An Easy Guide To BlueSky Verification


The new Twitter-Wannabe BlueSky has an interesting approach to verifying accounts. Rather than you sending in your passport, or paying a 3rd party, or bribing an employee - you can self-verify for free!

This opens up verification to small organisations, individuals, and anyone who wants to prove who they are. Brilliant!

Verification means that your @username will change to @Your.Website.com - this means that everyone can see your BlueSky account is owned by that specific website. When you change your name, you keep all your followers and posts.

Here are some organisations and people at risk of impersonation who have already done this:

There is an easy way to get verified and a hard way. Let's do the easy way!

1) Sign Up For BlueSky

Sign up and register a username. This can be anything you want. For example, I registered edent.bsky.social

2) Change Your User ID

Follow these steps:

  1. Visit https://bsky.app/settings
  2. Scroll down and select "Change Handle"
  3. Click "I have my own domain"
  4. Select "No DNS Panel". The screen should look like this:
    • Change Handle screen.
  5. Type in the domain name you want to verify
  6. Click "Copy File Contents"

Keep this web page open.

3) Copy and Save Your DID

On your clipboard, you will have a bit of text which looks like this did:plc:dip7ueksh627fxacagfrdyz2

Save it in a text file called atproto-did

Screenshot of a text editor.

It is very important that the file doesn't end with .txt - it must be called atproto-did and nothing else.

The file should only contain the text you copied. Nothing else.

4) Upload The File To Your Website

This is the only technical bit of the process. You need the ability to upload a file to your website. I don't know whether you use FTP, a control panel, or email things to the person who manages your site.

You need to save the atproto-did file in a folder called /.well-known/

If that folder doesn't exist, create it. The folder name must be typed exactly like that, with the dot at the start.

You can check it has worked by visiting YourWebsite.com/.well-known/atproto-did

If you can see your DID, it worked!

5) Change Your Username

Go back to the "Change Handle" web page you opened in Step 2.

Click "Verify Text File" and then "Update".

6) That's It!

Feel free to share this guide with people and organisations who want to get verified on BSky.

Leave a comment if you found it useful or want me to clarify something.


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11 thoughts on “An Easy Guide To BlueSky Verification”

  1. doowruc says:

    Hi Terence, thanks for the great simple guide!

    Do you have to keep the file at that location to keep the handle verified, or is it a one-off verification which you can then delete?

    I have a domain which I currently only host email on which I want to use for my handle. If I am able to temporarily spin up a web site to host the file, verify, then tear down, that would be awesome!

    Cheers

    Reply
    1. @edent says:

      From my testing, it appears you do need to keep the file there permanently. If it is removed, BSky may revoke your username.

      Reply
  2. dooorwuc says:

    Ha, I should have followed the "hard way" link before asking 🙂 I see I can set up a DNS TXT record. I'll do that!

    Reply
    1. Jon Ribbens says:

      Yeah, I think for some of us the "hard way" is in fact the "easy way" 😉

      Reply
  3. says:

    Strangely, when I copied the file contents, I got a string that looked like:

    did=did:plc:…
    

    That wouldn’t verify at Bluesky, but when I removed the leading did=, it, um, did. Not sure if that was just a glitch on my part or not, but if anyone else isn’t getting verification to work, check to see if this will fix it.

    Reply
    1. @edent says:

      That doesn't prove you own the domain though. Otherwise anyone could prove themselves to be Hotmail, Gmail, their Uni, etc.

      Reply
  4. After you change the handle, the old handle (under the bsky.social) will become available to everyone. I just changed my handle to my domain, and then I created a backup account with the old handle under bsky.social. (Just to be safe :D)

    Reply

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