Lemmy.World

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22173524

This is a relatively small update to address a few issues with v0.4.2.3.

The biggest issue this update addresses is scrolling behavior and performance. The previous release had a bug that would cause poor scrolling performance in post feeds, and issues sizing cells to fit their content. This update addresses this, and offers a significant improvement to scrolling in Arctic.

This update also adds support for native instance blocking, finally. Instance blocking was added to Lemmy in v0.19, after Arctic already had instance blocking built up in. This version will now use the native blocking feature for instances running v0.19+, and fallback to internal blocking on older instances. This update will also automatically migrate your instance blocks from Arctic, to Lemmy.

You can now use search in Arctic’s settings. I know Arctic has a lot of settings, and it can be difficult to find exactly what you're looking for, you can now search for most options. This is still a work in progress, and not all options are searchable yet. I’ll be improving on this in future updates.

Arctic for macOS open TestFlight

Arctic is now officially in beta for macOS. I know some users with silicon macs have been using the iPad version of Arctic for a while now, but macOS is now supported on intel macs as well. This version offers a lot of Mac specific fixes and improvements over using the iPad version on Mac. Note that this is the first Mac beta, and there will be bugs. There is still a ton of changes coming for Mac, primarily with the UI to improve support for the use of a mouse or trackpad, and make better use of the larger screen space.

v0.4.2.4 Changelog

New Features

• Added action menu to user and community buttons on post and comment cells/
• Added options to toggle haptic feedback for various actions/
• Added support for instance blocking using native Lemmy API, this will fall back to internal blocking on instances running versions older than v0.19.x.
• Added support for searching Arctic's settings /
• Added support for opening links to options in Arctic's settings e.g., arctic://settings.root/Settings/Appearance#App%20Theme Will open Arctic to the theme settings.
• Added options button to theme cells in the theme browser/
• Added color descriptions in the theme editor.
• Added option to configure the swipe action angle threshold/

Changes

• Updated support for stripping Markdown in push notifications.
• Updated toast messages appearance and improved dismiss gestures.
• Updated link preview generation to prioritize links in the order they will be displayed
• Updated scrolling behavior to reduce stutters and jumps while scrolling.
• Updated behavior when blocking, or subscribing. These actions should now be represented immediately in action menus.
• Updated large post default settings to display community button on the top of post cells.
• Updated default swipe action threshold to reduce false triggers while scrolling.
• Updated markdown and HTML parsing for link preview descriptions.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue allowing Spoilers to be shown in push notifications.
• Fixed an issue allowing Spoilers to be shown in post feeds.
• Fixed a layout issue allowing voting buttons to be compressed on post cells.
• Fixed an issue where link previews in comments would display an extra line of compressed text.
• Fixed an issue preventing paged gallery views from responding to taps when contained in a crosspost view.
• Fixed an issue where cells would not resize when a link preview was loaded.
• Fixed an issue preventing post cells from sizing properly when new content is loaded.
• Fixed an issue that could allow system swipe actions to display, even if custom swipe actions are enabled.

Links

• Website: getarctic.app
• TestFlight: testflight.apple.com
• App Store: apps.apple.com
• Issues: github.com
• Community: [email protected]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21042842

Well, this is no small update like I had planned after the previous update. This is by far the largest update to Arctic so far. I've packed well over a hundred fixes, improvements, and new features into this release. I'm happy I finally had the time to work on some larger features and bug fixes that I have been putting off for a long time.

Arctic Theme Support (beta)

I've talked about this for a long time and finally had the chance to implement support for themes in Arctic. This took a lot of work, but it has definitely paid off. I've included 12 default themes to choose from, as well as an editor to design your own custom themes. Rather than attempting to make every color themeable individually, I tried my best to minimize the colors used while still allowing for robust customization. With that said, I am looking for feedback on the theme editor. Themes can be configured for either light or dark mode, so you can mix and match them to your liking, e.g., Sepia during the day and Dracula during the night.

Themes can be imported and exported using a simple JSON file (ATDF “Arctic Theme Definition File"). You can duplicate any theme and edit to your liking, and switch between them with a single tap. I am planning a service for sharing and browsing community themes in the future, but first I would like to get some feedback on theming to finalize the format.

Markdown Improvements

I came across this post about Markdown support in Lemmy apps recently. It highlights many issues with Markdown rendering in a lot of the Lemmy clients that are available. Arctic seems to have scored fairly well with a 9.3/10.

Some of the issues that were highlighted about Arctic were:

• Images not properly rendering in-line.
• Headers not working inside spoilers
• Tables not aligning columns correctly

Well, this motivated me to work on improving markdown support in Arctic. I took some time and fleshed out support for embedded content in Markdown. Images, Videos, Tables, Spoilers are all embedded now which has allowed for many improvements to the rendering system, and more advanced control over the appearance. I've also fixed several issues where markdown rendering did not obey the Common Mark specification.

Media Uploads

Arctic no longer requires permission for selecting media from the photo library. I've also enabled support for uploading videos, and improved error handling to better convey issues with uploading media. Arctic also has support for uploading directly to Catbox.moe, this can be useful if you have a video that is too large for Lemmy or just prefer not to host media on Lemmy. Optionally, you can log in to Catbox so files are uploaded directly to your account and can be deleted later (anonymous uploads can only be deleted by Catbox.moe's admin). As a side note, I developed Catbox-Swift for easily managing Catbox.moe uploads. Please feel free to use this in your projects.

