this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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founded 2 years ago
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Hi, [email protected] community! It's been exciting seeing the Lemmy apps ecosystem continue to evolve, with all sorts of options emerging. Whether you're a seasoned resident of the Fediverse or a newcomer, we'd love to hear about your experiences and expectations for the future.

  • Which Lemmy apps have you tried?
  • Do you have any favourites? If so, what sets them apart from the others?
  • Are there upcoming apps you're looking forward to releasing?
  • What other functionality would you like to see from a Lemmy app?
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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

I have tried Jerboa, Connect for Lemmy, and Liftoff. Connect for Lemmy is my preferred option now as the UI is cleaner, available at Playstore, enough customisation for me.

Boost for Lemmy is what I am looking out for at the moment.

edit: OK, Thunder is my favorite now πŸ˜†

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Tried jerboa and it's perfectly good enough. Threading could use slightly more distinction but its snappy and lightweight.

Also am waiting for Boost for Lemmy though as that was my Reddit app of choice. Time will tell if I end up on it or stick with jerboa

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Are we the same person? I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. Boost was my Reddit app of choice, my first taste of Lemmy was Jerboa, and the latest updates for Jerboa have been awesome. But I want Boost for Lemmy!

[–] efitz11 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Thunder is my favorite so far but connect is a close second

My favorite reddit apps were boost and relay so I'm very excited for boost coming to lemmy

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I'm currently using wefwef because it's the most polished one regarding UI, that I've found. The jerboa one didn't let me sign in via feddit.de because of version mismatch.

But I'm very certain that I'll switch to Sync for Lemmy once that's out, as was a very long-time user of Sync for Reddit and it's UI just was so clean.

[–] UnendingQuest 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I just discovered wefwef and love it.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Ooooh is there going to be Sync for Lemmy? I'm a long time Sync user and I'd love to have it back

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Great to see LJ is back on it!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Also love wefwef and the ui, every time i open it there's an update or more than one. I used sync for 8 years I believe and can't wait for it to be on lemmy so I'm sure I'll also switch.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I have tried these:

  • Jerboa
  • wefwef
  • Liftoff
  • Connect
  • Thunder

After spending some time with each one, I've settled on Liftoff. It has the cleanest, nicest and most configurable UI (IMO), and most things just work. The developer is also actively fixing bugs and making improvements. It's not perfect, but none of them are yet.

I've come from Boost, which pretty much was perfect, and Liftoff seems the closest to it. It will be interesting to see what the Lemmy version of Boost is like.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (3 children)

My top three are Wefwef, Thunder and Jerboa.

Lemming in 4th place when it catches up!

And well I guess things will change when Boost and Sync for Lemmy arrive.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I started by using Jerboa but switched to Thunder and am loving it.

Jerboa was great too but it had some weird issues (like default homepage wouldn't apply, no matter what I selected as the default in settings it would default to local).

I wish thunder let me have vote/reply buttons instead of swipe gestures but it's not too bad.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Thunder has the best UX out of all apps I've tried, and it's not even close. And I'm fairly certain I've tried all of them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Is it available on the app store?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Cool thanks. I've never tried side loading anything on my phone before. I might give it a whirl for fun.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Enjoy! The amount of dev support for Lemmy is pretty exciting.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Thunder would be the obvious one for me but the lack of a swipe action to return to the fees from a post is a showstopper for me.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Well, I've tried all of them that I've run across.

Aside from jerboa, liftoff, connect, and thunder are the furthest along. They're all great in their own way.

Summit, slide, and lemmedit, or whatever the abandoned one on the play store is, are all quasi functional. Summit can't log in that I could find.

Slide is working overall, and the double columns in portrait orientation is awesome to have back. The tabbed interface only lets you switch between all/local/subscribed rather than through your subscribed C/s, but it should get there eventually.

Jerboa is pretty much the most functional overall. Anything you can do via web, you can do in app. And, you can usually do it from your feed rather than having to tap through. Subscribing is the exception there.

