How to cross-post to LinkedIn and X from your phone

LinkedIn and X are where most people share work news: a launch, a new role, an article you wrote. The update is the same on both, but posting it means two apps, two text boxes and two rounds of formatting. Here's how to do it once.

The short version

1. Install BarlaPost on your iPhone or Android phone and create an account.
2. Connect LinkedIn and X. Each one opens its own sign-in page, and you approve access there.
3. Write the update once, tick both accounts, and publish — now or at a time you pick.

What gets connected

On LinkedIn, BarlaPost posts to your personal profile. Company pages aren't supported yet. On X, it posts to the account you sign in with. Neither platform shares your password with BarlaPost: you approve access on their own pages, and you can disconnect from the app or revoke access from LinkedIn or X at any time.

LinkedIn doesn't let apps renew access indefinitely, so roughly every 60 days it asks you to reconnect. BarlaPost tells you when that's coming up; it takes one tap.

One text, two very different limits

X allows 280 characters on a standard account. LinkedIn allows 3,000. That gap is the whole problem: a good LinkedIn post is usually far too long for X, and a good X post can feel thin on LinkedIn.

BarlaPost shows a counter for each account you've ticked, so you see the X limit while you write rather than after a failed post. Three ways to handle it:

• Write for X, and let LinkedIn take it as is. A short, clear update with a link reads fine on LinkedIn too.
• Write for LinkedIn, then shorten it for X. You can give one account its own version of the text, so LinkedIn gets the full story and X a tighter summary, from the same post.
• Lead with the point. LinkedIn shows only the first couple of lines before "…see more", so an opening that works as an X post is also what makes people expand it on LinkedIn.

Photos and video

A post can carry up to four photos (on LinkedIn they appear as a multi-image post) or one video up to 100 MB. Alt text you add to photos is sent to both.

What to know about X

X charges apps for every post sent through its API, and more for posts that contain a link. To keep BarlaPost free, X posts have a monthly allowance per workspace: 10 units, where a plain post counts as 1 and a post with a link counts as 5. The composer shows how much you have left before you publish, and the allowance resets each month. LinkedIn has no such limit.

Posting now or later

Publish at once, or pick a date and time. Scheduled posts wait on a calendar in the app, where you can still edit or cancel them, and they're sent from our servers at that time, so your phone can be off. If one platform refuses a post, the other still goes out, and BarlaPost shows which one failed so you can retry just that one.

And everything else

The same post can go to YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Bluesky, Mastodon and DEV.to too. See how to post one video to YouTube, X and LinkedIn, the features, or the FAQ. Before you post, the free character counter tells you whether one caption clears X’s 280 and LinkedIn’s 3,000 at once.