Media APIs

Arctic finally supports playing videos hosted by Lemmy (Picts). This has been a long-time frustration for me, as videos hosted on Lemmy servers seem to have issues playing on all Apple platforms. Well, I finally had the time to track down the issue preventing playback and attributed it to server configuration and Apple oddly not handling this issue well. In addition to Lemmy video, Arctic can now stream videos on PeerTube and Streamable. I've improved support for streaming YouTube videos, and fixed several issues with Reddit, and Imgur media.

Performance and Energy

I've rewritten large portions of Arctic's backend with performance, reliability, and consistency in mind. On average, Arctic now uses about 75% less memory, and significantly less CPU. In rewriting these systems, I was able to make a lot of improvements to caching behavior to reduce network usage, and increase consistency in rendering content. When Arctic is idle, or backgrounded, systems will shut down, and memory will be freed to prevent any energy consumption while the app is not in active use.

v0.4.2.3 Changelog

Arctic Theme Support (Beta)

Theme support is in beta. Please submit any feedback related to improvements or issues

• Added support for custom themes
• Separate themes for light and dark mode
• Automatic theme switching
• Full theme editor, with live previews
• Instant switching of themes (some issues with this)
• Import and export themes
• Copy themes to customize to your liking
• 12 default themes to choose from:
  • Arctic Light
  • Arctic Dark
  • Arctic Black
  • GitHub Light
  • GitHub Dark
  • Dracula
  • Alucard
  • Crème
  • Solarized
  • Nebula
  • Verdandi Light
  • Verdandi Dark

Markdown

• Added support for embedded videos
• Added support for embedded images in Markdown tables
• Added support for markdown image links
• Added rounded corners to embedded media
• Added optimizations for caching embedded content layout
• Added support for additional Lemmy link formats /c/<community>@<instance> and /u/<user>@<instance>
• Added invisible break shortcut to the markdown toolbar for inserting invisible thematic breaks using HTML comment <!-- -->
• Updated block quote appearance to render full length margin lines for nested quotes
• Updated markdown parsing with improvements to parsing speed
• Updated spoiler parsing to improve reliability
• Updated link detection and handling
• Updated defaults to enable embedded content by default
• Fixed HTML rendering using incorrect font and text colors
• Fixed an issue where spoilers would be parsed inside code blocks
• Fixed an issue where a Markdown table occurring immediately after a spoiler could break rendering of the spoiler
• Fixed an issue where inline code may be incorrectly parsed
• Fixed soft breaks in code blocks having incorrect indentation
• Fixed block quotes incorrectly allowing soft breaks
• Fixed an issue where links were not tappable when contained in an embedded Markdown table
• Fixed some issues with inline images being positioned incorrectly

Link Previews

• Added support for audio in link previews: e.g. for playing audio previews on Spotify links
• Added a new network manager for improved control over network requests
• Added support for fetching the apple-touch-icon from links instead of relying on Google for favicons
• Rewrote open graph parser to improve reliability and performance
• Fixed an issue where direct download links could result in Arctic loading large files into memory while attempting to provide a link preview
• Fixed an issue where link previews could be unnecessarily be reloaded when they are already cached

Media Uploads

• Uploads no longer require permission for selecting media from the photo library
• Added support for selecting and uploading videos
• Added support for uploading media directly to Catbox.moe
• Added option to select the default upload destination (Lemmy, Catbox, ask each time)
• Added option to log into Catbox.moe, so uploads will be added to your account
• Improved logging of errors when uploading media

Media APIs

• Added support for playing videos hosted on Lemmy. (Videos hosted by Picts have issues playing on Apple platforms due to server configuration, arctic will now detect this and preload the video for playback)
• Added support for PeerTube videos
• Added support for Streamable videos
• Improved support for YouTube videos
• Improved caching behavior to reduce network usage

Improvements

• Major overhaul to memory and energy management in Arctic. On average, Arctic now uses 75% less memory, and significantly less CPU and energy. There are some cases where memory and CPU usage may spike, such as views with a high number of animated images. However, Arctic will attempt to listen to system warnings and unload resource intensive tasks when requested.

New Features

• Added support for additional image formats such as AVIF, and SVG (shields.io)
• Added an experimental feature to dim media when dark mode is enabled
• Added support for fetching media from Reddit post and comment links
• Added a new paging image gallery view, you can choose between paged, or grid appearance in settings
• Added a new option related to the Post Image Size option to allow scaling images down to fit the full image in the view
• Added a warning alert when attempting to submit a comment with no content
• Added support for Haptic Touch on images and videos to allow saving/sharing media
• Added an overlay for media that failed to load to allow attempting to reload the media
• Added support for domain filters, You can now filter individual websites from post feeds
• Added caching of media playback positions, media will now resume at its previous position
• Added a close button to the changelog popup when launching Arctic

