State of Voyager for Lemmy, 2025 edition

Thanks for all the work.

• It'd be great if user tags and vote totals were included in settings export/import. Losing those would mean dropping Lemmy entirely at this point since I prefer to tag rather than block most problem users. Tag import is also critical if we want to write a script to import user tags from other apps like Sync or Boost (since it'd just be converting one JSON schema to another).
• It's a longshot since I'm guessing it'd be incredibly heavy on API calls, but a way to import vote totals from Lemmy's up/downvote history. Voyager's vote tracking is the killer feature that had me drop Boost, but it was weird for the first week or so seeing people I knew I upvote all the time at only +1-3. We can manually set vote totals ourselves so someone could write a script to do most of the work outside of the app (especially if #1 is added), but a native way would be far more convenient.
• An option for long pressing the post thumbnail to show an enlarged preview of said thumbnail. Sync has this, if you needed an example of what I'm thinking of.
• An option to change what clicking on the OP or community in post view does. It's an incredibly minor annoyance, but sometimes on Android I accidentally tap one of them when attempting to open the post.

I would like tags I've made for users to allow a dropdown to select ones I've previously made. For example, I've tagged numerous people as Zionists or Tankies, and would like to be able to quickly select that tag for new users to the list, instead of having to type it out and select the color.

First off, thanks for making a fantastic app! Just a couple of niche requests:

1. (Likely incredibly difficult to implement) When reposting have a way of detecting that the post in question has been reposted to that community already.
2. A hopefully simpler request, NSFW images should stay blurred even when navigating to the comments. Often people like to check the comments before unblurring to avoid any unsightly images. I believe this is done by several other apps already.

Again though, great work! Been a very nice experience so far!

Hi!

Let me please add to the thanks and kudos for all your efforts developing a truly excellent app!

Two new features I didn’t see elsewhere (my apologies if they were already mentioned or are otherwise off base):

1. ability to search the comments of a post you’re viewing (like “find in page” on a web browser)
2. ability to view the relevant portion of the mod log by clicking on a comment that has been moderated (e.g., deleted)

Thanks again!

Swipe anywhere to go back would be a nice added feature.

I just want to chime in and thank you for putting together this awesome app. I use the iOS app not than anything else on my phone, and I probably use v.programming.dev more than any other website on my Linux PC.

Do you receive enough to make a living improving voyager?

Could we add the “disable downvotes” option that lemmy had in native settings. Ie. it’ll hide downvotes and behave according to upvotes only.

I know this is technically possible in voyager if you’re on an entire instance with downvotes disabled, but lemmy settings let you do this with a single account, which voyager does not.

ALSO I’m loving the new label/tagging system. :)

i really like voyager. one thing irks me though, and it's sort of hard to explain...

when i press the back button in most applications, the expectation is that i move one level back in a tree structure rooted at the application entry point. in voyager, back is more like stepping through my browser history.

for example, if i'm viewing a single comment, depending on the way i got there the back button may take me to either a) the thread that comment was in, b) another post that links to the comment, c) a profile, d) something else, probably.

now, this is not necessarily wrong, but it clashes with how i use apps. whenever i want to "reset" an application without closing it, i usually press back until i'm at the aforementioned root of the tree. with voyager, this is difficult to gauge because depending on how long i've been usinc it, the back button may go to comment > thread > community feed > community selector > feed > comment > selector > profile > comment > thread > post > feed > exit.

i don't really know how i would fix this behaviour either, just that it feels off compared to other apps.

i have a privacy/security feature request:

lock screen prompt when trying to switch profiles.

currently all it takes to switch is two clicks, no identity verification.

so if you have a regular and a NSFW (or otherwise private) profile, and you give someone your phone to look at a post, it's easy to switch to a profile that should be gated behind a verification screen...

infinity has this feature, and it's really nice for peace of mind!

otherwise voyager has been excellent all around! thanks for putting the work in!