All of them can be a bit pissy with links sporadically. You may or may not get taken where you think you will, no matter how the link is formatted.

I think it's connect that does the "everything" feed, which is cool as hell. Great feature that nothing else has as of yet. But, connect isn't open source currently. Which, on a system like lemmy, that's going to be a hard sell long term, though I believe the dev said they were going to open eventually.

The first app to figure out multi subscription function is going to end up the default though. Everybody wants to organize their communities into sorted feeds like multireddits.

I'm eager to see what sync and boost bring to the table, since they're waiting to release until they're beyond alpha, from what I've heard. Two extremely experienced devs with a long history of excellent UI, aesthetics, and functionality. There's no telling what they'll be able to add on top of the lemmy API basics.

Overall, I end up using jerboa the most because I use the all feed for discovery a lot, and it's easier to subscribe and block from jerboa with minimum tap throughs. The feed also works well with the header above links/images, and good division between posts

But I like liftoff the most overall. It flows the best for me until slide and its multiple column display is backed up with more of the basic features as well. I mostly accessed reddit from tablets, and it's the same with lemmy. Being able to make use of the screen real estate better is a killer feature for me.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

I was a Relay user for years and found that I prefer Connect followed closely by Jerboa.

I've also tried Thunder and Liftoff which are both great but the UI/UX of Connect and Jerboa seem to feel more at home for me.

I make an effort to use all four interchangeably but my thumb gravitates to Connect more often than not.

[–] mkhopper 10 points 2 years ago

So far I've only tried Connect and Liftoff, with Connect being the better of the two.

However, being a serious Sync user for Reddit, once that app is ready for Lemmy, I'm sure there won't be any other alternative.

[–] BullsOnParade 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

On Jerboa. Probably need to give connect a shot at some point just to experience it. But I'll almost certainly switch to Boost once it drops. Absolutely hooked on that for reddit for many years and it's such an awesome client I'm sure it's dev, Ruben Mayayo, will do no less for Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Same for me. I was finally able to update jerboa after my instance got to 0.18 and holy shit, it improved so much after just a month. Right now I'd say it's more polished than wefwef and connect.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Connect is currently updating so rapidly that it might remain on my phone even after Sync, Boost, and Artemis launch.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It's pretty remarkable how active development has been for a few apps thus far.

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[–] Devgard 8 points 2 years ago

honestly the web app is enough for me until Sync arrives.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I am a former Baconreader user. Connect, with just a few options tweaks, is very close to what Baconreader was. I'm enjoying it.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I've tried jerboa, thunder, wefwef, connect and liftoff. I was having some problems, but they may have been more related to the instance I was on.

In the last couple days, I've been mostly gravitating to wefwef and liftoff. I'd say wefwef is my favorite, but how it handles the back gesture on android is annoying.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I've been using liftoff and the experience has vastly improved since I switched to an instance that isn't regularly returning 503.

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[–] godolphins13 7 points 2 years ago

I've tried: Liftoff, WefWef, and Thunder.

Sticking with Liftoff for now as I like the UI more than WefWef while Thunder back gestures not working is a real deal breaker. Have found pros/cons of all of them and none has seemed perfect for me quite yet.

Waiting for Sync, as that was my Reddit app of choice.

[–] DumbleSnore 7 points 2 years ago

I've been using https://wefwef.app (you can install it to your homescreen like a regular app) and really like it. The UI is very iOS-like, but it works perfectly fine on Android. Apparently an Android theme for it is on the roadmap. Before this I was using Jerboa, but ran into issues with sorting/filtering. I think those issues are fixed now, but I'm happy with wefwef and don't see any reason to go back.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

I like Liftoff, didn't work too well at first but got an update yesterday and since then it's smooth sailing. Ahoi!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

I got my first iPhone a couple of years ago and I am never buying another one. So damn hard just to sideload the good apps