Changes

• Updated font sizes throughout the app for better consistency.
• Updated the new comments indicator to subtly add a green (+) icon in the center of the comments icon
• Updated the indicator used for featured posts
• Updated avatar image labels to improve performance
• Updated rendering of inline code that wraps lines
• Updated the Community Selector appearance
• Updated link handling to attempt loading all links over HTTPS, Arctic does not allow unsecured network requests
• Updated crosspost detection to be more lenient. Some clients have slightly different formatting for crossposts, and Arctic will now detect more of these formats
• Updated open post views to more closely resemble post feed appearance
• Updated image processing to improve performance and reliability in detecting image formats
• Updated the video player with modern swift observers removing some legacy code
• Updated the profile header appearance
• Updated the progress bar on inline videos
• Updated the playback controls in the media viewer with an iOS 18 esque appearance
• Updated the preloading behavior in post feeds, this addresses several issues with inconsistent layout, content disappearing, content failing to load, high memory usage, etc. This has drastically improved performance and reliability within post feeds
• Updated video thumbnail loading to improve reliability and performance
• Updated image gallery layout and improved performance
• Updated the project removing some unused legacy code
• Updated changelog popup not to show on the first time launching Arctic

Fixes

• Fixed issue where Arctic would request permission to send notifications on its first launch. Permissions will only be requested when enabling notifications in settings, or adding a Community Notification for the first time.
• Fixed issue where widget insets would be too large on iOS 17+
• Fixed issue where Reddit gallery links would not properly load content
• Fixed issue where some links could incorrectly be treated as YouTube links
• Fixed issue with some cells appearing clipped when using a notched device in landscape
• Fixed an issue where changes to the unique notification token for devices would not be synchronized with the notification server
• Fixed issue where media would not pause when dismissing an open post view
• Fixed Bar Shadows setting not applying when blurred or default bar styles are enabled
• Fixed several layout issues that could cause performance drops, and incorrect rendering in some cases
• Fixed an issue where importing user settings would show a success alert even if the import was canceled
• Fixed an issue where Arctic may crash when refreshing a profile view
• Fixed an issue where media in comment cells could continue to play even when it is out of view
• Fixed an issue where the mod reason composer would show full-screen rather than as a popover
• Fixed an issue where image gallery's' could cause a crash due to invalid links
• Fixed an issue where some pages would allow pull to refresh even though it was unused
• Fixed an issue where widgets would display very low quality images
• Fixed an issue in private messages where the bottom inset would be incorrect after sending a message
• Fixed an issue where clearing the search query in the Community Selector could continue to show results for the first letter of the cleared query
• Fixed an issue where the navigation bar might not reappear when swiping back from search results
• Fixed an issue where the cancel button would appear on the right-hand side when inserting a link or image using the markdown toolbar
• Fixed an issue where refreshing a profile, or scrolling would repeat some API requests when they already cached
• Fixed an issue where multiple API requests to the same endpoint could occur at the same time, duplicate requests will now be batched into one to prevent unnecessary network traffic, and reduce server load
• Fixed an issue where embedded crossposts could incorrectly show an empty image gallery view
• Fixed an issue where avatar images would be fetched even if they are disabled in settings
• Fixed an issue allowing images to be re-downloaded even if they were already cached
• Fixed an issue where Imgur gifv links would not load, these links are now redirected to the direct media link
• Fixed an issue where the random community button in the search tab could cause a crash, or load the home feed
• Fixed an issue where opening a community you are not subscribed to while the listing type is set to Subscribed, would result in an empty feed
• Fixed an issue where Arctic could crash when scrolling in post feeds, or after reopening Arctic from the background
• Fixed an issue where video seeking could be inaccurate
• Fixed a typo in appearance settings
• Fixed an issue where saving HLS videos would silently fail. Saving HLS streams is unsupported, and an alert will be shown when attempting to save HLS content

iOS 18

• Fixed a visual glitch when hiding the tab bar on iOS 18 due to an iOS bug
• Restored tab bar appearance on iOS 18 to use the classic style

MacOS

• Added support dismissing media previews using the trackpad
• Added support for building as Optimized For Mac (So much left to fix with this)
• Added better support for App Nap on Mac by pausing non-essential background activity
• Added keyboard shortcut (Command + Return) for submitting comments, posts, messages, etc.
• Fixed an issue where the login controller would be shown off screen when presented from the account quick switcher

Links

• Website: getarctic.app
• TestFlight: testflight.apple.com
• App Store: apps.apple.com
• Issues: github.com
• Community: [email protected]

It's been several months since I released any updates for Arctic except for a single hot-fix released to address an issue with API changes. I've had a busy summer and have not had much time or energy to put towards development. In the last few weeks, I've finally gotten back into working on updates, and I couldn't be more excited. I'm currently recovering from back surgery, so I have some time off work for the next month at least. I plan to use this time to push out some updates for Arctic, and get back on a consistent release schedule.

The goal for this update was to have it ready before the last TestFlight build expired. Unfortunately, even though I managed to submit the update before the deadline, the review process took longer than usual, and the previous build expired before the update was released.

I've been working on this update for a couple of weeks now in my free time, and I had originally planned for it to just focus on some minor bug fixes. Well, I got a bit carried away and added a bunch of new features while I was at it. The feature I am most excited about in this update is support for embedding views in Markdown. Arctic can now load embedded images rather than appending them to the end of comments or posts. I've also added embedded Markdown tables, so I can add proper rendering for tables which were extremely basic in previous versions. Both of these features are still in an experimental phase and disabled by default in this release. If you'd like to try them out you can enable them in the Experimental section in settings.