I'd suggest the following major things:

• Commenters in threads to be colored by their first comment in that tree (if they first commented in red their username will be red the entire tree, that way it's easier on the eyes to distinguish who's talking), idea taken from a Reddit client I used to use ages ago
• I really don't like it when I'm on all and by mistake click on Android's Back button, it just moves me back to the community selection screen and doesn't let me get back to where I was in the timeline
• Highlighted search in the comment section of a post
• I'd love the ability to copy the URL to the attached content directly from the post

Also, I feel like clicking on a post frequently sends me to the attached content instead of into the post itself, maybe the post structure can be improved somehow?

Thank you so much for this awesome app and being so open to feedback

I wish there was an option to move the up and downvote arrows to the left side. So I can scroll and upvote with one hand as a left-handed person.

Please add some well placed "back" confirmations. For example, when browsing All please ask for a confirmation when hitting back before returning to Home.

Show my alias (This is fine 🔥🐶☕🔥) instead of username (TheBat).

Would it be possible to make it easier to copy a single word? Right now there are multiple steps where I need to hold it down, then click select text, then try to highlight a word if I want to get a translation of a word for example.

It would be nice if I could just directly highlight a word with a tap or translate without the multiple steps. Thanks for the app.

I have a simple one.

When you search for a community, then start browsing one and go back to the search the text is gone. This requires you to retype the query for each community you visit.

It would be cool if the query was saved.

Thanks for all your hard work :)

Previous Apollo user, this is where it’s at. Without Apollo support I dropped Reddit. Without Voyager I would most probably not be on Lemmy.

Features: Tablet layout on iPad, GIF scrobbling with swipe.

Bugs: Database error, UI missing requiring quit and restart.

Overall though, Voyager is amazing & indispensable. Great job :)

Sometimes I’m far down in a thread and then swipe back to my subscribed list, but then I regret and go back into the thread. It would be nice if it remembered my last position in a thread. Maybe just for a few seconds, in case.

Wood be nice to have a gif integration in comments where you can search and post gifs straight from the app. Prob no gif providers that are privacy focused though.

Love the app!

Going beyond Apollo, have you ever thought of adapting Voyager to work on Apple TV? Not sure how many this would interest but there’s a lack of Lemmy tv clients.

I used a separate app that would notify me about Reddit posts in selected subreddits if they hit a upvoted or comment threshold. Could be a separate app or built into Voyager. Also helps you keep up with smaller communities if they get drowned out in the main feed.

This is frankly not a huge issue, but in the iOS app, sometimes pulling down to refresh doesn’t remove read posts. I also have the setting that shows the button to remove seen posts. Tapping on it doesn’t seem to do anything. When this happens, I just close the app entirely and try again.

This is literally the only problem I have with Voyager. The app is otherwise perfect. Thanks for the incredible work!

Would it be possible to implement translations of posts and the ability to download videos like Apollo did?

Searching in the settings would be great

The tinkerer in me keeps trying other apps.

I always come back to voyager. Regardless of the current road map, you're doing a killer job.

Video from PeerTube and Loops is not embedded. Is it possible to be able to play videos directly in Voyager?

I'd like to see number of new comments since the last time I opened the post.

I'd love to be able to save message drafts.

Sometimes I start typing up a reply to a comment, but I want to go back and check the OP, or a previous comment, or the community I'm in, or even the rules of the community I'm in.

Right now, I can copy my comment and paste it in. But if I find myself wanting to copy text from one of those other places, I'm out of luck (unless I want to turn on clipboard history, which I don't due to security concerns). I could use a separate app, but that's annoying.

Another thing I'd like is a better flow for recovered text. It seems that Voyager saves one draft whenever the app crashes/closes when writing a comment. It asks if I want to save or discard the comment. This is good.

What I'd like better is that recovering the text actually takes me to where I was writing the comment. Sometimes it's hard to remember where I was writing the comment, or even if I do remember, it can be hard to find it again.

Overall, I'm loving the app. These are my only 2 pain points right now.

push notifications and widgets

I’d love Apollo-level inline video playing.

