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Channels: connections, health and Coming soon

A channel is one connected account on one platform. What connecting stores, what the health states mean, and what "Coming soon" means.

Updated

A channel is one connected account on one platform. Your Bluesky account and your Mastodon account are two channels. Two Bluesky accounts are also two channels. Every post goes to one or more channels, and every channel gets its own result.

What connecting stores

When you connect a channel, OmniPosts keeps the sign-in details the platform gave it: an access token, an app password or a bot token, depending on the platform. These are stored encrypted. They are used only to post for you and to read back how a post did.

The details are deleted when you disconnect the channel. Disconnecting also deletes the raw copies of what OmniPosts downloaded from that platform. Your list of posts, your publishing record and the numbers already on the Performance screen stay, and they stop updating. For the exact promise see Export or delete your data and the privacy notice.

Connecting an account that is already connected is a reconnect. It does not use up another place on your plan. See Plans.

Health states

Each connected channel shows one status on the Channels screen. The API returns the same state in health.state on GET /v1/channels.

API state What you see What it means
OK Connected The channel can take a post.
DEGRADED Working, with problems Posting works, but something is wrong. A sentence under the status says what.
NEEDS_RECONNECT Needs attention The platform no longer accepts the saved sign-in, or it is about to expire. Reconnect to keep posting.
BLOCKED Blocked by the platform The platform has blocked posting from this account. Reconnecting will not fix this.

Some platforms give OmniPosts no way to renew a sign-in. For those, the channel moves to Needs attention about a day before the sign-in expires, so you can reconnect before a post fails.

A channel that needs a reconnect is not offered as a place to post in the composer. It is listed with its reason and a Reconnect link instead. See Reconnect a channel.

Posting paused

A connected channel can also show Posting paused. This is not a health problem with your account. It means OmniPosts has switched that platform off for now, so no post will go to it. The channel stays connected.

Coming soon

Not every platform is open to connect yet. The Channels screen lists those under Coming soon. A channel marked Coming soon opens on its own; nothing needs to be done on your side. To see what is open today, look at the Channels screen in the app and at Channels.