this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2023
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Liftoff!

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A mobile client for Lemmy running on iOS and Android

founded 1 year ago
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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by liftoff to c/liftoff
 

Limbo and Limmynade have joined forces, and will continue development together as Liftoff!

The past couple of weeks have been tremendously exciting times for all of us as events elsewhere have led to a massive growth in interest in and usage of Lemmy.

Our two separate projects both started with the intention of bringing an existing open-source code base Lemmur up to date, with the aim of helping new users to have a great first experience of Lemmy, while giving existing users access to many rich features. As soon as we became aware of each other we realised that we would work much more effectively by combining our efforts. Read more about what makes Liftoff! special.

We are:

Zach—Extensive experience in Enterprise full stack architecture and infrastructure.

Michael—Many years experience of developing and managing commercial and open source software projects.

Liftoff! is written in Dart for API support and Flutter for front-end development, meaning that it can run wherever Flutter runs. Our primary targets right now are Android and iOS, but the sky’s the limit!

Our current development priorities are to:

  • Ensure that the app runs robustly on iOS and Android platforms.
  • Identify and address any major bugs affecting key functionality
  • Work to improve the user experience on both platforms.
  • Release 1.0 version

Beta builds now available on TestFlight and will soon be available on F-Play and Google Store. (Note that the TestFlight page still refers to it as Limbo, but it does indeed install as Liftoff!)

Liftoff code is made available under GPL2.0 and can be found at https://github.com/liftoff-app

We have already had tremendous support from enthusiastic Lemmy users as separate projects and we look forward to continuing to work with you all. Code contributions, bug fixes, issue reports and suggestions are all welcome, so please join us on our journey into the unknown!

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[–] darklightxi 47 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Hey there! (developer of Thunder here)

I would just like to pop in and say congrats on getting Lemmur up and running! I'm happy to see more Dart/Flutter apps popping up. Since both Thunder and Liftoff use Flutter, this could also be an opportunity for our projects to help one another in good ways - maybe starting off with the lemmy-dart api

I am currently using a very basic lemmy-dart library that I built from scratch, but this could be the opportunity to migrate to using your fork

[–] liftoff 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You'd be more than welcome, and don't feel shy about picking through the code for ideas and things you'd like to do better! We'd welcome any suggestions or contributions you make.

I have to say Thunder is looking good too!

[–] darklightxi 11 points 1 year ago

Same here, feel free to look around through Thunder's codebase as well to gather any ideas, and provide any suggestions or feedback! I've been learning a lot about Flutter and Dart through this so far, and it's been a fun time for the most part :D

[–] FarLine99 5 points 1 year ago

Liftoff is awesome. Best app on Android among others for me. Kudos to developers ❤️

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Zach here! (The old lemmynade dev)

Super excited to move this forward with Micahel! Thanks everyone for the support and engagement so far!

[–] mykl 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Michael here, right back at ya!

Sad to see Limbo fade away, but we've got places to go!

[–] ventusx 16 points 1 year ago

Kudos to the devs! I use Liftoff on Android and i think this is it for me!. IMO the number one thing that will help the fediverse gain adoption is good mobile apps, I'm leaving reddit because of two things:

  1. Fuck you u/Spez and u/ModCodeOfConduct
  2. RIF is fun is shutting down and i do most of my reddit time on my phone.

The app is in early stages but i trust that you'll make it great!

[–] hal9001 9 points 1 year ago

Congrats on the merger. Love the new name and logo 🚀

[–] dzonc 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This is great, even in its current state it's head and shoulders above other options. I had started something myself as a pet project, but you guy have already made a start on my list of feature ideas and I see you're open to pull requests.

I'd love to see a bit of an AMA style roadmap discussion, I can see from the git issues there's plenty of bugfixes and feature requests, but I'm curious if you have any long term design, feature or Ux ambitions?

Personally I'm more frontend/Ux than developer, sadly as a product owner I rarely get to write code in work these days so my skills are limited to 'pet projects'. Do you think there'd be any interest in adopting material3 or was you going for more of a device agnostic approach (or more likely is it a leftover from Lemmur)?

Also, You mentioned F-Droid, no ambition to put it on Google Play? I know it's early days but it's relatively simple and currently there's a complete lack of options for the average user? I personally think this is a huge barrier for people coming from reddit - the kindling for the exodus was lack of third party app integrations but when you look at Lemmy, there's basically only 1 app and it's not great from a Ux perspective.

Good luck with the next steps, wishing the project success!

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[–] DustyNipples 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's really good, I've tried a few apps and I'm sticking with Liftoff!

My only request rn is a transparent or white nav bar because Pixel.

Thanks to all involved 🖤

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

Could you explain what you mean by that request? Happy to log it but I don't send much time on Android so I don't understand it :-)

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

Sorry, I didn't see your reply till now.

Gesture navigation on Android features a small black bar at the bottom of the screen, it's transparent (like iOS) most of the time but devs specifically have to account for it, either make it a specific colour or transparent or it just appears black, which is quite ugly when the surrounding app is white or any other colour.

Some manufacturers like Samsung allow you to remove the bar completely, but on others including Pixel there is no option.

