If you have several devices of the same type, and want to be able to control them all together, then it’s possible to group them together in Home Assistant. The integration is simply called ‘Group‘, and once configured, it creates a helper entity that will perform the same action on all grouped devices.
Last year, I picked up two Zigbee colour-changing LED strips from AliExpress. One was to go in our nine-year-old’s bedroom and the other in the living room – the idea being that we could set the colours depending on the time of year. Rather than having Christmas lights that we put up in December, and took down in January, these lights could stay up all year round. For example, they could be pink around Valentines Day, or green at Halloween.
That was the theory. However, despite ordering 3 metre long strips, they were too short. Our house is about 100 years old with tall ceilings, and consequently, tall windows. In the end, two LED strips together, totalling 6 metres, were long enough just for one window and so they’re both in our nine-year-old’s bedroom. Because they’re two separate strips, they appear and work as separate Zigbee devices.
Creating a group in Home Assistant
You can start the process of creating a group either on the Integrations or Helper screens of Home Assistant’s settings. First of all, Home Assistant will ask you what type of devices you are grouping – all the devices must be of the same type, so you can’t group a switch and a light together.
Well, actually you can – but first you need to create a ‘Change Device Type of a Switch’ helper. Say you have a smart plug controlling a light; you can then create a Helper that appears as a Light, and then that can be grouped with other lights.
Anyway, in my example, I selected Light, gave it a name, and then selected the entities that needed to belong to the group – i.e. the individual lights. There’s also a ‘Hide Members’ option, which will hide the devices you’ve selected from the list of entities in Home Assistant. If you’ll only ever want to interact with the lights as a group, then tick this. However, if you still want to be able to manage individual lights as well, then keep it unticked.
On my Home Assistant dashboard, the icon shows that the new group helper is for multiple lights. The good news is that, even with colour changing lights, all the lights in the group will respond the same way together once grouped.
I also make these lights available in Apple Home and Google Home, and again, I make sure that Home Assistant is exposing the group, rather than the individual lights. As such, when I use Google Assistant to turn them on and change the colour, both lights change simultaneously.
For anyone who can’t manage stairs, the building is essentially a no-go. There are stairs up to the main entrance, and once you’re inside, more stairs up to the seating or down to the bar. There is no lift, nor has there ever been one.
As regular readers will know, accessibility is something that is important to me and I include a section in all my newer days out reviews. Installing a lift at the Bradford Playhouse will open it up to many people who can’t manage stairs – not just wheelchair users, but others with mobility issues, and parents with prams. That way, more people can enjoy shows there, and it makes the venue more attractive to producers who currently may be deterred by its lack of accessibility. It would be fantastic if the funding target could be met, and the work completed before the end of Bradford’s year as City of Culture ends in 10 months time. I’ve already contributed; if you can, please contribute as well.
Being able to access your Home Assistant instance outside of your home is useful, and there are many ways to do it – I’ve used several, including SWAG, an nginx proxy and more recently Nginx Proxy Manager. Today, I’m reviewing Homeway, a third-party service.
Setting up Homeway
Of all of the ways that you can enable remote access to Home Assistant, Homeway is one of the easiest. You sign up for an account on the Homeway web site, install an addon on your Home Assistant instance, and then you should be ready to go. Setting up the Home Assistant Companion App for iOS and Android is also supported, albeit with a little more work. If you don’t run Home Assistant OS or Supervised, and can’t install addons, then there’s also a Docker image or CLI client you can install.
Once up and running, it works well – you log in first to Homeway, and then into your local Home Assistant instance. It’s all done over SSL, without needing to set up DNS, port forwarding or reverse proxies.
Homeway also supports easy integration with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Having done it myself, setting up Google Assistant manually is a chore, and even when it’s up and running, I found it slow and unreliable. Using Google Assistant this way is much easier, as you don’t need to create a developer account. I also found it to be much faster, and I haven’t had any issues with devices showing as offline.
