Show HN: Microwave – Native iOS app for videos on ATproto
36 points - 01/13/2026
Hi HN — I built Microwave, a native iOS app for browsing and posting short-form videos, similar to TikTok, but implemented as a pure client on top of Bluesky / AT Protocol.
There’s no custom backend: the app reads from and publishes to existing ATproto infrastructure. The goal was to explore whether a TikTok-like experience can exist as a thin client over an open social protocol, rather than a vertically integrated platform.
Things I’d especially love feedback on:
- Whether this kind of UX makes sense on top of ATproto
- Client-only tradeoffs (ranking, discovery, moderation)
- Protocol limitations I may be missing
- Any architectural red flags
TestFlight:
https://testflight.apple.com/join/cVxV1W3gCool app! It’s quite polished and scrolling is smooth on a 13 Mini. Some quick thoughts:
- I didn’t see any loading indicator, and some videos took multiple seconds to load
- When I scroll up then back down, I get a white gradient at the bottom of the screen that goes away after a few seconds
- I’d like to be able to expand the description text, but clicking it didn’t do anything
- Without signing in, my initial feed was almost entirely ICE videos
Looks nice. Why not add ActivityPub as well? Or is this not possible?
Congratulations on launching.
Also this is probably the most comprehensive what to test notes in a test flight I've ever seen iirc
get used to it with coding agents
Most of the videos are related to American politics. Would be nice to see more diversity.
Ask creators you follow to add Bluesky as a publishing target. Alternatively, someone builds a pull through cache and content is ripped from TikTok and Insta for serving on the ATproto fabric (yt-dlp still works well for ripping from Big Tech social media storage targets).
Looks very good! I don’t have feedbacks wrt what you asked, but I like the app.
What are your thoughts on ATproto after implementing a client?
Installed. Had a look around. Quite fast. Nice and responsive. No option to share though… wanted to send a video outside of Bluesky and no option. I can re-whateverthewordisinbluesky, but no external share.