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/166478545 - as you can see, lots of people have issues!

Android 14 beta has a transparent nav bar option (currently only sort of working) so hopefully this will be one less thing for devs to worry about in the future.

Thanks for your work on this app, it's fab!

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

Okay, got it now. I've just copied your great description into a new issue: https://github.com/liftoff-app/liftoff/issues/128.

Thanks for the report, and for the nice words!

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[–] HeavyRaptor 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Great job with the app!

The refresh rate does seem to be locked at 60fps which makes switching to the app feel a bit jarring and stuttery. (I'm on a 1+ 8 Pro, 120hz screen)

[–] mykl 4 points 1 year ago

undefined> The refresh rate does seem to be locked at 60fps which makes switching to the app feel a bit jarring and stuttery. (I’m on a 1+ 8 Pro, 120hz screen)

I believe that's the case. I've raised an issue on GitHub.

[–] BasildonSmythe 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Loving the app so far, only thing that’s bugging me is when toggling on the AMOLED dark mode the feed has no separation between topics. I’m normal dark mode the cards are visible and creates a nice break between posts.

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[–] V4uban 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hello, Nice to hear about the merging! I can login to Lemmy.ml, but not to Lemmy.world, is that a known issue?

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

Check if your password length exceeds 60 chars. Lemmy-ui has a char limit of 60chars whereas all flutter apps transmit your whole password even if >60chars. I've just been thru it with a dev https://github.com/hjiangsu/thunder/issues/52

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

This didn't work for me. I reduced my character length to 15 and even removed all special characters but I still couldn't login with my lemmy.world account, it just spins. If I put in an incorrect password it does tell me that its incorrect. It just doesn't ever accept the correct one.

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[–] AnonLordo 5 points 1 year ago

Congrats for this wise decision. It's the best lemmy app already now, awesome :)

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

Will Liftoff support kbin?

[–] liftoff 3 points 1 year ago

We have a placeholder issue for it, but haven't had time to look at it yet, so bear with us :-)

[–] sputtersalt 4 points 1 year ago

I had already been using Limbo for a while and loved it. Glad to see you guys working together on this!

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

I'm testing Limbo right now, and was about to send a suggestion via TestFlight, but since it concerns the UI I think it should be more useful to the community to leave it here.

I am not sure about the rounded corner cards with dark gray shadows you use to separate posts, since we only see top and bottom shadows and it makes the separator look really weird. Maybe it's the shadow that's too dark on the white background I don't know.

What do you think?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Replying from the latest android version, added an instance & logged in without any issues, looking good...👍🏻

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

Just installed it on my device it seems to be working great, good job guys, looking forward to see how it evolves.

[–] V4uban 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hello, Are you on Lemmy.world? I'm having trouble logging in

[–] Zed 2 points 1 year ago

Hey there, yes I am on world and I had no issues logging in or subscribing.

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

Hi, check this comment. https://lemmy.world/post/520520/comment/508830 It's related to the length of your password.

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

I just installed it as well after setting up Obtanium and it already seems much less buggy than Jerboa. Thank you!

[–] Ginjutsu 3 points 1 year ago

Good stuff! Using it rn

[–] Senchi 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Ah didn’t mean to delete my comment. As for us that aren't great at puters, when will we be able to download it from App Store without any particular dev or beta things? 😄

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

You really should give TestFlight a go, it’s pretty painless. If you follow the link it offers to install Apple’s TestFilght app, which then takes care of downloading the actual app for you and automatically updating it as needed.

Either way we’re really enthusiastic to get the app into people’s hands, so we’ll be making a full release as soon as we’re comfortable that any major bugs have been found and squashed!

[–] Senchi 3 points 1 year ago

Wow, that was much easier than expected. Installed it right now. Thank you and sorry for being dense :)

[–] Senchi 3 points 1 year ago

Since I had issues giving feedback but it would be neat if you were able to do it similar to Apollo for the swiping on posts. Might have not described it good but in general.

As a user While I do a mild swipe left on a comment So I can reply

Hard swipe left So I can save post

Mild swipe right So I can give a upvote

Hard swipe right So I can give a downvote

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

This is the best app so far! One issue I'm having with it is that the keyboard covers the text box I'm typing in so it makes it difficult to see what I'm typing.

I'm on android.

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

I think this is the most 'complete' android client for Lemmy right now! Feels the most seamless to me at least

Walking users through registering an account here would already make this recommendable to people upset about 3rd party reddit apps going down I feel.

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

Can I choose which account I comment from? If I have my sh.itjust.works acct and lemmy.ca acct signed in I'd still rather comment on Lemmy.ca communities with my sh.it acct since I check it more often.

The feature is cool for seemlesly interacting with beehaw but otherwise I'd like more control.

Great app otherwise though.

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

Is there a way to assign a default YouTube player? It looks like when a YT link is pressed it automatically opens YT in a browser. Is there a way t o force it to always open Newpipe?

[–] MinFapper 2 points 1 year ago
[–] Niccalo 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Doesn't seem to want to install on the pixel 7, says not compatible with my phone.

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

Try the .APK that has arm64 in the name.

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