The perfect Lemmy app?
The perfect Lemmy app?
I know there are a ton of iOS apps for Lemmy. But what are they missing? What experiences would you like? It could be quality of life or big and ambitious features Many of you often have really good ideas and feedback, I’m looking forward to responses.
Voyager is cool, we have home, all and local. I would like a news sort option or at least be able to put any post with a news story link in its own category.
It can also be viewed as an Apollo replacement if you fled Reddit like I did.
If it had a split screen view on iPad, posts on a side bar and content on the main screen, I would be so happy.
Most of them can't do the basic formatting of Lemmy, so in my mind, they are basically useless.
**Bold**
Bold*Italic*
Italic^Superscript^Normal~Subscript~
SuperscriptNormalSubscript~~Strike-through~~
Strike-through::: spoiler spoiler Soiled :::spoiler
Soiled
Voyager supports all of these apart from spoilers.
spoiler
Soiled
Voyager does bold and italic without needing to know those, but yea it would be nice to add the others you listed
withoutthe syntax. It also does crossposting, text faces (/¯ ಠ_ಠ)/¯ share comments and posts as images, preview,quoting
, auto finding communities and users sorted by most pustular, porting subs from Reddit to communities, etc.
Boost did not do superscript and spoiler for some reason.
Arctic had all these covered. It’s not perfect but my fave so far
Raccoon managed everything but the sub/superscript. Not too shabby!
Thunder failed the formatting test. Still like it though.
I wonder if it works differently on iOS, because it displayed all of those properly for me except for the super/subscript on Android.
Eternity works for all of them except spoilers
Those all work on Sync
Connect did them all right. It has it's own problems, but I'm staying with it and support the dev for now on.
On my client (Jerboa), all of these worked except for
^Superscript^Normal~Subscript~, honestly I don't know why it doesn't support this very specific formatting thing.
Something thats missing is the ability for mixed sort types. For example. Sort by Hot and every 4th posts be a New Comments post. With the ability to customize this to your preference
Shameless plug for my megathread which has lemmy apps for every platform including linux and mac also contains tools and everything listed is full foss with no ads or tracking
And for people open to non FOSS apps, such as Boost or Sync, there is [email protected]
My community allows non foss apps too the link i posted is to just a megathread i keep . If anyone wants to create a non foss megathread in my community they are welcome to do so and encouraged . Its just that i don't wanna do it i was updating the foss one last night without sleeping can't take up anymore work .
I would say Eternity (based on Infinity) but reread and saw you're on ios. If you want to escape the Apple-like design then you don't have much of a choice.
Arctic for Lemmy is the best one I have tried for iOS so far.
I know the title is iOS specific and not Android, I use Jerboa that works amazing for my needs. It's lightweight, simple, supports dark mode, has card mode (thumbnail only, no inline preview) and reminds me enough of QuantumBadger's RedReader.
What I still need is:
- To be able to save comments when I back out of the reply screen so that I can return to them. (The biggest want, I know some apps have that already)
- To be able to play videos a little better...
- To be able to do a search for anything other than communities
- To be able to initiate crossposts and view crossposts
- To be able to preload comments and view them offline when I have intermittent connection (I like to ride trains through wilderness).
I know various apps have these features, haven't heard if there's one for Android that does what I like about Jerboa but also has the listed extras, but that is what would be ideal for me.
I like Thunder but it doesn't pass the formatting test.
The perfect Lemmy App is Firefox (and a close second is Safari).
Apps break the promise of the world wide web of an open platform where you are in control of how data enters and leaves your machine. This was the promise of Netscape all the way up to Firefox.
Google and Apple want to close down the open web and replace it with apps, because you cannot control your app experience beyond what they want you to be able to control. To stop data leaving your device, instead of being able to rely on your browser settings, you instead are required to become a Network Technician to be able to block the data at the Network level. Most people do not have this skill set and thus are left unable to be in control of their own data.
The only "apps" that can be trusted are Free Open Source Software and even those you're better off with something that needs no access to the internet if you're worried about your data.
Google wants to add "Web attestation" so that they can block you from using websites if your browser isn't set up the way Google likes it. There's a reason that proposal was shitcanned and rightly called out for what it was.
