When you first join Bluesky, the hardest part isn't signing up, it's finding the right people to follow. An empty feed is a silent feed, and a silent feed drives new users away. Starter packs solve this elegantly: they're curated lists of accounts you can follow in one click, organised by topic, niche, or community.
For creators, getting included in the right starter pack can be more valuable than any single viral post. Here's everything you need to know about how they work, and how to build one.
What Is a Bluesky Starter Pack?
A starter pack is a shareable collection of Bluesky accounts (and optionally, custom feeds) that someone has curated around a theme. Think "Scientists on Bluesky," "Indie game developers," or "UK journalists." When a new user sees a starter pack during onboarding, or when any user clicks a shared starter pack link, they can tap "Follow All" to subscribe to every account in the pack at once.
Starter packs aren't paid promotions or official Bluesky features, they're user-generated lists built by community members who want to help others navigate their niche.
Key stat: Starter packs shown during Bluesky's onboarding flow get seen by every new user who completes sign-up. A well-placed pack in a popular category can generate hundreds of follows per day during active growth periods.
How to Find Starter Packs
The easiest way is to search Bluesky directly. On bsky.app, search for your niche + "starter pack" (e.g. "photography starter pack" or "crypto starter pack"). Starter pack results appear in search alongside regular posts.
You can also find starter packs shared by accounts in your niche, when someone creates or shares a pack, it appears in your feed just like a post. Many curators share their packs in their bio or pin them.
Third-party directories (like bluesky-starter-packs.com, though availability changes) aggregate popular packs by category and make browsing easier than Bluesky's own search.
How to Create a Starter Pack
Go to Starter Packs in your profile
On bsky.app, tap your profile, then scroll down to find the "Starter Packs" tab. Tap the + button to create a new one. On mobile, this is in the same area as your Lists and Feeds.
Name and describe your pack
Give your starter pack a clear, searchable name, something like "Bluesky Food Photographers" or "Climate Scientists to Follow." The description should explain in 1–2 sentences why someone would want to follow this group. Make it specific: "Bluesky accounts" is too generic; "marine biologists sharing research and field photos" is discoverable.
Add accounts
Search for and add accounts to the pack. You can add up to 150 accounts, but 20–50 is the sweet spot. More than 50 starts to feel undifferentiated, curators who are ruthlessly selective tend to build better reputations. You can include yourself in your own starter pack.
Add feeds (optional)
You can also include custom feeds in a starter pack. If there's a well-curated feed for your niche (e.g. a "Science news" feed), include it so new followers have both accounts and a curated feed to start from. This makes your pack much more useful than just a list of people.
Share it
Tap Share to get a link. Post it on Bluesky, share it in relevant communities, and include it in your bio. The more places it's shared, the more it gets used, and the more traction all the accounts in it receive.
Tips for Making Your Starter Pack Succeed
- Be ruthlessly selective. A pack of 25 active, high-quality accounts in a specific niche beats a pack of 150 mixed accounts in the same space. Quality over quantity.
- Update it. Remove accounts that go inactive or change niche. An active, maintained pack is worth sharing repeatedly. A stale one reflects poorly.
- Name it for search. Include the niche keyword in the title so it appears when people search. "Astrophysics on Bluesky" is more discoverable than "My Space Friends."
- Include yourself. If the pack is genuinely relevant to your niche, include your own account. It's not self-promotional, it's what makes the pack complete.
- Cross-post the announcement. When you launch a starter pack, post about it and ask the accounts you've included to share it with their followers. One signal boost from 20 accounts can drive significant discovery.
How to Get Added to Others' Starter Packs
There's no application system. Curators add accounts they already follow and value. The best way to get included is to:
- Post consistently in your niche
- Engage genuinely with other accounts in the same space
- Have a clear profile bio that signals your focus area
- Reach out politely, "I notice you curate a great [niche] starter pack; I post about [topic] regularly, would love to be considered" is a perfectly reasonable message
What Happens When Someone Taps Follow All
The button does exactly what it says, and knowing its limits saves a lot of confusion later.
Tapping Follow All creates an individual follow from that person to every account in the pack, one at a time, as though they had visited each profile and pressed follow. There is no group, no subscription and no ongoing link. Once the follows exist, the pack has done its job and steps out of the picture.