Something else I'm super excited about is that Arctic is coming to MacOS soon. I've spent a lot of time during this update cycle working on refining the user experience on Mac. I've gotten nearly all the Mac specific bugs worked out, and now I'm working on refining the UI to better suit the desktop experience. With this, I am also working on the iPad layout and improving the UI on larger displays. I'm hoping that over the next month I can release a Mac build on TestFlight.

v0.4.2.0 Changelog

New Features

• Added support for embedded markdown views:
  • Embedded images (experimental)
  • Embedded tables (experimental)
  • Embedded spoilers (stable)
• Added support for disabling markdown features (post feeds will now display using limited features)
• Added support for paragraphs in Markdown lists (note: this will not yet be rendered correctly in the markdown editor)
• Added Alternate Sources for links, Haptic touch on any link to open the link using an alternate source
• Added option for showing profile images in comment sections
• Added support for clearing push notifications when marking them as read in Arctic
• Added option to hide labels on the tab bar
• Added option to adjust the thumbnail size in compact layouts
• Added new filters to the profile tab, view liked or disliked posts and comments, as well as hidden posts
• Added a new trending communities section to the search tab (trends are based on Lemmy suggestions, and currently they are mostly just new communities)
• Added support for selecting multiple communities at once in the Multi-Community editor
• Added descriptions to the Multi-Community editor to explain its usage
• Added community icons to the Multi-Community editor
• Added support for filtering by NSFW in Lemmy Explorer
• Added support for tapping the search tab while it is open to focus the search bar
• Added a settings section for migrating Subreddit subscriptions from Reddit. (Thanks to Voyager for this idea)
• Added option to choose the default listing type in profile views
• Added pinned section to the left side of the markdown editor toolbar for undo and redo actions
• Added support for selection images for upload using Finder on Mac
• Added support for swipe actions using a trackpad
• Added option to disable swipe actions
• Added option to use full screen navigation gestures (not compatible with swipe actions)
• Added change log popup after updating Arctic 

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a missing close button in the community notification editor
• Fixed issue preventing a custom guest instance from being set
• Fixed issue causing Top sorting modes to show twice in sorting menus
• Fixed account and community settings editors not resizing text views while typing
• Fixed issue where media previews would be loaded from post bodies even if the post is not a media post
• Fixed issue allowing comment tags ("ME", "OP", "BOT", etc) to render incorrectly
• Fixed an issue where the activation threshold for swipe actions was too high resulting in false swipes while scrolling
• Fixed issue where images would fail to upload when using limited access mode for photos. (you will now be presented with an option to grant access to photos before selecting them for upload when using limited access mode. Note: For the best experience, it is recommended that you enable full access)
• Fixed issue where links would not open in private messages and profile bios
• Fixed authorization error when trying to delete images
• Fixed issue where cells in the Reports section would render markdown incorrectly
• Fixed issue that could cause crash alerts to show more than once
• Fixed an issue making it difficult to grab cells for reordering accounts
• Fixed highlighted cells in the subscriptions view on iPad and Mac
• Fixed issue causing the tab bar to permanently disappear in some cases while Hide Bars On Scroll was enabled
• Fixed positioning of labels in media previews on Mac
• Fixed media gallery views not resizing properly on wide displays
• Fixed issue where categories for the search tab may not show on some devices
• Fixed layout issue with the profile header view

Arctic Push Notifications

• Rewrote networking to improve performance and error handling
• Improved logic to help prevent overlooking notifications, or sending duplicates
• Updated with the latest API support
• During these updates, you may have missed, or received duplicate notifications

Links

• Website: getarctic.app
• TestFlight: testflight.apple.com
• App Store: apps.apple.com
• Issues: github.com
• Community: [email protected]

It’s been a very busy couple of weeks for me since the AppStore release. I have not had much time to keep up with new beta posts, so this post aims to cover all the changes in v0.4.0.x updates.

As I am sure most of you have noticed, Arctic finally has a new default icon. I’m super excited about this. The original icon was only ever meant to be a placeholder, and it ended up sticking around far longer than I had intended. With the new icon, I’ve set up a full set of branding resources that I will be open-sourcing later this week to enable community icon contests in the future.

Widgets are here! I’ve added the first set of widgets finally. This set is fully configurable so you can set up feeds based on specific accounts, communities, instances, sorting, etc. I have a lot more widgets planned, and I will try and roll out a new set every couple of updates.

Crosspost rendering has been improved. Crossposts will now embed the original post and display it inline, this helps with following the original thread and it looks a lot better than a long blockquote. I’ve also added a crosspost indicator to post views, so even from the original post, you can browse all the crossposts for the original link.

Link peeking has been enabled. You can now long-press any link and peek at its content just like in Safari. With this addition, I’ve also added some convenience options for opening YouTube links in Piped or opening them in the YouTube app.

Full-screen scrolling has been added. You can enable Hide Bars On Scroll and the top and bottom bars will be hidden while scrolling to enable full-screen viewing.

The markdown editor has several new improvements. Inserting links and images has gotten smarter, when inserting, the selected text will automatically be added as the link title or URL if applicable. Lists will now automatically continue when pressing return while composing a list. Special markdown characters will now render in a muted color while editing. I’ve also added actions for changing indentation (tabs).

There are too many changes to write about each one individually, but as always you can find the full change-logs below. If you encounter any issues in the latest release, please let me know. I am hoping to submit a new update to the AppStore this weekend.