If you want to use Home Assistant’s voice control feature, then Homeway also provides access to an AI large language model for processing commands. Its chatbot is called Sage, and behind the scenes it uses ChatGPT 4 and Anthropic’s Claude services. For speech-to-text, it can also call on Google Gemini and DeepSeek R1, and there’s a choice of 25 voices from the various services it uses. As I use Google Assistant, I haven’t set this up myself.
What about Home Assistant Cloud?
What Homeway offers is very similar to Home Assistant Cloud. Home Assistant Cloud is provided by Nabu Casa, who employ many of Home Assistant’s developers and support the Open Home Foundation. So why should one use Homeway instead of Home Assistant Cloud?
The answer is price. I’ve compared the prices in a table:
Monthly price
Annual price
Home Assistant Cloud
£6.50
£65
Homeway
£3.49
£29.88
As you can see, Homeway is less than half the price of Nabu Casa’s Home Assistant Cloud. And, it should be noted that Homeway offers a free tier, if you just want remote access, albeit with data limits. You only need to pay for heavy usage and Google Assistant/Alexa access. There isn’t a free or lower-priced tier for Home Assistant Cloud.
That being said, as of January, Home Assistant Cloud now includes backup storage as well, which Homeway doesn’t currently offer. It’s also worth reiterating that some of the money from Home Assistant Cloud subscriptions goes to paying staff to work on Home Assistant development. As such, Homeway is a little controversial, and I noted that the Home Assistant Community on Reddit seems to block the word ‘homeway’ from posts.
For me, the best feature about Homeway is the Google Assistant support, which works well. I already have good remote access set up using Nginx Proxy Manager and will continue to use this.
In last weekend’s post about Magna, I mentioned that it had escaped the fate of another nearby Millennium Project, The Earth Centre, further down the Don Valley. The Earth Centre opened in 1999, but closed just five years later.
Thankfully, unlike Transperience (another failed museum near Bradford that I wrote about in 2010), I did manage to visit the Earth Centre whilst it was open. That being said, my visit was around 25 years ago. I don’t think I still have any photos of my visit, and even if I did, they would’ve been shot on photographic film as I didn’t get a digital camera until 2003. The image above is from Geograph and re-used under this Creative Commons license. This also means that my observations are from rather old memories.
The Earth Centre was a visitor attraction to showcase ways that we could be more sustainable, and reduce our negative impacts on the environment. There was a large solar panel array, and I remember there being a building with a small wood burner that could generate heat from fast-growing willow trees on-site. There were also play areas and things for kids to do. The architecture was modern too, and the buildings were designed to be highly energy efficient – many with grass roofs. A series of reed beds ensured that any sewage produced could be cleaned up before being discharged into the River Don.
It was quite a large site, and as well as walking around, I remember there being a kind-of ‘bike bus’ where every passenger could also peddle, so it didn’t consume any diesel.
Getting there
The Earth Centre was located near the town of Conisbrough in South Yorkshire, on the site of a former coal mine. The site was within walking distance of Conisbrough railway station, and visitors were encouraged to use sustainable forms of transport to get there. Indeed, the relatively small car park was located some distance away. That may have been one of the reasons why it struggled – getting there wasn’t easy. I know we went there by train, but whilst Conisbrough station is on the line between Doncaster and Sheffield, only local stopping services call there. Again, I can’t remember how frequent the trains were back then, but nowadays Conisbrough gets just one train an hour in each direction.
Reasons for failure
The main reason why the Earth Centre closed was a lack of visitors. In its later years, it closed to the general public and was only open to pre-booked groups (e.g. schools), but even that wasn’t enough. I’ve mentioned the difficulties getting there, but I also remember Jeremy Clarkson giving it a hard time on his TV talk show, Clarkson, which ran from 1998 to 2000. He was filmed taking his son there, and made it out that the Earth Centre was some kind of really boring theme park.
But I also think it was maybe ahead of its time. Our knowledge about the environment, and the effects of climate change, have significantly increased in the 20+ years since the Earth Centre closed. Maybe a similar attraction would do better if opened today – especially if it was built somewhere with better transport links.
Over in Wales, there’s the Centre for Alternative Technology which is kind-of similar, and indeed pre-dates the Earth Centre. Sadly, like the Earth Centre was in its later years, it’s now only open to pre-booked groups.
