky is keeping Saved Posts off-protocol—similar to how the app handles direct messages—so they remain visible only to the account holder.
That choice reflects the practical trade-offs in building an open social network. Public content and identity are federated and portable; private artifacts like DMs and saves, for the moment, are app-scoped. If the protocol later adds encrypted private records, Bluesky could migrate bookmarks into that layer, aligning privacy with portability without losing today’s functionality.
What it means for engagement and discovery
Private saves typically boost “return to content” behavior—people come back to finish reading long posts, re-open threads they meant to cite, or resurface how-to guides. In creator ecosystems, saves can correlate with deeper interest than a quick like, and they often inform recommendation systems. While Bluesky hasn’t said whether saves will influence ranking, the feature naturally supports the platform’s composable feeds by helping users curate and share higher-signal posts when they’re ready.
The timing also fits a broader push to make Bluesky stickier. Recent updates added a unified button for photo and video uploads, tooling to give feedback to custom feed creators, and “Starter Packs” that bundle follow recommendations—features aimed at reducing onboarding friction and accelerating discovery without sacrificing user control.
How it compares to other platforms
Instagram, Reddit, and TikTok have long treated saves and favorites as private signals that complement likes. Bluesky’s implementation hews to that pattern but stands out for how it must straddle decentralization: the public graph is federated; the private shelf is local to the app. That split underscores Bluesky’s dual mandate—build an open social layer while meeting modern expectations for privacy and personal organization.
The bigger picture
Saved Posts won’t dominate the feed, but they will change behavior at the margins that matter—research, reporting, long-form reading, adult content, and anything where discretion is part of participation. It’s a small feature that signals a larger direction: Bluesky is willing to ship pragmatic, privacy-respecting tools today while its underlying protocol catches up tomorrow.