Thank you, to everyone for all the feedback and suggestions. It’s been a huge help in improving Arctic!

Changelogs

v0.4.0.3

• Added 2 new icons Mystic Globe and Outline
• Added context actions for youtube links to open in Piped, or open in the YouTube app
• Added option to preview posts when long-pressing a post cell
• Fixed an issue that could cause a crash when long-pressing a link preview
• Fixed a crash that could occur when pressing return while composing a comment or post
• Fixed an issue where forward navigation could show an incorrect font size
• Fixed an issue that could cause a zooming transition when using forward navigation
• Organized sketch projects for open-source release of branding

v0.4.0.2

• Added a new default icon for Arctic
• Added support for OpticID on iOS 17+
• Added a new changelog controller
• Added option to embed crossposts in post views
• Added crosspost indicator, and browser to open post views
• Added support for peeking URLs in markdown by long-pressing links
• Added options to upload images from the Account and Community settings page
• Added option to set the matrix user ID in account settings
• Added swipe actions to profile view cells
• Added long-press actions to profile view cells
• Added toolbar actions for indentation in the markdown editor
• Added support for automatic list continuation when pressing return in the markdown editor
• Fixed crash when editing blocked communities
• Fixed some warnings during the initial layout of post-feeds
• Fixed an issue that could prevent post cells from updating when needed
• Fixed a UI glitch that could happen when swiping cells in some views
• Fixed comment swipe actions not displaying "Unvote" option for voted comments
• Fixed indentation for root comment cells being larger than needed
• Fixed video controls not working in link previews
• Updated the Lights-Out icon
• Updated special character detection in the markdown editor
• Updated post-composer layout to improve keyboard handling
• Updated rendering of app icons in the settings menu
• Improved handling of videos in the media viewer

v0.4.0.1

• Added the first set of Widgets, This widget set allows configuring your own post feed
• Added support for removing drafts from the draft history
• Added option to disable comment listing modes, this is enabled by default.
• Added scaled and controversial sort types to the default post sorting options
• Added option to insert image from a URL in the markdown editor
• Improved markdown editor to handle link and image insertion better. highlighted text will now pre-populate the link entry
• Fixed jumpy behavior when selecting context text in comment replies
• Fixed crash on first launch when opening an external url
• Fixed voting in post feeds with vote buttons disabled, this will now update the cell appearance
• Removed post feed action for opening Experimental SwiftUI view

v0.4.0

• Added option to set the vote display style (separate, combined, none)
• Added option to disable voting buttons in post cells
• Added option to hide top and bottom bars while scrolling
• Added the Mod Zone to the inbox view
  • The unread badge will now include any unread reports and applications
• Updated the markdown editor to render special markdown characters as muted
• Updated the community selector to default to listing all communities when in guest mode
• Fixed a crash that could occur when changing accounts
• Fixed an issue with markdown badges where they could be wrapped over multiple lines
• Fixed Lemmy user and community links not working after v0.3.0

Links

• Website: getarctic.app
• TestFlight: testflight.apple.com
• AppStore: apps.apple.com
• Issues: github.com
• Community: [email protected]

Sorry for such a delay in posting release notes, I’ve been very busy the last few weeks, and almost all of my free time has been spent working on updates. Since my last release post, I’ve released v0.3.0, v0.3.1, v0.3.2.

Arctic gained quite a few new features in these releases. I’ll list off some of the most notable changes, and as alway you can find the full list of changes below.

v0.3.0 was primarily focused on markdown rendering improvements. I added support for Lemmy spoilers, subscript, superscript, highlights, and syntax highlighting. Code and blocks are now rendered with a styled background for better distinction.

v0.3.1 added an all new private messages view. Messages are now sorted into conversations, and displayed in a iMesages style feed. You can now edit, delete, and report private messages. This release also included forward navigation. If you swipe back in the navigation stack, you can swipe back forward and pickup where you left off. There is also a new action to quickly switch the post layout while viewing a feed.

v0.3.2 added options to hide read posts, and mark posts as read while scrolling. There a new post layout Headline which is a compact style that only displays the post title. I also improved the layout of other compact layouts. Reddit gallery links will now be rendered as regular image gallery posts.

I’ve also spent some time preparing the first AppStore release for Arctic. I just about have everything ready for submission, with only iPad previews left to design. I hope to submit the first release to the AppStore by the end of the month.

One last thing I would like to include in the first official release, is a new default icon for Arctic. I’ve tried my hand at a few icons now, and so far I’ve not found any that feel adequate. If anyone here is a graphic designer or digital artist, feel free to reach out to me.

