Tapbots, the makers of Mastodon client Ivory, announced today that they are working on a Bluesky client. The app, which will be called Phoenix, is planned for release this summer.

There aren’t a lot of details yet, but Tapbots’ history of making top-notch social media apps stretches back many years, to Tweetbot, which was pulled from the App Store after Twitter no longer offered a third-party API. If you visit the project’s landing page, there is a brief FAQ, which explains that Ivory will continue to be developed, and that the Tapbots team believes separate apps for Mastodon and Bluesky will result in a better user experience than combining the two, which strikes me as right. Tapbots also says that they will release a public alpha version of the app as soon as possible.

This is great news. I’ve never been a huge fan of the default Bluesky app, and although more alternatives seem to be released every week, there are still fewer choices than there are for Mastodon. Plus, as an Ivory user, I’m looking forward to what I expect will be a similar interaction model and design with Phoenix.