this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
533 points (98.2% liked)

Voyager

5720 readers
44 users here now

The official lemmy community for Voyager, an open source, mobile-first client for lemmy.

Download on App Store

Download on Play Store

Use as a Web App

Download on F-Droid

Rules

  1. Be nice.
  2. lemmy.world instance policy

Sponsor development! πŸ‘‡

Number of sponsors badge

πŸ’™

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
533
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by aeharding to c/voyagerapp
 

Hi there!

Voyager has been released to Google Play! You can check it out here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.vger.voyager

Please try it out and let me know what you think below! Because it's brand new, let me know if you have any problems relative to the web app and I'll try to fix them ASAP. And if you have time, leave a review, that helps Voyager gain exposure.

Why use the native Android version? Well, there's a couple main benefits:

  • The back button works much better!
  • Your browser history shouldn't be inundated with Voyager entries.

Please note, it's currently a slightly outdated version of Voyager. Hopefully it should update soon!


As for Apple peeps, that's still in progress. If you're on TestFlight and have an Apple Watch, check out the brand new Apple Watch app (coming very shortly in an update). It's quite simple at the moment, but kind of neat and useful!

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] xaxl 26 points 1 year ago

Did we just get like 3 new apps drop in about 2 days?

Sync, Infinity and Voyager. Omg.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Apple Watch app

Woah! Is this a first? Actually sounds kinda cool.

[–] aeharding 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's very very basic but still kind of cool! I hope it will be expanded in the future, but my Swift skills need to improve (or someone more talented needs to help, lol)

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This may very well become my favorite mobile app for Lemmy. I used infinity for Reddit and I quite like the Lemmy fork (though its still VERY early In development so we shall see)

But I love a lot of them currently. This ones just clean, simple while still having great features

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] kenbw2 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Is there a possibility of it being released on F-Droid?

Or just an apk download?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Installing my 7th Lemmy client then...:)

It's fun to try them all.

Edit: It's not available on Play Store for me at least.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] tzutolin 16 points 1 year ago

Thank you for bringing Voyager to the app store. I have installed and tried it, it's just as good as its web counterpart. Nothing abnormal or malfunction, great work. The loading speed is much faster than the webapp. Though, I do miss the ability to update to the new version using the web.

Thank you πŸ‘

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Two apps in as many days. Excited to try it out!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Quite good. If you allow criticism, one particular feature that needs improvment is the smoothness of image loading. Images (in particular) and posts took quite awhile to load. Even for some images, when they have already been loaded and displayed, if I go back and then forward, the app will try to reload the images that have already been displayed before. By right, the images should've already been cached and will load straight away.

This is what I find strangely interesting with Sync, which you can take as a benchmark. The image load very fast, even at the first loading. None of the apps that I tried, e. g. liffoff and infinity can even load (half?) that fast. If you can find a good algorithm to load ~~the~~ images, it will help increase user experience tremendously.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's quite interesting. I was very impressed with Voyager being a PWA and a bit sad that a native version was needed.

Isn't the overhead of maintaining three completely different code bases very demanding?

Or, as the benefits it seems to have are quite limited, was it a quick conversion into a native app?

[–] aeharding 10 points 1 year ago
[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer 4 points 1 year ago

I think there are certain frameworks out there that basically let you write a website and it bundles it as an app for you. Also this could just be a web view locked into their site. Either way I don't think there's a ton of overhead here.

[–] SeatBeeSate 11 points 1 year ago

Thank you for somehow making the best and most featured app for all of lemmy.

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

I noticed that the vibration feels mushier on slide gestures compared to the web app/back button swipe. For reference I'm on the Pixel 6a and use Edge as my PWA client.

[–] aeharding 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Interesting! The code is the same, so it may be a Capacitor Haptics bug (translating wrong haptic)? It's technically using a different API for haptics under the hood.