v0.3.0 Changelog

• Added support for new Markdown features to the Markdown Editor
• Added a loading indicator for Lemmy Explorer
• Added option to set the instance used for Guest Mode
• Added font size preview when using the font size slider
• Added appearance settings for adjusting the style of the top and bottom bars in Lemmy
• Added a warning message that will show at the end of feeds if you're viewing a filtered feed eg: listing mode set to Local
• Added a new preview controller when composing a post or comment
• Updated Swimmy to use a single instance of Lemmy Api for all API calls
• Updated the account switcher to use the applied font settings
• Updated to save and restore listing mode when switching to/from guest mode
• Updated Markdown rendering:
  • Added support for syntax highlighting in code blocks
  • Code blocks and inline code will now be rendered in a box
  • Block quotes will now be rendered in a quote box
  • Added support for ~subscript~ and ^superscript^
  • Added support for ==highlight==
  • Added support for Lemmy spoilers
  • Added settings to adjust syntax highlighting behavior
  • Added support for loading remote images inline
    • Note: This behavior is not enabled yet, I still have more work to do to support videos and animated images
• Fixed issue where non-account cells could be reordered in account settings
• Fixed Safari Open In extension causing a crash due to a previous update
• Fixed Lemmy Explorer failing to load Communities
• Fixed issue where the tab-bar profile title would not update for Guest Mode
• Fixed an issue that could cause font size changes to not apply unless using the iPad layout
• Fixed color themes not applying to the top and bottom bars immediately
• Fixed issue where the listing mode could unnecessarily change when switching to guest mode
• Fixed issue where changing the sorting/listing mode when viewing a post would not reload the feed if the feed was empty before changing

v0.3.1 Changelog

• Added a new Private Messages controller similar to iMessage:
  • Messages are now displayed in conversations based on the recipient
  • You can now edit, delete, and report messages
• Added forward navigation, swipe from the right edge of the screen to re-open previously open views
• Added support for selecting text in the reply view context preview
• Added an option to the Posts Feed action menu to quickly change the cell layout style
• Added option to lock Arctic using biometrics (Face ID, Touch ID, Passcode), with an optional timeout before locking
• Added a timestamp to inbox comment cells
• Added additional support for internal Markdown customization (user settings coming soon)
• Fixed issue with the Syntax Highlighting settings page, where the preview would render incorrectly on iOS 16+
• Fixed issue where editing a post multiple times would not reflect the previous changes when re-opening the editor
• Updated font size and color in generated initial icons
• Updated the markdown editor to respond to font size changes

v0.3.2 Changelog

• Added option to mark posts as read while scrolling
• Added option to hide read posts in the home feed
• Added option to hide read posts in community feeds
• Added new post layout style Headline: a compact style that only shows the post title
• Added support for fetching images from Reddit gallery links
• Added support for viewing YouTube and Piped videos from opened posts
• Added support for opening links in private messages
• Added support for markdown [[BADGES]] (color defaults to red for now)
• Added a delivered notifications manager for deleting notifications once they are read in-app (not enabled yet)
• Added notification permissions status cell to notification settings, this is intended to assist users when encountering an error while enabling notifications
• Updated unread count polling, polls now allow for threshold waiting to reduce network calls.
• Updated support for inline HTML in markdown, HTML will now render with the correct font
• Updated NSFW blur view layout
• Updated HLS stream support to reduce stalling when playing streams
• Updated post spacing for compact post layouts
• Fixed media seek gestures blocking the navigation swipe gestures
• Fixed forward navigation transition causing a zoom effect for some views
• Fixed issue where canceling a navigation transition would clear the forward navigation stack
• Fixed an issue preventing videos from opening in the media viewer when viewing a post
• Fixed an issue where media gallery views could display duplicate images
• Fixed issue allowing a link preview to be displayed in a media post
• Fixed a crash that could occur when opening the media viewer in rare cases
• Fixed a crash that could occur when attempting to open a URL that not http(s)
• Fixed issue where animated images could display out of bounds when viewed in a paged media viewer
• Fixed spoilers incorrectly indenting paragraphs after the first line
• Fixed issue where selecting the active account in the account switcher would reload feeds
• Updated support for parsing lemmy semantic versions

Links

• Website: getarctic.app
• TestFlight: testflight.apple.com

Happy holidays everyone!

I released Arctic v0.2.10 on TestFlight yesterday. Additionally I forgot to make a release post for v0.2.9 which released a little over a week ago.

v0.2.10

This release features a new Markdown editor, Anonymous Logging, support for new sorting modes, and addresses issues with expired jwt’s on the notification server.

I finally took the time in this release to implement logging using swift-log for cross-platform logging which is shared between Arctic, Swimmy, and the notification server. If you encounter any crashes, please include your logs by going to Settings>About>Arctic Logs. All logs are stored only on device, and don’t include any personal or sensitive information.

The account switcher also includes some new features. Each account now shows a badge indicating your unread notifications at a glance. It will also show a warning if you login session has expired. You can now set a default account, whenever you close or relaunch Arctic, the default account will be loaded.

The markdown editor toolbar has been redesigned. It now features a scrollable action list, and will be easier from me to expand on in the future.

v0.2.9

In this update, I improved the workflow for moderators with a new Mod Zone for accessing all your reports, mod-logs, and user applications. I also added a new section to the subscriptions list that shows all your moderated communities for easy access

Arctic finally supports opening links from other instances natively. For instance if you are browsing lemmy.world and open a link to a post on lemm.ee, Arctic will now resolve the link and open it on the instance you are browsing. In some cases this may fail, for instance if the link is to an instance that is blocked, in this case, it will be opened in the browser.

Most of the other changes in this version are minor tweaks to the UI and a couple of crash/bug fixes. You can read about all the changes in this version below.