Three consequences follow from that. Nobody is notified that a pack caused it. You see new followers arrive with no indication of where they came from, which is why a sudden unexplained bump is often a pack you never knew you were in.
Adding someone later does not reach earlier users. If a hundred people used your pack in March and you add three accounts in April, those hundred people do not follow the new three. Only people who tap Follow All after the change get the updated list. A pack is a snapshot at the moment of tapping, not a live subscription.
Removing an account does not undo follows. Once someone follows you through a pack, taking you out of it changes nothing for the people already following you. Those follows are theirs now.
Starter Packs vs Lists vs Feeds
Bluesky offers three ways to group accounts and they are easy to mix up. Choosing the wrong one is the most common mistake people make here.
| Starter pack | List | Feed | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Help someone follow a group at once | Read or moderate a group separately | Show posts matching a rule |
| Creates follows | Yes, on Follow All | No | No |
| Membership | Accounts, plus optional feeds | Accounts only | Defined by an algorithm |
| Updates reach past users | No | Yes, the list is live | Yes, continuously |
| Best for | Onboarding newcomers to a niche | Curating your own reading | Ongoing topic discovery |
The practical rule: use a starter pack when you want other people to follow a community, a list when you want to read a community without following it, and a feed when you want posts on a subject regardless of who wrote them. If you find yourself repeatedly updating a starter pack so followers stay current, you actually wanted a feed. Our guide to custom feeds covers that route.
How Long a Starter Pack Keeps Working
Packs do not perform evenly over time, and expecting them to leads to disappointment.
Most of a pack's impact lands in the first days after it is shared, while it circulates in feeds and gets reposted. After that it settles into a slow trickle from search and from whoever links it in a bio. A pack that drove two hundred follows in its first week might drive five a week afterwards. That is normal rather than a sign it failed.
The exception is a pack that gets surfaced during onboarding, which can keep producing follows for months because it reaches people who were not on Bluesky when it launched. You cannot apply for that placement, and there is no way to buy it.
The other factor is decay. Accounts go quiet, change subject or leave. A pack built eighteen months ago and never revisited will contain people who no longer post, and following it delivers a worse experience than it promises. If you maintain a pack, prune it a couple of times a year. If you are following one, check the join dates before assuming it is current.
Measuring Whether Your Pack Did Anything
Because Bluesky tells you nothing about pack referrals, measuring the effect takes a little deliberate work.
Record your follower count immediately before you share a pack, then again at 24 hours, one week and one month. The shape of the curve tells you more than the total. A sharp spike that flattens quickly means the announcement travelled but the pack itself is not being found. A slow steady climb means people are discovering it through search, which is the more durable outcome.
Watch engagement rather than follower count alone. Followers gained through a well-targeted pack tend to reply and repost, because they chose the niche deliberately. Followers from a broad, unfocused pack often never interact at all, which is the clearest evidence that a tighter pack would have performed better.
You can track both without any special setup using our Bluesky profile analytics tool, which reads public data and needs no login.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many accounts can a Bluesky starter pack contain? Up to 150 accounts, plus optional custom feeds. Most effective packs sit well below that, somewhere between 20 and 50, because a tightly curated pack is more useful than an exhaustive one.
Do I get notified when I am added to a starter pack? No. Bluesky sends no notification, and there is no screen listing the packs you appear in. Most people discover it through an unexplained rise in followers, or because the curator mentions it.
Can I remove myself from someone else's starter pack? Not directly. Only the person who created the pack can edit it, so you would need to ask them. If the pack is being used to harass or misrepresent you, report it to Bluesky through the pack's own menu.
Does a starter pack automatically follow everyone when shared? No. Sharing a pack does nothing on its own. Follows only happen when a person opens it and chooses Follow All, and they can also follow individual accounts instead.
Do updates to a pack reach people who already used it? No. Follows are created at the moment someone taps Follow All. Adding accounts later only affects people who use the pack after the change.
Can I include myself in my own starter pack? Yes, and you generally should if the pack genuinely covers your niche. Leaving yourself out makes the pack incomplete rather than modest.
Track your growth after getting added to starter packs
Use BskySuite Analytics to see how your follower count and engagement changes when you're included in a new pack.
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