Keep up the great work!

Am I just blind, or is there no way to search the comments?

Edit: i'm on iOS version 17.7.1 on the actual application not the Web app

Just dropping in to say brilliant app mate! It fills the Apollo shaped void in my wee geeky soul. Can’t think of anything to make it better as it already does everything I want.

One of favourite apps!

Two requests:

1. Ability to open shared Lemmy URLs in Voyager, via share sheet to the app, iMessage extension maybe too, and clipboard recognition once in the app although this might have privacy issues I suppose. My family sends a lot of Lemmy links via iMessage and it’s annoying having to load the page, tap the image, close the tab after and return to iMessage to comment. I remember Apollo having something better with this.
2. Block community on a post from an All, Local or Home feed. Right now you have to tap into the sub/community and then tap ellipses to get the block function.

Another thing is better search but I believe Voyager might be doing the best that it can right now compensating for the terrible search in Lemmy. And that terrible search might also be a byproduct of the federated instances (sync time, different restrictions, etc) which I guess is an acceptable trade-off for now if so.

I don't know if it's my phone or my fingers, but I constantly have issues with hitting the *3dot menu when I try to hit the vote buttons.

Oh, and inconsistent back behavior. When opening images, sometimes swiping for back closes the image and returns me to the post list, and sometimes it backs me out of the post list and I can't get back to the listing I had been looking through without reloading.

I don't say this a lot, but this app doesn't need much else. Using an app like this feels rare nowadays... It is pretty much perfect in my use case. Keep it working and i'll be happy forever.

Will donate soon! Have a good one :)

Add swipe forward as Appollo had (same as back, just in the other direction, to e.g. get to last opened post (which is on the right side in feed view.

This is my main lemmy app.

The one mildly annoying thing that might be a user error on my point is that if I swipe into the community selector menu, I'm stuck. I haven't figured out how to get back to where I was.

Loving it, Voyager is great to use.

Would like a way to pull up a list of instances federated and defederated with my own.

Also, an easier way to get a non-voyager link to a comment to then post for people.

My trouble with both of these might be faulty user errors.

Apollo had great media sharing capability. Ability to share videos and gigs and images.

That’s all I want.

Lots of images are webp but when I share them I just get the link to the file instead of a downloaded and cached media share.

Oh and when viewing responses to a comment I’ve made I’d love a button to see all responses to that comment, and then a further button to see the comment that I commented on if it was not the OP.

Thanks

I still want a way to go from the subscribed community list to where I was in the posts. If I'm in an article in a post and hit back once extra time by accident then I'm screwed and the entire post list refreshes.

One feature I’d like to have is the option (maybe a setting) to recover text when commenting and then pressing as sometimes I reply to a comment and then want to read the original post again.

Thanks for making this app, it has been the Lemmy app I’ve tried by far

A couple of things irk me (on iOS):

• Shaking the phone if I’ve opened a text editor brings up the “undo typing” dialog, even if I’m on the main feed or in a comments section
• sometimes, the app freezes and restarts (almost like an out of memory) and I think it’s related to sometimes when I swipe away from a video or browser view, I can still hear audio from a media player for a second. Are views being left open on the background for a long time, possibly indefinitely?

Other than that, great app! Loving as an Apollo replacement.

• Tags are working great! Would love to be able to link to the comment that made me tag, too.
• Would be nice to have the searchable modlog instead of just myself
• If I'm in a thread and accidentally hit back, I have to go back through the list to find that post again. A "last post" or something in the menu would be handy.
• A bunch of gifs/videos don't show/play, but it works in other clients, instead I have to open in a browser. That would be a nice one to hit.
• db0 added some flairs, which are apparently natively supported by lemmy, which is cool. They are gigantic in voyager (in comment threads when its posted standalone). Compare to the thread here. Would be great if this was supported to display next to the users in app too.

Definitely the one app I keep coming back too though, great work!