As for the Earth Centre’s fate following closure? For a while, it became an air-soft arena, was used as a filming location, and then in 2011 it became an outdoor activity centre. Although the company that now owns it went into administration last month, so who knows what will happen in future.
I remember my trip to the Earth Centre quite fondly, and for a while later I had a t-shirt from the gift shop which had been made from unbleached cotton (again, a novelty at the time). It was a shame that it closed.
‘My Own Worst Enemy’ by Lit. Lit have actually released 7 albums, but the massive popularity of this song means that they’re sometimes seen as a one-hit wonder. Indeed, it’s been streamed on Spotify 10 times more than any of their own songs.
‘Diamonds and Guns’ by Transplants. This always went down well as dancefloor filler. Transplants were a supergroup made up of members of Rancid and blink-182, and were a punk rock/hip hop crossover.
‘Chop Suey!’ by System of a Down. Another popular one for fans of heavy metal.
‘Take On Me’ by Reel Big Fish. Organisers of ‘rock’ nights also needed to keep fans of rock-adjacent genres happy, and so you would usually get at least a few ska tracks in there too. This is Reel Big Fish’s cover of the a-Ha classic.
‘Fat Lip’ by Sum 41. More punk rock, opening with a really powerful guitar riff.0
‘The Rock Show’ by blink-182. A blink-182 song was usually guaranteed at some point. If it wasn’t this one, then it would be ‘What’s My Age Again?’ or ‘All The Small Things’ from their previous album.
‘Basket Case’ by Green Day. I’m convinced there was some secret law that required all student unions to play this song at least once a month. I must’ve heard this song thousands of times by now.
‘Smooth Criminal’ by Alien Ant Farm. Although the Michael Jackson original has more Spotify streams, this version seemed way more popular at the time. Alien Ant Farm are still going incidentally, with a new album out last year, but this is far and away their most famous song.
‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ by Good Charlotte. I really liked Good Charlotte’s first album when it came out, and again, this song was everywhere for a while.
‘Want You Bad’ by The Offspring. This isn’t their most streamed song, but nor is the breakthrough hit Pretty Fly (For A White Guy), surprisingly. I’ve included it as it best fits the theme. And yes, they’re still going after 35 years.
If you have one of the higher tier models of Instant Pot, then you may well have a ‘sous vide’ button on it. We’ve used sous vide cooking a few times with our Instant Pot Duo Plus to make tasty meals, as it’s relatively easy to do.
Sous vide is French for ‘under vacuum’. Essentially, to cook something using the sous vide method, you put it in a vacuum-sealed bag, and then put it in a heated water bath (also known as a bain marie) inside your Instant Pot. Depending on the recipe, this can be quite quick, or take many hours. In the photo example, we were cooking some beef brisket for 30 hours.
There’s some instructions for how to set your Instant Pot to sous vide here. As well as setting the cooking time, you also need to set the temperature, using the buttons or dial on the front of your Instant Pot. Once it’s going, we use a glass lid(sponsored link) that we bought separately rather than the pressure cooker lid, so that you can see inside.
Sous vide without an Instant Pot
The sous vide cooking technique has been around since 1974, when it was pioneered by a French chef (hence the name). But the need to keep the water at a constant temperature means that it’s a difficult technique for home cooks to adopt without specialist equipment. You need something that forms a feedback loop between a temperature gauge, and the heat source. Of course, you could probably have a thermometer inside the bain marie and constantly adjust the heat yourself, but this isn’t feasible for recipes that take a long time. Thankfully, many models of Instant Pot will provide this feedback loop as part of their sous vide feature, so you can set and leave it.
If you don’t have an Instant Pot, or you have a more basic model without a sous vide mode, Amazon will sell you a sous vide wand(sponsored link) for around £50 that you can pop in your bain marie. The wand will provide the heat and measure the temperature. More advanced models can be configured with a smartphone app – a friend has such a model. It lets you set how well-cooked you want a piece of steak, for example, and sets the time and temperature accordingly.