There will be an update to disable haptics shortly if it's annoying :)

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

It's not annoying, just... how do I put it... Unsatisfying? Feels less clicky than the system default is all.
Thanks for the hard work anyways! :)

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] CeruleanRuin 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Just grabbed it and it's working great so far. I'm not really clear on the pros/cons of using a native app vs a web app, but so far the experience is pretty much identical.

Edit: I'll also add that if there's ever a "premium" version that's just the same app only paid so people can support it with their dollars, I will be happy to use my Google Play points on that.

[–] HWK_290 4 points 1 year ago

For me, it's that the app was sluggish on Firefox but not on chrome. But it turns out, with unlock, the internet is a terrible place! So links were unreadable

The dedicated app is the best of both worlds. Fast and responsive, but can use my default browser (Firefox) for links

[–] sma3in 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I see developers putting in some hard work to make the best lemmy app. imo voyager and sync are the best I tried so far in terms of responsiveness and features!! definitely leaving a review

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thank you very much!

Right off the bat, it feels much more smoother. I haven't noticed anything broken, I'll keep an eye out.

[–] madcaesar 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I really wish I could disable the post collapse on click. Long click wouid be ok, but like this as I'm scrolling I'm constantly accidentally collapsing comment threads, it's really annoying.

[–] aeharding 4 points 1 year ago

Hey, this is on the list for settings to add. Apollo had it and it's definitely something Voyager will add.

[–] Wilshire 6 points 1 year ago

I love the subreddit migration tool.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I really like this project, so kudos! Both as PWA on the browser and in the wrapped WebView version it is GREAT! I have a feature request if it's not too complicated: would it be possible to disable the long tap gesture on images which I sometimes accidentally trigger while scrolling? In the browser it opened the share modal, here it does nothing except giving haptic feedback.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Thanks! It's my favourite app for lemmy. Even the pwa was better than many other native apps. I've some minor suggestions if you're open to them.

  1. The back button on the Android app doesn't exit the app no matter pressed how many times.
  2. The vibration feels a bit off while upvoting even on the app. I mean it doesn't have the same "punch" to it like it should.
  3. Material you icon theming would be nice.

Kudos to you and the team for making this app happen. It is one of the greatest lemmy apps.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Congrats on the launch, exciting times to be sure!

[–] Chenzo 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As a developer of PWAs, can I ask how you ported it to Android? Did you use something like React Native?

(Regardless, I love me my Voyager PWA app. thank you!)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Am using it already. Smooth as butter.

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

One of the killer features of the PWA is long tapping an image anywhere and sharing it through other apps. Not a link to the post, not a link to the image but the actual image. Long tapping an image in the native app only vibrates it and does nothing. Would it be possible to port that behavior?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Taeye0n 5 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the app, everything is working fine!

[–] aquarisces 5 points 1 year ago

I’m chomping at the bit of the thought of this coming to iOS especially as a former Apollo user.

[–] sheetmysharts 4 points 1 year ago

Thanks for creating Voyager (Wefwef), been using it as my goto - works great πŸ‘

[–] y9uVqBq0 4 points 1 year ago

Native app oh my godsh α••( ᐛ )α•—

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Awesome, posting this from the app! My browser history thanks you!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Just saw this post a few minutes back and downloaded it.

Not sure if its my phone (samsung s22+) or something, but comments keep dropping and I need to reopen the post for the comments to show up.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

When I try to comment I get blank text box, no qoute, image attachemt, hyperling etc. Do I have to use ![]() for img or im missing something?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] kratoz29 3 points 1 year ago

I don't know how but I feel the haptics work better here than in any other app in my phone!

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

Can anyone comment and how's the battery performance of the native app compared to the PWA?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Woah! That was quick!

I have a problem. It's not really to native app though. It's related to themes. Themes look good in Apple mode, but in Android mode switches look half blue half red. It looks weird.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] nostalgicgamerz 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m jailbroken on iOS 15 and I don’t see the watch app aa installable. Is this iOS 16 required ?

[–] aeharding 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

WatchOS 9.1 is required I believe

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next β€Ί