Change your web browser to Firefox (Mozilla isn't the best, but Firefox is the only independent browser with its own renderer) and if you want Lemmy to look different, you're totally able to set up Firefox to show it how you want it. It's time to take the web back people and to stop using the tools that giant corporations want you to use because it allows them to more easily exfiltrate your data and serve you ads. (If you're on macOS or iOS just keep using Safari, they're the only other independent browser. iOS enforces Firefox to use WebKit instead of Gecko to render, so it's a moot point)
Please, for the love of all that is Holy people, this is a big deal, and we will lose the last vestiges of an open internet if the entire fucking planet says goodbye to the worldwide web with "apps" as a replacement.
EDIT: I'm still gonna upvote everyone else in the thread because y'alls opinions are valid, too.
Although you are right, apps, in my opinion, smooth over the rough edges of a website, and do so in a way that easy for the average plebeian to access. Sure, I could figure out how to make lemmy.world look and act how I want, I just don’t have the time, knowledge or patience to do so. So I use Memmy.
But you are completely correct.
Sure, I could figure out how to make lemmy.world look and act how I want, I just don’t have the time, knowledge or patience to do so. So I use Memmy.
Which is also valid, most people don't really have the time for it and they've already spent time finding something independent like Lemmy to begin with.
You're quite right. If the website works well on a mobile, you don't need an app. However a lot of the fediverse is built in such a way that it really sucks in a mobile browser.
Here are the stats: which fediverse platform works best in a mobile web browser.
Lemmy is great in Firefox mobile. It's how I use the site. The only reason I keep a Lemmy app installed is for quick shares.
I agree with you on this much of the time. Especially on sites today that have ads. The fediverse doesn't have that problem.
But the mobile web interface isn't that great yet for Lemmy. Pixelfed's web interface is so good I debate whether or not to use an app but Lemmy isn't there yet.
safari is just konqueror with more steps and a bit worse though
and apps are a much better experience on mobile than web clients, and I don't see much reason to not use then when most of them are free software.
also web apps are bloated af and actively create ewaste. Lemmy's one's not too bad but Reddit, Microsoft, Google's sites make me want to do a skydive without a parachute
I'm a big fan of sync EXCEPT redgifs don't work and it's driving me nuts.
Not to be horny on main but it is an issue lol.
lol I respect the transparency
also the dev is MIA for months
How could it be the perfect lemmy app when it only runs on iOS or respectively only runs on Android?
Because cross-platform apps inevitably feel out of step with the OS they run on. Native apps can use system components and behaviors and will almost always run better because they don't need to be wrapped in a cross-platform framework. Admittedly a platform-locked app isn't going to be a universally perfect Lemmy app, but it can certainly be a platform-specific perfect Lemmy app.
With no disrespect to Voyager, its devs, or its users, this is why I can't use that app despite its impressive feature set and high level of polish--the ui feels fundamentally wrong on iOS, and the fact that it's a very direct Apollo clone but not written in native swift makes it feel like a knockoff.
Well, it could launch on one platform first, doesn’t mean it’s only going to be for one platform.
The website
Most lemmy apps do not embed videos/gifs and have to open them on the in-app browser. The only ones I know that can do it are Arctic and Avelon, of which the latter put scrubbing behind a paid subscription. So Arctic is one of my top lemmy apps, even though Thunder is my favorite for general browsing.
Another minor issue for me is almost every app tries to look like Apollo, so they end up all looking the same. It’s one of the reasons I like Thunder because it looks a little different.
Infinity is the best one in my opinion
I would really like to help any of the existing clients to integrate the reddit-to-lemmy community map from https://fediverser.network. Voyager sort of has this functionality with the "migrate subreddits", but it does a very simple comparison of the community names.
What does it do ?
Take a look at https://fediverser.network/?mapped=true, and it will tell you exactly what are the recommended alternatives to any subreddit. This is a crowdsourced database, anyone can signup and make a recommendation, which I then can merge into the list.
So in theory, we could facilitate the migration of users in mass if the clients did two things:
- provided a "login via reddit" system (like the one on https://portal.alien.top)
- Use the data from the fediverser database to auto-subscribe the logged user with their list of subreddits (which could be obtained when they authenticate with reddit)
This would single handedly solve all the "content discovery" issues, and if more instances beyond alien.top integrate with fediverser, we could even have a system that selects an instance to user automatically.
I’m testing voyager app now…