Vacuum sealing
The other aspect of sous vide cooking is that you should vacuum seal your food, before it goes in the bain marie. We bought our vacuum sealer from the middle aisle of Lidl, of all places – in fact, it was a Lidl in France, and so we have to use a UK plug adaptor with it. Again, if you need a vacuum sealer, Amazon will sell you one for around £23(sponsored link), and expect to pay £11-£15 for two rolls of bags.
If you don’t want to buy one, then you may get away with just a regular plastic food bag with as much air squeezed out of it as possible.
What we’ve cooked using sous vide
I’m mentioned that we’ve cooked beef brisket using the sous vide technique, and indeed we’ve done so more than once. Brisket contains a lot of connective tissue, and so you need to use slower cooking methods to allow this tissue to break down. Sous vide is perfect for this, and after 30 hours, you’ll end up with a very meaty piece of meat.
We’ve also done duck confit this way, which then went into a cassoulet. Again, this was a long and slow recipe, taking around 12 hours with the cooking temperature set to 75° C.
It’s worth noting that, whilst you can cook steak using the sous vide method, you won’t get any browning on the outside. If this is something you want, then you’ll still need to flash fry the meat at a higher heat after it’s come out of the bain marie.
In summary, sous vide cooking, whilst requiring some forward planning and investing in the correct equipment, is also relatively easy. You can prepare some really tasty food ahead of time, and have it cook slowly at a regulated temperature. Plus, because the food is vacuum sealed, it’s a less messy way of cooking too. We don’t do it very often, but the few times we have done it have always been worth it.
What if I told you that Rotherham was home to one of Britain’s best science museums? Well, it is, in the form of the Magna Science Adventure Centre. I feel like it’s somewhere that I would’ve written about before, but can’t find a previous blog post about it. We’ve been a few times – I went with my parents when it first opened, and I’ve taken our little one several times, including last weekend.
History of Magna
Magna was one of a number of visitor attractions funded by the Millennium Commission, to mark the turn of the Millennium. It opened in 2001, with high expectations – further down the Don Valley, the Earth Centre in Conisbrough had opened in 1999 and was already struggling to meet its visitor targets. The Earth Centre ultimately closed in 2004 – a shame, as I’d enjoyed my visit there and felt it was perhaps ahead of its time.
Anyway, the good news is the Magna was more popular, and is still open today. Indeed, it had something of a refit in 2022, so if you’ve been before, there are some new things to see. Magna essentially fills two roles: a history of the area and, in particular, steelworking; and as a more general science museum.
Magna is housed in the former Templeborough Steelworks, or ‘Steelo’s’ as it was known colloquially. This steelworks used electric arc furnaces to recycle scrap steel – relatively new technology at the time, and allowed a significantly higher throughput than coal-powered furnaces. It did require a lot of electricity, however – a staff member commented that, if it was still running today, the steelworks annual electricity bill would be around £100million.
Templeborough Steelworks was massive – housed in a building around 1/3 mile (530 metres) long. Most of the building is still there now – it’s not quite as long as it once was, but it’s still massive. The site closed as a steelworks in 1993, with much of the massive industrial equipment remaining behind in situ, and it wasn’t long before it re-opened as Magna.
Four pavilions
The main ‘sciencey’ bit of the museum is split into four ‘pavilions’ – air, fire, water and earth. The Air pavilion is in what looks like a blimp, suspended from the ceiling; fire is at the main level of the museum, water is on the ground floor and earth is underground. Almost everything is hand’s on, in the way that the best museums for kids are these days, so there’s lots of things to press, push and twist. In the Fire pavilion, there’s a demonstration of a fire tornado approximately every 10 minutes, and at weekends there’s also a forge demonstration where you can see how a piece of steel can be melted and shaped.
The water pavilion teaches the water cycle, and lets visitors compare different ways of moving water upwards. Down in the earth pavilion, you can control a digger and learn about quarrying and archaeology, and up in the air pavilion, you can see how wind energy and vacuums work.