Upcoming Changes

I’ve started working on a new markdown renderer using TextKit for a future release. This will offer much improved rendering for markdown. Thinks like embedded tables, code highlighting, backgrounds for blocks like block-quotes, and code. Support for tags, and spoilers, and in-line previews for links and images. This is very early in development and will likely not be released in the next several versions.

v0.2.10 Changelog

• Added logging support, you can now find logs for arctic in settings (logs are anonymous and never leave your device)
• Added a new Markdown toolbar to improve Markdown editing
• Added support for Lemmy v0.19 sort modes (Controversial | Scaled)
• Added support for showing taglines in Instance Sidebars
• Added unread badges to the Account Switcher
• Added the account name to the post composer to show what account you are posting from
• Added support for inline HTML in rendered markdown
• Added 3 new app icons
• Added support for selecting a default account that will automatically be used when reopening Arctic
• Added options to disable Account Switcher badges and warnings
• Added support for parsing semantic versions to determine Lemmy instance versions
• Fixed a crash that could occur when attempting to load the duration of a video
• Fixed more navigation bar layout issues on iOS 15
• Fixed a layout issue in the LoginRefreshController
• Fixed issue where arctic would attempt to fetch video thumbnails for unsupported video urls
• Fixed upvote by pressing upvote label in comment cells
• Fixed an issue where notification options could be reset after certain actions
• Updated to use new features in Swimmy and removed some outdated backend code
• Updated adding an image link to the post composer, the image will be loaded and displayed
• Updated the post composer
• Updated block-quote appearance in rendered markdown (quotes are now rendered as muted italic)
• Improved the readability of popover views
• Re-authenticating an account will now update your auth (jwt) on the notification server (if applicable)

v0.2.9 Changelog

• Added a new Mod Zone for accessing:
  • Mod Logs
  • Reported Content
  • User Applications
• Added swipe action to subscriptions list view for unsubscribing
• Added a moderator section to the subscriptions list view
• Added support for video thumbnails in Grid Gallery views
• Added a reply arrow to the reply composer to better indicate the context being replied to
• Added support for tappable links in profile bios
• Added support for accessing the community selector from inside post views
• Added chevron to the navigation title view to indicate it's tap action
• Added support for resolving urls from other instances
  • Note: when opening a link to a post or comment that is not local to your instance, arctic will fetch the local instance url prior to opening the link. This should resolve most instances of lemmy urls being open in the in-app browser.
• Updated the section header font size in the subscription list view
• Updated the appearance of report, and mod reason controllers
• Updated the subscriptions list view index slider to adjust to theme changes
• Updated action menus community and moderator action menus
• Updated url handling to attempt redirecting http traffic to https
• Updated font size handling to support views presented over the main view
• Updated the indentation width for child comments in comment threads
• Updated about settings section
• Fixed a crash that could occur when using the hue comment color theme
• Fixed an issue where the inbox may fail to load all items in various sections
• Fixed issue where the select text popup would not allow text selection
• Fixed issue where arctic could attempt updating a view after its been dismissed, causing a crash
• Fixed Lemmy Explorer failing to load instances due to API changes

Links

• Website: getarctic.app
• TestFlight: testflight.apple.com

Arctic v0.2.8 released on TestFlight yesterday. The biggest change in this version is updated support for Lemmy v0.19. I noticed d that several lemmy instances have already updated to v0.19 RC, so I wanted to get this release out as soon as possible.

I also finally added support for overriding the default system font size, and an option to open links in the default browser, or in reader mode.

I finally tracked down a long standing bug that would cause crashes for many users when exiting a post view, or shortly after doing so.

Coming up next in v0.2.9

In the next release I’ve added an all new Mod Zone for quick access to all your mod/admin tools. You can view all your reports, or mod-logs per community. I also added Admin support for managing new user applications.

You can now access your moderated communities in a new section on the subscriptions view, and you can also swipe to unsubscribe from communities.

I’m working on a few more QoL updates before rolling out the next release

v0.2.8 change-log

• Updated support for Lemmy v0.19     - Note: Not all of the new features are supported yet, though all of Arctic's current features should be supported
• Added support for customizing the font size in Arctic
• Added the instance Lemmy version to the sidebar
• Added link options:     - Open in default browser     - Open in reader mode
• Added support for editing Community Watchers
• Added a new App Icon
• Fixed issue where the community selector search did not respect the sorting mode
• Fixed Lemmy Explorer failing to load communities
• Fixed issue where the application badge would not update immediately after changing notification settings
• Fixed an issue with image loading that could cause a crash when exiting a post view
• Updated post composer to pre-select the open community when using the long-press gesture
• Updated in-app Safari to use Arctic's tint color
• Updated Arctic's theme support

Arctic Push Notifications

• Added support for updating community notification
• Added support for notification sounds
• Added support for running on a local machine for debugging
• Added support for sending local-urls in notifications
• Added collapse identifiers to notifications, in the off chance a duplicate notification is sent, it will be collapsed with the previous one
• Fixed incorrect parsing of dates in community notifications
• Fixed an issue that would cause registration application notifications to send repeatedly until they were all approved
• Updated badge notifications to update less frequently, and improve reliability
• Updated support for Lemmy v0.19
• Updated the format of sent notifications to improve client-side parsing support

Links

• Website: getarctic.app
• TestFlight: testflight.apple.com

I know updates have been comming slow the last few weeks, though I have been hard at work writing a push notification server for Arctic. You can now enable push notifications in settings on a per-account basis. Push notifications currently include Post and Comment replies, as well as Private Messages.

