Bluesky adds mentions tab in the notifications screen and username squatting protection

Social network Bluesky has released a new update to its app that includes a separate mentions tab in notifications, protections against username squatting, and new controls for replies sorting.

The company announced that it is adding a new mentions tab with the v1.96 rollout to let you see those posts separately. Until now, all notifications were under one tab.

Bluesky is also adding protection against username squatting by reserving your original Bluesky username with (.bsky.social suffix) when you change your username to a custom domain. The platform said it only reserves the most recent Bluesky username, and it doesn’t expire.

A recent incident has shown that the company has faced problems with impersonation when people buy up domain names and reserve usernames with the names of known people who might not be on the platform yet. People also used to create a separate account while switching to a custom domain to prevent someone from taking their original Bluesky username.

Bluesky is also adding a way to display replies under a post. Users can choose between linear and threaded views. They can also sort replies using different filters like hot, oldest, newest, most-liked, and random.

The social network, which has crossed 25 million users, is also adding new translation language support for Nepali, Khmer, and Romanian.