this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago

It can also be viewed as an Apollo replacement if you fled Reddit like I did.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (14 children)

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~
^Superscript^Normal~Subscript~

~~Strike-through~~
~~Strike-through~~

spoilerSoiled

spoilerSoiled

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Voyager supports all of these apart from spoilers.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

You'd think they would have worked on the spoiler one first, slightly more important than making your text look interesting.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

They seem to be having some difficulties but it is being worked on: https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/issues/9

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I think it's because spoiler tags in lemmy have been custom-made for some reason, whereas all the other stuff is standard markdown. Voyager is a web app, so it can maybe only render whatever the engine it relies on can render.

Edit: Turns out I'm 2 for 2 on making incorrect statements in this comment.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I’m pretty sure spoiler tags are just not part of the markdown specification. This would mean it’s probably easy enough for an application developer to just take the raw comment and pass it to what I assume would be a markdown rendering library (haven’t done app dev much), but spoiler tags won’t work without some additional work.

[–] aeharding 4 points 10 months ago

Yeah, this. Remark, the markdown library Voyager uses, is very powerful but also extremely complex (it has to be, to deal with Markdown edge cases).

I made a bit of progress last week on a custom plugin but it’s a lot of work. There’s like 4 layers of parsing required.

I wish Lemmy used GFM spoilers, which just uses normal details and summary html tags. But alas.

It’s really annoying there’s no standard markdown syntax in common mark.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

A quick Google suggests you're correct - big sites have implemented their own versions, but it looks like everyone has spent the last decade arguing with other about a CommonMark standard.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

It’s not just a web app anymore.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

spoilerSoiled

[–] HootinNHollerin 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Voyager does bold and italic without needing to know those, but yea it would be nice to ^add^ the ~others~ you listed ~~without~~ the 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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Boost did not do superscript and spoiler for some reason.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Arctic had all these covered. It’s not perfect but my fave so far

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Raccoon managed everything but the sub/superscript. Not too shabby!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thunder failed the formatting test. Still like it though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I wonder if it works differently on iOS, because it displayed all of those properly for me except for the super/subscript on Android.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Eternity works for all of them except spoilers

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

https://lemmy.today/post/6716339

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (11 children)

And for people open to non FOSS apps, such as Boost or Sync, there is [email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Arctic for Lemmy is the best one I have tried for iOS so far.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

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.

[–] snekerpimp 21 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] ramenshaman 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have an app for my fucking toothbrush. Not everything needs an app.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

A toothbrush and a decentralized social platform may have different needs

[–] ramenshaman 4 points 10 months ago

I don't understand, they're almost the same thing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Piefed looks really promising!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

piefed has quickly become my main threadiverse driver. its really nice

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

I like Thunder but it doesn't pass the formatting test.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] Feathercrown 4 points 10 months ago

The website

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

How could it be the perfect lemmy app when it only runs on iOS or respectively only runs on Android?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Well, it could launch on one platform first, doesn’t mean it’s only going to be for one platform.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Infinity is the best one in my opinion

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