The other major indoor attraction is The Big Melt, which runs on the hour four times a day. It’s a big light and sound show, which simulates how the electric arc furnace would have worked in its heyday.
Outside, there is a huge adventure playground, and in summer, there’s Aqua-Tek, which is a small waterpark. Obviously, this being February, it was shut.
Our nine-year-old pretty much demanded a return trip to Magna, hence our visit, and it’s one of their favourite places to visit. I agree.
Accessibility
Having been opened in 2001, mobility access to Magna is pretty good – there are lifts between the different floors and no stairs to manage. That being said, there are some uneven floors in the Earth pavilion in places.
If you experience sensory issues, it may be worth brining ear defenders. Some parts, like The Big Melt, are very loud. Also, on a practical note, it’s worth bringing a change of clothes and some swimming gear for kids, as they will get wet in the Water pavilion and/or Aqua-Tek.
Tickets are cheaper if booked online, and automatically become an annual pass for free repeat visits.
There is a car park on site, but be aware that Magna also has a huge events space, and so the car park may be full at weekends. When we went, there was a junior boxing competition, and this weekend it’s the Camra Great British Winter Beer Festival, so you may need to park some way from the entrance if you’re driving. It’s not far off the M1 junction for the Meadowhall Shopping Centre.
If you want to get there by public transport, then you can catch the X3 bus from Sheffield, Meadowhall or Rotherham, and it drops you outside the back entrance to Magna. In the near future, you’ll also be able to get to Magna by tram, as the Supertram Tram-Train service from Sheffield to Rotherham passes by the site.
I recently bought a pair of Onvis Matter Smart Plugs(sponsored link), as my first foray into smart devices that use a Thread network rather than Wi-Fi. These were to replace my remaining Tuya smart plugs, which use Wi-Fi.
I’m going to review the Onvis smart plugs, and talk about why I’ve chosen Matter and Thread smart plugs over Wi-Fi or Zigbee.
Why not Tuya?
I bought my Tuya smart plugs several years ago, when I didn’t know so much about smart home technologies. At the time, we’d only recently got a Google Home Mini, and so I picked up a cheap smart plug which happened to support Google Assistant and IFTTT, as well as Alexa. The other advantage of Tuya devices was that they could work without buying a hub as a controller, unlike Zigbee-based devices from the likes of Philips and Ikea. Bearing in mind that the hubs often cost at least £40, it’s a lot for when you just want one plug.
I wouldn’t buy a new Tuya Wi-Fi device nowadays, for the following reasons:
Wi-Fi devices use more power than others (Zigbee and Thread). Whilst we’re talking single digit numbers of watts here, having lots of Wi-Fi smart plugs around your home adds to your home’s ‘base load’ (sometimes known as a ‘phantom load’) of always on devices.
Tuya devices rely on Tuya’s servers to work. I understand that users based in Europe use servers located in Europe, but it means that every request has to make a round trip to their servers. This makes it slower than a system where commands can be actioned locally. Now, millions of Tuya devices have been sold over the years and I doubt that those servers would ever go offline, but if they did, any Tuya devices would lose their smart abilities.
Tuya is a Chinese company, so theoretically someone in the Chinese government could be logging every time you use a Tuya device. It’s a theoretical risk, but not having that data pinging across the internet in the first place is better for privacy.
The Tuya plugs that I have are also quite big, and not very sturdy.
Getting started with Thread
To use Thread devices, you need a Thread Border Router. Thankfully, I already have two, as they’re built into my Google Nest Wifi devices. You may also already have a Thread Border Router if you have some of the newer Google Nest Hub devices, a newer AppleTV or Apple HomePod, a newer Alexa device or a Samsung SmartThings Hub.
If you use Home Assistant, you can flash a Zigbee dongle to use Thread instead. Note that the blog post mentions enabling a ‘multi-protocol’ mode that allows you to use both Zigbee and Thread on the same dongle, but this isn’t recommended. As it is, my dongle just runs Zigbee nowadays but I may get a second dongle that I can flash Thread firmware onto. That way, Home Assistant has its own Thread Border Router, and it expands the Thread mesh network. Until then, Home Assistant is able to use the existing Thread mesh network that my Google Nest Wifi devices created – see How to join a preferred Thread network in Home Assistant for more.