[–] NatoBoram 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

I'm making a web app at the moment for personal use. So far, you can scroll posts, sort, filter, upvote, downvote, view one comment page, view a user's posts, view a community's posts, subscribe / block users and communities... and that's about it

Ironically, since it doesn't have the blur NSFW post feature yet, it's a much better client for browsing NSFW communities than established clients :D

screenshot

Absolutely not ready for prime time yet; there's no deployment, you have to build it from source and it you can't even comment. https://github.com/NatoBoram/Leanish

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Nice, I look forward to seeing how it comes along! Let me know when it's more functional and I can also add it to our sticky post.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Which Lemmy apps have you tried?

I've tried Jerboa, and WefWef in particular. I like both – Jerboa is a native client built using Jetpack Compose, and WefWef is built using Ionic and can be used on any device as a Progressive Web App.

Do you have any favourites? If so, what sets them apart from the others?

WefWef is definitely the best one I've tried. The interface is really nice, but it's probably only a stop gap for me until I finish working on the Material You client I'm working on (which will again be a PWA so that it's easy for everyone to use on all their devices).

As for what sets WefWef apart is that it's the only feature complete Lemmy client with a somewhat half decent UX (Apple's HIG is actually pretty bad compared to Material).

Are there any upcoming apps you're looking forward to releasing?

Yes, an initial launch of a working version of the Material You client I'm working on. Also Sync, Boost, and the rest of the old Reddit clients.

What other functionality would you like to see from a Lemmy app?

Honestly, the one thing I'm absolutely missing is good UX patterns and proper mod tools. Since there is no AutoModerator equivalent on Lemmy, most posts go live and could break rules of a community. Currently, none of the apps have good mod tools, and having good tools for moderation on the go is absolutely essential in growing a healthy community.

[–] efraimbart 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

Infinity and Dawn for Everything now have early support for Lemmy. See here.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Does anyone know of apps with proper spoiler parsing like the Lemmy websites have? It's made looking at threads for games/shows pretty annoying, and I don't really want to go with the PWA route because I frequently search questions on my phone and don't want my Lemmy history crowding up my browser history

Edit: I've tried jerboa, connect, and liftoff so far, and none of them seem to have it. I also realized my comment is unclear, I specifically mean comment spoiler tags with :::

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

You might want to consider using another browser dedicated to it, or going for Hermit or Native Alpha. Personally, I like Kiwi Browser(Chrome based) and Fennec (Firefox-based) - both support browser extensions/add-ons.

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[–] rx480 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] Tankaus 3 points 2 years ago

I've been using a few myself and keep going back to Jerboa. I'll keep tooling around but that's my pick so far as well.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Jerboa, Summit, Connect, Liftoff, Lemmotif, Thunder, Wefwef

My favourites are Connect and Liftoff. And in the last couple of days Jerboa had a good catch-up run.
I mean they ALL evolved a good deal in the last 2 weeks, it's just amazing. Thank you, devs!

Upcoming? Yes. Sync. I've used it for Reddit for like 6 years. I miss it very, very deeply.

[–] bobbysq 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Jerboa's improved a lot lately, but I've also been using Connect when it has problems. When the Lemmy versions of popular Reddit apps come out, I might switch to one of them since I expect them to be more refined out of the gate.

The thing I think I want the most is a clone of RIF's comment navigation. Being able to easily skip through long threads is a feature I didn't realize I'd miss, but I used it all the time on there. Jerboa kind of has it now, but it doesn't let you move up through child comments and the "active" comment is always at the top of the screen.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Voyager/wefwef is the best one rn honestly, even if the design language is iOS

Waiting for Sync and Boost πŸ™πŸ™

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I really hope some of these are working on ensuring compatibility with both lemmy and kbin platforms. I expected they'd just work, because ActivityPub, as I assumed the backends where more alike than similar, but since kbin.social accounts don't seem to be able to login, I suspect there will be more work necessary than this end user thought.

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