Bluesky update 1.61 is here! In-app video and music player added, ‘Hide post’ feature arrives too

Bluesky update 1.61 brings new features to the platform. The most notable ones include an in-app video and music player for links and a hide post feature.

Bluesky update 1.61 brings new features to the platform. The most notable ones include an in-app video and music player for links and a hide post feature. (Bluesky)

Ahead of the new year, the popular decentralized social media platform Bluesky has rolled out a new update. The Bluesky update 1.61 comes less than a week after the previous update which redesigned the logo to a butterfly and made the posts public for even those who did not have an account on the platform. Now, with the new update, Bluesky has added a new in-app video and music player for links. This player will function like the native player on X (formerly Twitter) where users do not have to leave the platform to play a YouTube video and can instead watch it on the platform. Alongside, Bluesky has also added a ‘Hide Post' feature that allows users to hide the posts they do not want to see.

Bluesky announced the update in a post from its official handle, and said, “App Version 1.61 is rolling out now. There's now an in-app video and music player for links! YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify, and Twitch embeds now play in the app. This will only trigger after a tap. (No autoplay)”.

Bluesky update 1.61 comes with in-app player, hide post feature

The in-app player is compatible with YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify, and Twitch. Users posting videos and posts from these platforms will see it automatically embedded into the platform and a video box will emerge. However, unlike X where these posts are set to autoplay and just scrolling to the video will make it play automatically, on Bluesky, users will have to manually tap the play button to play the video or music.

Alongside, a new hide post feature has also been added. Bluesky stated, “You can now “Hide Post” if there's something you don't want to see again. It will be removed from your feeds and put behind a mask if you visit it directly”. This feature is currently in beta, and while users will still be able to make use of this feature, it will not be synced across devices for now. So, if you use the iOS or Android app, it may not reflect on the website.

Apart from these, Bluesky has also released several bug fixes. The most notable among them is a fix for a bug that caused muted and blocked account listings to show as empty. Some users reported seeing an empty home screen due to a bug, which has also been fixed.