Commissioning the Onvis smart plugs
When you get a new Matter device, it needs to be ‘commissioned’ to add it to your home network. You need to open the app for the smart home ecosystem you want to add it to (for example, Google Home, Apple Home or Home Assistant), select to add a new Matter device, and then scan a QR code on a label on the side of the device. In the case of these Onvis smart plugs, you also need to hold down the button for around 15 seconds to put them into commissioning mode. It helps to read the manual.
One of the reasons that I use smart plugs is that they’re controlling devices in awkward places, so I commissioned this in a place where I could sit comfortably with the devices plugged in, and then moved them to where they need to be. Otherwise, I’d be spending time crouched awkwardly in a corner.
Once commissioned, the Onvis plug will show up in the smart home app of your choice, and you’re done. I’ve been using them for a couple of days, and they seem to work well.
Why Matter and Thread?
So I’ve outlined why I wouldn’t use a Tuya device, but why have I chosen a device that uses Matter and Thread?
Thread devices only work locally. Whilst voice assistants like OK Google and Alexa may still need to use the internet to interpret what you say, they don’t need to send the actual commands across the internet. As well as protecting your privacy, it’s also faster; these Onvis Thread plugs seem to respond almost instantly, rather than at least half a second with the Tuya plugs.
The majority of Tuya devices do not work with Apple Home. This isn’t a massive problem for me, as although I use an iPhone and an iPad, I’m not a big Siri user. However, Matter devices are supported.
The idle power usage of these plugs should be lower than Wi-Fi.
As Thread is a mesh network, the more devices you add, the stronger the network becomes. It can also have multiple Thread Border Routers as exit points to your LAN/Wi-Fi network, so a network with several Thread devices and Border Routers should be very resilient.
Many of Apple’s newer iPhones (iPhone 15 and later), iPads and MacBooks include Thread radios, offering even more resilience if they’re connected to your Thread mesh network when at home.
I also think Matter is the future, although it’s taking longer than I would have anticipated for Matter devices to become mainstream.
It should be noted that these Onvis smart plugs do not support energy monitoring. They simply turn a socket on and off. Obviously, you can use automations in your choice of smart home ecosystems to set timers, or trigger them to turn on and off in relation to external events.
I’m noting this because it seems to be a common issue with these relatively early Matter devices – their Matter support is basic. With the Meross smart plugs for example, the Matter support is also limited to turning them on and off again. If you want to use their energy monitoring abilities, you have to use the Meross app, or install the Meross LAN integration from HACS for Home Assistant. These don’t use Matter and instead rely on Meross’ servers to send and receive data.
Price
I recently picked up a Zigbee smart plug for around £8 (including VAT) from AliExpress, which included energy monitoring. Seeing as these Onvis smart plugs don’t support energy monitoring, you may be surprised to find that they’re £25 each, or £40 for a pair (although as I write this, there are 15% off vouchers available on Amazon). So they are on the pricey side.
Which brings to the question about why I’m not just using Zigbee. After all, Zigbee is also a mesh network, and devices work locally. As it is, I have a small Zigbee network with the smart plug and a couple of colour-changing lights for our nine-year-old’s bedroom. And they work fine with Home Assistant. But then I have to use Home Assistant to make them appear in Google Home, and allow my Google Assistant devices to talk to them. Command fulfilment can be slow, taking a few seconds, and it’s unreliable – even when the Zigbee devices are obviously working, Google sometimes complains that they’re offline.
I suppose I could buy a Zigbee hub, like a Philips Hue or Ikea Dirigera, which would probably work better. But I already have Thread Border Router devices, and I’m hoping that Matter will mature as a standard.
Is £25 per Onvis plug worth it? Well, that’s up to you – but bear in mind that they work without needing a third-party app, will work with most smart home ecosystems, seem nice and sturdy and don’t rely on third-party internet servers. Hopefully, these Onvis smart plugs will be a good, long-term investment.
