Connect social accounts

Social accounts belong to the selected Personal or team context, and posts in that context go to them. There are two kinds:

• Accounts Magpie publishes to: Bluesky, Mastodon and LinkedIn, connected so that Magpie publishes each post at its time.
• Accounts you post to yourself: X and Instagram. Magpie prepares each post and reminds the team when its time comes; a person posts it. See Post to X and Instagram yourself.

Team admins add, connect and remove accounts; other members see each account and its state. Besides Social Media → Accounts, Add an account appears in First steps on the Social Media page and on a post when the team has no accounts yet. Adding an account there returns you to that page; from a post, the account is also switched on for the post.

Adding X and Instagram

Select Add account in Social Media → Accounts, then under X or Instagram choose the platform and, optionally, type the username. Nothing is connected and no password is asked for. Remove takes the account out of the team; posts marked as posted to it keep that record.

Connecting an account

Select Add account in Social Media → Accounts and choose the platform under Accounts Magpie publishes to. You sign in on the platform itself and approve Magpie there. Magpie never asks for or stores your password. Connect more than one account on the same platform by connecting each in turn.

• Bluesky: enter your handle, such as name.bsky.social. Accounts on other servers that use the same protocol also work.
• Mastodon: enter the server your account is on, such as mastodon.social. Other servers that use the Mastodon API also work. Magpie uses the server's own character, image and description limits.
• LinkedIn: connects your personal profile. LinkedIn company pages cannot be connected.

Only platforms set up on the server are offered.

Connection state

Each account shows Connected or Reconnect required. An account needs reconnecting when the platform stops accepting Magpie's access: the access expired, it was revoked on the platform, or the permission to post was removed. Check connection asks the platform now.

LinkedIn access lasts about two months. The account row shows the date it ends. Reconnect before then; a post scheduled after that date cannot be scheduled until the account is reconnected.

When publishing finds that an account needs reconnecting, the post to that account fails, the account is marked Reconnect required, and the person who connected it receives one email. Reconnect signs in again and keeps the account's posts and history.

Disconnecting

Disconnect removes the account's stored access from Magpie. Posts waiting to be published to it are marked failed. Posts already published stay on the platform. To end Magpie's access on the platform too, remove Magpie from the account's connected apps on that platform.

Platforms that cannot be connected

Magpie cannot publish to these platforms itself:

• Instagram, Facebook Pages and Threads: publishing needs a Meta app with publishing permissions approved through Meta's App Review. Instagram can be added as an account you post to yourself.
• X: posting through the X API is charged for every post. X can be added as an account you post to yourself.
• Pinterest: creating Pins needs a Pinterest app approved by Pinterest.
• TikTok: posting needs an audited TikTok app, and TikTok accepts video and photo posts only.
• YouTube: the YouTube API uploads videos only; community posts cannot be created through it.

Images prepared for these platforms' shapes can still be downloaded from Prepare images for social posts.

For help, see Contact support.