People participating on the open social web have a problem: it’s not yet possible to post on one of the social networking sites and have that post reach everyone across multiple sites, like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads. While third-party tools are available, most are designed for small businesses and creators, not individual consumers, often costing more money than an average user would want to spend. To solve this problem, a new cross-posting app called Croissant, launching today, offers an affordable way to cross-post across social services at just $2.99 per month.
The app was designed and developed by Ben McCarthy, a Dublin-based designer and developer best known for the popular camera app Obscura, alongside Canadian iOS developer Aaron Vegh.
Explains McCarthy, “…I found myself getting very frustrated at the process of publishing a post with multiple images, and alt text for each image, across multiple services. You’d copy the text, swap app, paste, swap back, tap to open an image, tap to open alt text, copy alt text, swap app, paste alt text, swap back, etc.,” he says. “It doesn’t take too long for programmer brain to kick in and say — hey, maybe this could be better.”
McCarthy believed other people would feel the same as he did, but when talking to a few others about the problem, he was pointed to solutions like the cross-posting service Buffer. However, Buffer’s subscription tiers are designed to best cater to professionals, teams, brands, businesses, and agencies, along with anyone focused on social media marketing. The same holds true for larger platforms like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Sprinklr, Brandwatch, and others.
“We wanted to target folks who use social media as part of their job, but perhaps don’t directly make money for it,” he says.
Meanwhile, a competition led by the subscription management platform RevenueCat offered the incentive that prompted him to get started building. With Vegh’s help, the app came together in about a month, McCarthy says.
Initially, you can use the iPhone app to easily cross-post to Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads. It also supports threaded posts, image attachments, Alt Text on Mastodon and Bluesky, automatic drafts, content warnings on Mastodon, and audience options (who can see your post, as supported by each network.)
Croissant is iOS 18-optimized, with support for iOS 18’s tinted icons, in addition to a selection of custom app icons.
If the app gains traction, the team aims to roll it out on other platforms, like iPad and Mac, and add more features like scheduled posts and auto-complete for usernames and hashtags.
Croissant competes with not only Buffer, but other cross-posting tools with a free plan, like Fedica, and other consumer-focused cross-posting apps and open social clients, like Openvibe.
Of course, cross-posting tools may not be necessary in the long term. Already, bridges are being built between Mastodon and Bluesky, while Instagram Threads is working to fully federate with the open social web, also known as the fediverse — a group of interconnected services running over the ActivityPub protocol.
In the meantime, Croissant make for a handy addition for early adopters looking to more easily engage in multiple spaces.
In addition to the $2.99 per month tier, users can also opt to pay $19.99 per year for Croissant or make a one-time payment of $59.99 to use the app for its lifetime.
