Show HN: Microwave – Native iOS app for videos on ATproto

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/cVxV1W3g

Show HN: Microwave – Native iOS app for videos on ATproto
testflight.apple.com

Congratulations on launching.

Also this is probably the most comprehensive what to test notes in a test flight I've ever seen iirc

Looks very good! I don’t have feedbacks wrt what you asked, but I like the app.

Cool 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

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).