this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023

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Lemon App

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Lemon for iOS

Status: Pre-Alpha

Interested in being an alpha tester?

Add a comment to this thread and I'll reach out when we're ready for testers!)

This community is for discussion related to Lemon, the Lemmy client for iOS.

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DevLog[1] - reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated! Update on Alpha progress, new screenshots, and videos 🍋 (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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previous devLog[0]

Hey folks! 🏄‍♂️

First things first:

I have been absolutely floored at the positive response you all have had for Lemon! I frankly did not anticipate so much support and positivity. I want to thank each and every one of you for that!

second things.. er.. second:

Apologies I've been slow to update you all! I want to be clear: Lemon is not dead, and is very much still in active development!

I had a very hectic past couple of weeks in my personal/professional life, and so I haven't had as much time to dedicate to Lemon as I would have liked. Combined with the 4th of July holiday here in the US and some other travel I had planned, my free time was limited. But fear not! We are rapidly approaching a testflight release for iOS! 🎉

What features are currently working for 🍋 ?

Right now, I have:

signing in with instance search
light and dark modes
upvoting / downvoting / saving / commenting
rendering post feeds, comment threads
collapsing posts, comment threads
in-app browser (ie for links, media)
native image / gallery viewer
community search bar
comment / post sorting
basic account / community / instance filtering (WIP)

What about the other things you said in DevLog[0]? >:(

Yes! So I ended up removing account registration and offline persistent cache for now. These features will both return, but I wasn't happy with some of the bugs. Just about any engineer will tell you that there are two hard problems in CS: naming things, and cache invalidation. I personally think there's more hard things than that, but needless to say, I want to make sure I get these pieces right before shipping them to you all!

Can we see 🍋 ?

Certainly! And since I made you all wait so long and you all were so patient while I got my 🍋's together, I've recorded a small video!

Videos

apologies these are on youtube and not the fediverse, I don't have a peertube account yet :)

Photos

Any questions? Thread them below!

Love and lemons ❤️ 🍋

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[–] dsm 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

this is looking awesome! do you have a github page where we can follow along? and any estimate on when a testflight build could be ready? thank you

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Hey thanks! This is currently stored in a private github repo. The best place to follow along will be right here in [email protected]!

Im hoping to get an alpha onto testflight in the next few days! It's definitely going to be rough around the edges and have some bugs, which is why it will be so critical to have feedback from the community to improve! 🙏

[–] ren 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

looking good y'all!

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

Thank you! :) what are some features you're looking for in a lemmy app? I want to make sure I'm focusing on the features the community needs first and foremost.

[–] ren 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think your goal is emulating Apollo is a good one. It's more than just looks though, it's a lot of 1-handed action too, tapping down to the next comment, swiping back to previews views, lots of themes (not just black and white, but other "dark, but not black or grey" themes like dark navy blue). And never forget the easy way to vote, save, etc. again, one handed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Totally agree! I'm hoping to make it a solid one-hand-use experience.

For themes, we're only going to have light and dark to start with. But eventually I do want to support user customizable themes. Just something on the roadmap for later.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Wow this looks very nice, and surprisingly feature rich (when compared to some other apps out right now).

One thing I've been missing in Mlem (the app I've settled on for now) is the fact that comments and posts only show the sum of up/downvotes rather than displaying them individually.

Also, is the app free/open source? You mentioned a private GitHub repo in a different comment, but do you plan to open it up when you feel confident in the code?

I can understand a developer feeling reluctant to share early code, but I personally will not use a closed source app if there are free alternatives. (Edit: I personally wouldn't mind paying for a free (libre) app, btw)

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

Thank you for the positive feedback! 🙏

One thing I’ve been missing in Mlem (the app I’ve settled on for now) is the fact that comments and posts only show the sum of up/downvotes rather than displaying them individually.

I can certainly explore making individual upvote/downvote numbers visible. Not shown in these screenshots, but there is also an additional context menu (long-press a post or comment) which reveals these stats. But I will make a note to explore making this user configurable from the feed / post views 👍

Also, is the app free/open source? You mentioned a private GitHub repo in a different comment, but do you plan to open it up when you feel confident in the code?

I'm a bit on the fence here. I am a solo developer working on this in my free time, after work and on weekends. My dream has always been to work on my own apps full time similar to Christian Selig did with Apollo for reddit. The app will be free, but may have a "premium" tier for extra functionality. I haven't decided if I want to open-source or not, but currently it is closed.

I will say that I'm an Admin on the lemm.ee lemmy instance, so I have a vested interest in both upholding my personal reputation, and in making Lemmy the best experience it can be (hopefully via Lemon!) but I completely understand and respect anyone who dislikes or distrusts close sourced software. That's a completely fair and valid stance to have.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the response, I will definitely be keeping my eye on this project (ticks pretty much all the boxes from what you shared, except for the mentioned up/downvote display, though the long press feature sounds nice too).

Hopefully you’ll make it open - honestly I think specifically on iOS where the process of side loading apps is fairly convoluted (especially when the dev doesn’t provide an IPA), creating a free open source app which has a premium tier (or maybe even just a donate button somewhere) makes a lot of sense.

As I said, if the app is as good as it looks, I’ll pay for it in that case for sure, even if it doesn’t give me any extra features.

But I don’t want to seem demanding, in the end it is your project and I fully respect your right to keep it closed.

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