It’s also worth noting that these were the only Thread smart plugs that I could find on Amazon UK.
Matter Multi-Fabrics
One last thing to mention about Matter is its ‘multi-fabric’ feature, which allows you to add devices to multiple smart home ecosystems simultaneously. Initially, I’ve added all my Matter devices to Home Assistant, which has the Python Matter Server addon. On the device settings page, there’s a ‘Share Device’ button, which, when clicked, puts your device back into commissioning mode. You then get a new QR code in the Home Assistant interface, which you can use to add it to another smart home app like Google Home. You can then repeat the whole process for any other apps, like Apple Home.
This means that I have my Onvis smart plugs added to all three smart home apps, and they can be controlled by Home Assistant, Apple Home and Google Home. What’s particularly notable is that I was still able to control the lights in Apple Home whilst my Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant was restarting after an update.
Summary
Well, this ended up being a longer blog post that I’d expected. So, in summary:
The Onvis smart plugs work well, are sturdy, respond quickly and are compatible with most smart home ecosystems
They’re a bit pricey at £25 each, and don’t support energy monitoring
You need a Thread Border Router device for them to work, but you may already have one
They’re more energy efficient than Wi-Fi sockets, and don’t rely on third-party internet servers
The Pronouns Labeller uses an interesting feature of Bluesky called labels, which can be applied to individual posts (or skeets) and whole accounts. They can be used in a positive way, such as sharing pronouns, but can also be applied as a potential warning to other users. Today, I’m listing some of the labellers that I use – all of these are listed on the (unofficial) Bluesky Labellers page, which ranks them by popularity.
To use these, you’ll first need to subscribe to the labeller whilst logged in to Bluesky – there’ll be a big ‘Subscribe to labeller’ button on their profile. Once subscribed, you can configure which labels you want to see, and optionally hide all posts with a certain label (or all posts from users with that label).
If you want to apply a label to your own account, then there may be additional steps, usually detailed on a pinned post on the profile.
TTRPG Class Identifier. It’s somewhat telling that this is the most popular labeller on Bluesky. Once you follow, you’ll be given a class from a table-top role-playing game (such as Dungeons and Dragons) which will display as a label on your profile. There are commands that you can send to re-roll your class, and you can choose your race too. More details available here.
Nations. Allows you to add your country’s flag as a label, and see others’ flags. You can also add the standard pride flag emoji, and/or the trans pride emoji to your account too.
Sorting Hat. I have my issues with the author of the Harry Potter books, due to her views about trans people, but this lets you tell the world which Hogwarts house you would belong to, and see others.
XBlock Screenshot Labeller. Labels posts containing screenshots from other social networks, so that you can have them labelled and optionally hidden.
Developer Labels. Show off what programming languages you know on your posts.
Private School and Landlord labeller. Subscribing to this will reveal which private (fee-paying) school various (mainly UK) users attended, so you can see who benefitted from a paid-for education. Nepo Baby Labeller works in a similar way.
Birthdays. Will show you if it’s a user’s birthday.
Profile Labeller. Warns you about potential bots, and people whose posts are bridged in from other social networks.
Anyone can make a label, and there’s a Label Starter Kit on GitHub if you want to make your own. If I had the time and the skills, I would consider writing a labeller which allows users to show which British university they graduated from, for example.
Labels are one thing that I particularly like about Bluesky – especially as users can contribute their own. It’s quite a unique feature – I’m not aware that others have anything similar. Sometimes, a bit of extra context on each post is welcome.
I’ve added a couple of extra WordPress widgets to the sidebar, which appears on the right of blog posts if your screen is wide enough. For smaller screens, it’ll be at the bottom.
The second is a list of posts written on this day in the past. When I was a Movable Type user, I used Brad Choate’s OnThisDay plugin to achieve something similar. On WordPress, I’m using the Posts On The Day plugin instead.
Both plugins make a widget available to insert wherever widgets can go in your WordPress theme. They’re classed as ‘legacy widgets’ but are customisable in the WordPress user interface.
This does mean that, on shorter posts like this one, the sidebar is now significantly longer than the content. Oh well.
