Microwave
Native iOS app for videos on ATproto
Details
- External ID
- 46604067
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Microwave
- Website domain
- apple.com
- Launched
- Jan. 13, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 36
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.7424242424242424
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
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
Enrichment
- Theme
- hardware hacking and device utilities
- Vertical
- Media & entertainment
- Function
- Vertical SaaS
- Audience
- B2C
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Commercial product
- Normalized one-liner
- native ios app for atproto videos
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes It is a client-side SwiftUI app that delegates all video hosting, authentication, and social graph functionality to the public AT Protocol API.
Discussion
10 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: TikTok, Instagram
Concerns raised: No external share option for videos outside Bluesky, Loading indicators missing, videos take multiple seconds to load, Initial feed heavily skewed toward American politics and ICE videos, White gradient glitch when scrolling up then back down, Description text not expandable
Feature requests: Add ActivityPub support, External video sharing capability, Expandable description text, Loading indicators for video buffering, More diverse content beyond American politics
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 33 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #7 of 34 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 66 days after the earliest competitor.
- ServerKit · hn · 2026-06-30 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- Media Stack: Managerr · ph · 2026-09-17 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- aTV RC · ph · 2026-09-26 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.35
- simfleet · github · 2026-09-25 · 90 upvotes · similarity 0.35
- Flux, a tiny protocol that rethinks email from the ground up · hn · 2026-03-08 · 12 upvotes · similarity 0.34
- Falcon · hn · 2026-02-24 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.34
- SyncPL · ph · 2026-09-26 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.34
- SkyPad Social · ph · 2026-09-25 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.34
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a vertical saas tool for Insurance yet.