Bluesky Bookmarks and Account Portability: Why Moving Your PDS Doesn't Lose Your Archive
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Bluesky's bookmarks only point to a post. They don't keep a copy. If the author deletes the post, or the account moves in a way that breaks the old link, your bookmark points at nothing. To keep a Bluesky post you saved, you need your own copy of it.
How Bluesky bookmarks work
Bluesky added its own bookmark button in early September 2025. It's good for saving a post in the moment. Your bookmarks are private and only you can see them. But a bookmark is a reference to where the post lives, and that can change.
What is a PDS, and why does it matter for bookmarks?
Bluesky runs on the AT Protocol. Your account lives on a Personal Data Server (PDS), and you can move it from one PDS to another. Your handle and followers come with you. That is the main idea of the protocol: your account isn't tied to one company's servers the way it is on X.
For bookmarks, that has side effects. A post you saved can become unreachable at its old location while an account moves. People also delete posts or whole accounts. In each case, a bookmark that only points to the post stops working.
How to back up your Bluesky bookmarks
Birdfeeder keeps a searchable copy of every Bluesky post you bookmark. When you connect your Bluesky account, it imports all your existing bookmarks, not just recent ones. After that it checks for new bookmarks every 30 minutes and saves the full text and images of each one.
That copy doesn't depend on where the post lives later. It doesn't matter which PDS hosts the account next month, or whether the post still exists at all. More on the Bluesky bookmark backup page.
X has the same problem in a different form: there, posts vanish when accounts are deleted or suspended. The fix is the same in both cases. Don't depend on the original staying where it is.
Can I export my Bluesky bookmarks?
Yes. Birdfeeder exports your Bluesky bookmarks to CSV, TSV, JSON or Excel, and that is free on every plan, including after a trial ends. See Bluesky bookmark export.
What else you get once they're saved
Everything works the same no matter which network a bookmark came from. You get full-text search across everything you ever saved, and a weekly email so bookmarks don't just pile up unread.
Your archive is private by default, like Bluesky's own bookmarks. If you want to share what you've been reading, you can publish single bookmarks on a public Birdfeeder profile without making the rest public.
Why Birdfeeder supports Bluesky now
I shut Birdfeeder down in early 2023 after X changed its API pricing. When I brought it back in July 2026, it came back with Bluesky and Mastodon next to X. For Bluesky, that meant building around a protocol that expects accounts to move. I wrote more about that shift in moving from X to Bluesky with my archive intact.