With all these new options springing up, I’m a little outdated. What’s the best app to use right now?
I’ll put my thoughts on this post as it showed up as I scrolled to get to the one from a day or two ago…I have 5 different Lemmy apps installed right now. Figure that there is going to be a lot of experimentation and work being done right now, so it’s nice to see what everyone is doing.
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Jerboa - Personally, I really like Jerboa. Being the most mature of the bunch shows. It’s well laid out, has just enough UI options, and works. Except that now Beehaw isn’t on v0.18.
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Connect - Not open source at this time, I get why that matters to people, but not a deal breaker for me. Typing this comment in Connect. Just updated this morning with additional and redesigned settings. There is about a thumbs width of space between this comment box and my keyboard. That’s kind of yucky.
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Liftoff - I’m hopeful for this one. It LOOKS the best to me, but there’s some weird UX issues. Biggest being that the only place to see your replies/notifications is the top of the Home feed with no quick way to get there if you’ve been scrolling.
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Thunder - I can see the potential, but it’s not for me right now. No buttons on comments, you have to use swipe gestures. But posts have buttons. Changing UI options doesn’t actually change anything 95% of the time.
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Summit - You want a zero frills, dark mode way of browsing and interacting? This is that. I’d love a FEW options (like light mode), but it’s fast and easy. Uhh…just realized I can’t find a way to make a new post…
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Wefwef.app - Last one. Really slick looking and responsive, but too iOS-y for me. It also claims to have light mode, but I can’t figure out how to switch it. Really polished though.
I just want one that will allow me to hide a posts so I’m not scrolling past the same things over and over. None of them do it.
This is the feature I need…I can overlook a lot if I had this.
On Jerboa tap once on the comment to collapse it
That’s a useful feature, but I think what the other person meant was posts on the front page. A lot of Reddit apps let you permanently/temporarily hide posts that you’d already seen, which was really useful as a way of ‘resetting’ your feed when you’ve already scrolled through it recently
I want Jerboa to add swipe to go back from a post and then I’m set
They just did and its great
That would be an amazing feature. I am just switching the sorting options to avoid this issue. Active seems to be the most “stable” sorting, meaning the same stuff stays on top for the longest time. Hot is better, imho, as it fluctuates a bit more. If I can’t find anything new/interesting on active/hot, I switch to “new”. Tends to be full of irrelevant stuff, but at least it’s new.
Similar to what I do. Browse by hot, and when that looks too samesies, switch to new.
Even worse is some of the apps (Thunder, Liftoff) don’t even distinguish read posts from unread. At least Jerboa greys it out somewhat.
That’s a lemmy feature. Some apps have this others don’t (I mean the option to change your lemmy user settings), but you can just log in your instance on a web browser, click on your name, then settings and then disable ‘show read posts’. Any post that you vote (and I think open?) counts as being read, so next time you reload your feed you won’t see them.
That’s a good tip, but only half the solution. An account wide flag is the nuclear option, but granular control by post is important in conjunction.
Thought you meant you didn’t want to keep seeing read posts on your feed. If it serves of any consolation you can turn the setting on/off so read posts show up again, also you can save posts, so you can see them on your profile’s saved section, even if they don’t show up on your regular feed anymore.
How would you decide when a post should be hidden? Explicitly marked by the user? Upvoted or downvoted? Visited the link or comments? Just curious what the user experience should be like.
All of those options.
A settings flag for “Hide read posts” A settings flag for “Mark upvoted/dowvoted posts as read” And a toggle on each post to hide/unhide. I use the feature so much that having it as a swipe action would be a dream (like archiving emails on mobile).
Is there a reason why thunder is only on a weird, very 90s looking app store and not F-Droid?
The apk is available on the github page, so you can just download and install from there.