Apart from the known iOS issue requiring the occasional app restart, no bugs and loving the app. Only feature i’d like to see is a display of the instance in the post list. So not just ‘news’, but ‘[email protected]’. Some community names exist on different instances (which I think is not helping new users, but it’s a lemmy problem, not a voyager one)

I’m glad it has accessibility features!

Don't see my issue in the comments, hopefully this isn't a duplicate. I'm on iOS, 18.3, this problem has been ongoing for a while tho. When I open a linked page, it opens correctly but then after a short time, perhaps a second or two, the in-app browser locks up. I can open in safari and that works fine.

Aside from that, Apollo refugee here. 👋

I would like to see mod logs for other users because I think that would be funny

Newer lemmy versions have the option to add a thumbnail url yourself when creating a post. It would be nice to have that also on Voyager.

The only bug I've run into is that I can't download videos. I'll hit "download video" and then it just does nothing. No prompts and I can't find any videos saved anywhere from it.

Otherwise I think Voyager has been the premiere experience for Lemmy 👌

Two features I'd love to see are an option from the posts view for "Scroll to top", also while in a comments section the ability to "find/search" the various comments. Thanks so much :)

I used Voyager for a while and here are the issues i noticed before I switched to another app (which also has issues):

1. Gestures for actions tend to take big motions, bigger than is comfortable to me, and the difference between actions is small. Like, I need to swipe very far (and not too fast), and then within a few millimeters, it goes from upvote to downvote. In the end i was just wishing for buttons considering how much work was to reply or downvote.
2. The combo of auto-marking posts as read when scrolling and hiding read posts doesn't work too well. I frequently refresh my feed to only see stuff I've already seen and the posts stick around until I manually click then, go back and refresh. When I drag down at the top of my feed to refresh, I want to see posts I haven't seen before. Refreshing 2-3 times and seeing nothing new...i don't think anyone expects that from a social media app. Nearly all Lemmy apps seem to have trouble with this behaviour.
3. I don't think it's a great idea to make "click = comment and thread disappears" the default. I often did it by accident and was very disorienting.
4. I would often accidentally swipe/touch something, not realize what, and end up at my feed, the post I was looking at entirely gone, and no easy way to go back. To this day I'm not sure how I did that, but each time it a bummer to give up the post I was reading.

The one bug that's always super annoyed me: clicking on a photo in my feed and when I swipe out it takes me to the "communities" tab where you choose Home/Local/All and it completely loses my place in my feed

I would love to see a way to group communities akin to “multireddits”. So if I want a view of just my Apple related communities, for example, I can click my custom community and see only that content.

Search bar for settings. So I can tour a word in the settings page and quickly get to the relevant setting.

This is a bit of a big ask and maybe something that needs to be done in lemmy core, but I’d love it if posts of the same image/link posted around the same time were consolidated into one item in the feed.

Why does android not have filtering when iPhone does?

As far as features go, I'd love for loops to get embedded!

I've noticed a couple fairly annoying and related bugs involving images on android (pixel 5a, f-droid release), but I haven't checked yet to see if it's been reported. When I select an image and then dismiss it with a swipe gesture, rarely I'll be taken to the communities menu and have my feed refresh and return to the top. Even more rarely, it will send me to my profile, then returns me to the communities menu, before returning to the spot I was in. It's entirely unpredictable from my testing, so attempts to record have been fruitless for me. Most often though, it occurs if I've scrolled through the feed for an extended period of time. It doesn't occur when selecting text threads or viewing comments though

The one major thing I’ve been wanting since day 1 is the ability to peruse the mod log of others without having to jump through hoops. If I’m modding a community and want to see what has been said/done elsewhere to see if it’s a one off or pattern, I have to dig for it.

From a user standpoint, it’d be great to have the ability to see the removed/edited history of a comment inline. I realize this is likely a limitation based on app store rules, but even just having this option on the web only would be nice.

The big feature I would like to see. As if when you block somebody it doesn’t block the entire thread.

It should only block that one individual.