Izzyondroid (the weird 90s looking store) can be used with the (or any) fdroid client. You just have to add the repository in the settings. Fdroid builds all the apps from source themselves. You need to add a request for packaging and even after that it takes a bit of time until the app is approved. It seems nobody has requested the inclusion yet. Izzy on the other hand takes the developer build binaries and publishes. The requirements are lower to be included here. So apps tend to be in izzy first and then get eventually added to fdroid proper.
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I was using Jerboa, but recently moved to Thunder and enjoying it a lot more.
Although the Reddit Sync app Dev said he’s going to make Sync for Lemmy, so I’ll swap to that once it’s released.
I’m still using the mobile website until the apps mature a little bit. it’s surprisingly functional.
Waiting for Sync
Sync is what I used for reddit for years. Is there a timeline for sync for lemmy or is it just started?
See r/SyncforLemmy. The dev stated an ETA of 3-6 weeks for a first release with very basic functionality.
I’ve currently settled with Liftoff. I got very used to Jerboa and was perfectly happy with it, but the last few updates broke it to the point of unusability for me.
Liftoff isn’t perfect, though its pretty good. My biggest gripe is that as far as I can tell there’s no button to go straight to the top of the feed, which is really annoying when you’ve been scrolling for ages and have to scroll all the way back up. Hopefully that will be added soon.
I switched from Jerboa to Connect. I like Connect a bit better. Really excited for Sync for Lemmy, and will likely switch to that.
Is Connect open source?
Nope
Another vote for connect. It’s my current go to after trying jerboa, liftoff, summit, and thunder. Although thunder is a close second.
As a kbin user, I’m really excited about Artemis.
I’m enjoying liftoff for lemmy right now but will switch to sync for lemmy once it’s out. The reason why is because of gestures. I feel that it’s intuitive to swipe to go back and forth between posts and voting.
I’ve tried most of the Android apps available and Jerboa is the one I like the most. It functions and looks just as a expect it to.
I’ve been using Connect for Lemmy and so far it’s unbeatable
I’ve had the best luck with Liftoff so far. I used Jerboa for awhile until it kept crashing within seconds of opening it. Not sure how much this affects it, but I’m using GrapheneOS instead of stock Android on a Pixel 6
Is liftoff in the play store? I can’t find it.
Here’s the github link for the latest release:
Thanks!
deleted by creator
On Android…
I am eternally grateful for the welcoming start to fediverse apps in Jerboa.
Connect is visually nice in places, but not a fit for me (so far).
I’m REALLY enjoying functionality of Summit so far - don’t know how to submit a new post in a community in app though and it’s driving me crazy that I may be missing something obvious…
Jerboa 0.0.36, but there are some bugs that really bother me. But since Sync will hopefully come soon I don’t care enough to try others in the meantime, just waiting it out.
I prefer using a firefox PWA but I have the scrolling bug no matter what browser I use - the page keeps jumping to top when I’m trying to read.
So I’ve started using liftoff this morning and so I agree with others in this thread, it looks the best to me. It’s not as smooth but I find it each much easier to tell which post comes from which instance than with connect. The community icons and titles are larger and the cards seem more separated.
The kbin mobile site as a PWA :)
I’ve kind of gotten into PWA’s phone wide. I went through my app list and replaced as many as I could. I had to go back to one or two apps when the webpage didn’t cut it, but it’s working pretty well. As a side effect, I had also cut down on my Google search usage about a month ago and I have noticed that ads (within Facebook at least) have gotten a lot more generic. So apparently the walled garden that hermit created is working.
No saving/bookmarking 😞
Upvoting saves a post to your favourites
Normal Lemmy site can be used as a PWA and you can just login and do what you want. Also Jerboa works fine for reading and marking. So could use that to read and mark, and then do replies with PWA. That is what I do.
Yes, I just use the normal Lemmy site presented as a PWA or just my workstation to post and comment. Use Jerboa for browsing and marking. Works fine for that, but seems to be less then reliable for commenting.
I’m using jerboa for now, I intend to investigate in a couple months to find the best one, things are changing way too rapidly right now and I’d end up going through so many and that can’t be great for security.