So for example, if I respond to somebody will call that person Jon. And then John responds to me and I’m thinking yeah this guy‘s getting blocked. Itnot only deletes out John‘s comments. It’ll delete mine too. But let’s say somebody responded to one of my messages in that thread, Well their stuff is gone too. I don’t know if this is an issue with Lenny . world or if this is an issue with this app or what the problem is, but it’s a bit of a problem.

If I block somebody who is an active user in In the groups that I’m involved in, I pretty much don’t see anything in there anymore because of how the blocking feature works

The profile tab for changing accounts is dependent on the logged in account loading. I'd prefer if I can change accounts faster and independent from the account's instance loading speed.

Edit: Checking now, I'm not sure if it still persists, kinda hard to simulate for me.

The Inbox tab can be a bit fiddly about returning to the Inbox at times; it would be nice if the first touch switches to the Inbox tab as usual, but a secound touch definitely returns to the main Inbox page, regardless of previous position.

Big thanks for the app.

Hey, i would like to be able tp see users pronoums and 'usernames' (i.e. their readable name, and not their tag). Great app!

Fast way to open post in normal webkit (in iOS App) view, as fallback if a post has somehow issues.

I have an issue with voyager where if I am on an image centric community, and start scrolling, voyager would sometimes scroll down and zoom through pages of content.

If I scroll down slowly it never happens but it mostly happens if I kinetic scroll.

As for feature, I would love to have the option of customising the theme further. The dark black theme is my favourite, but would love to change some aspects to make more legible. For example, I prefer to have gray font on black background as it's easier on the eyes.

Oh and there's been an open issue regarding showing user profile pictures on their page, it would be awesome to have!

https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/issues/457#issuecomment-2609576595

Love this app honestly. I have two issues that have led me trying other apps, though I ultimately come back.

First, I don’t know how to describe it, but trying to press and hold an image to save it, for example, seems sluggish and non-responsive. Sometimes it ignores my press entirely, sometimes it waits a while then just “zooms” the image a bit, and it often takes me 3-4 tries of trying to open the context menu for it to take.

Second, sometimes when I try to swipe back from a post to the feed, it gets “stuck” halfway and requires a restart because the post is still “open” and any touch input just shifts the post left or right, but won’t actually return me to the list.

Otherwise, it’s a great app, and no other suits me nearly as well, so cheers to that!

First off, you’ve made a great app. Makes me not miss Apollo one bit. Best Lemmy app out there, period.

And I’m on Lemmy because I don’t wanna be on Reddit anymore. Or on X, YouTube, instagram, fashbook - all the exploitative, controlled-media, oligarch-run platforms.

I’d love if Voyager became an ever better tool for that. Give me the option to flag, block or filter out any reference to those platforms. And better yet, automatically propose / replace any posted link to those platforms with a fediverse alternative whenever possible.

Also, I’d love to get automatic context with any given link. I would love to know whether a site is reliable, what country it’s from, who finances it, what political preference it has, if it’s billionaire-owned, etc. All inline with the link itself. There’s online sources for a lot of that info - integrate them into voyager!

This age demands smart tools that make us more informed of what’s going on behind the deluge of info. Voyager could help do that.

Thanks!

I find myself really often accidentally collapsing comment threads while scrolling, or accidentally selecting posts I didn't mean to when scrolling. Not sure if that's fixable at all or just because I have a new phone I'm not used to yet. Just throwing it out there in case more people have this issue

I’d like to be able to see profile information, or at minimum a link on the profile page to open in a browser. There’s also a bug with the image viewer where it seems to zoom with only one finger and gets pretty broken.

Perhaps some work on a sidebar for navigation for tablets or desktop?

I know Apollo never had that, but when I’m on my iPad I tend to use Arctic simply because it uses the real estate better. But I use Voyager on my phone.

Sometimes I can't scroll voyager when using iPhone mirroring with iOS 18/macOS 15. I haven't been able to pin down what causes it to occur though unfortunately.