Whats to come: I’m currently working on adding support for more granular notification options. Such as disabling certain types of notifications like Private Messages. I am also working on setting up more notification types such as :

• Username Mentions
• Community Watchers
• Mod Reports
• User Applications

About the notification service. In order to provide push notifications, your account auth token (jwt) needs to be uploaded to the server. This is required in order to fetch content from your Lemmy account on your behalf. These tokens remain valid until you logout of Arctic, or change your password. No identifying data is collected for notifications, only a device token that Apple uses to forward the notifications to your device. When disabling notifications in Arctic, your auth and device token will be purged from the server.

Will push notifications be subscription based?

Running a notification server does cost money. While builing Arctic, I’ve always had the goal of keeping all features free for everyone in the spirit of the fediverse. With that said, I have been trying to come up with a modal that would allow me to add notifications without locking them behind a paywall.

I decided to offer basic notifications as a free service allowing everyone access to replies, messages, and mentions. Advanced notifications such as community watchers, Mod, and Admin notifications, there will be a small subscription fee.

I have not settled on pricing for for the subscription just yet. I’ll be offering these notifications for free during TestFlight beta testing.

v0.2.6 Release

Though this version is as primarily focused on push notifications, I also addressed a few other issues, and added a few features.

Arctic now has a Safari Extension, this extension allows you to open any Lemmy url from safari in Arctic. You can configure the extension to automatically open the page in Arctic, or add a banner to the top of the page so you can open the page in Arctic. The rest of the changes were primarily minor bug fixes.

v0.2.6.1 Release

This was simply a hotfix for a loading issue introduced in v0.2.6 that caused issues loading link previews, and scroll performance issues.

v0.2.6.1 Changelog

• Reverted some crash fixes from v0.2.6 that would cause link loading to fail, and scroll performance degradation.

v0.2.6 Changelog

• Added support for Account Notifications
• Added "Open In Arctic" Safari extension
• Fixed a bug that would cause a crash when parsing certain urls
• Fixed Post Compose View "Post" button not restoring after an error occurred
• Added a warning that shows when trying to submit a post without a title
• Fixed comment Scroll To Selection not always scrolling to the correct position
• Fixed comment separators not properly displaying on all comments
• Fixed comment highlighting not showing
• Fixed issue that could cause post titles to be cropped vertically when viewing an image post
• Fixed media viewer status bar not behaving correctly in some cases
• Fixed media viewer action buttons not showing when viewing a gallery
• Added swipe actions for voting in the inbox
• Fixed community feed action menu icons
• Added App Icon selection settings (only 2 icons at the moment)
• ~~Fixed some crashes that would occur randomly for some users due to tableview updates~~ (reverted in v0.2.6.1)
• Fixed moderated communities view not displaying communities when viewing profiles other than your own
• Fixed "Scroll To Top" tab bar action not always completing

Arctic v0.2.5 is now out on TestFlight. This is a small update with just a few fixes and new features.

I’ve added an option to convert YouTube links to Piped. YouTube has a lot of restrictions in accessing direct links to videos, thus embedding YouTube videos in-line is unreliable at best unless using Web views which I do not plan on doing. Piped on the other hand is very simple to work with and embedded videos is simple and achievable. This initial implementation does have issues, namely videos may fail to load due to cloudflair on Piped instances. For this reason I’ve added a load balancing option for attempting to distribute Piped requests across several Piped instances.

I’ve also added swipe gestures configuration options for choosing your own actions in post/comment swipe menus. I also included a fix for the new swipe gestures being unusable on some cells.

Link post images are finally fixed for compact post cells, sorry that took so long. I also included some inbox improvements, so now the inbox will properly update once you’ve replied to a message or comment. You can also manually refresh the inbox.

You can see the full list of changes below.

v0.2.5 changes

• Comment usernames are in bold now for readability
• Added option to convert YouTube links to Piped links (post feed only)
• Added option to select which piped instance is used for inline video
• Update the post feed title according to the listing type
• Updated the elasticity of swipe action gestures
• Updated settings icons
• Added swipe gesture customization options
• Fixed link images not loading when using compact post layout
• Inbox now updates when replying to a comment
• Added support for refreshing the inbox

Arctic v0.2.4 is is out on TestFlight. This update is primarily focused on new features. I’ve added a few highly requested features. Firstly, a new comment jump button, for jumping between top level comments (tap for next comment, long press for previous comment). I’ve finally taken the time to implement distance based swipe actions, rather than the native swipe drawer. If you prefer the old drawer style, this can still be enabled in settings. Another exciting feature in this version is support for piped.video links. These links will now properly display metadata previews, and I also added an option to play Piped videos in-line in the posts feed.

Some other notable changes in this version include:

• Support for HLS video streams in the media player
• Options to limit image height in posts for managing large image sizes

The remainder of the changes are rather minor, and you can see the full change-log below.

v0.2.4 changes

• Added a jump button to the comments section
• Added new swipe action design, this is consistent with other apps behavior where actions are triggered based on distance, rather than opening a drawer. This is optional, an the original style is available in settings.
• Added image height options for post cells to constrain the maximum image height
• Added support for loading Piped video metadata, and playing Piped videos inline
• Added support for playing HLS (m3u8) streams
• Added the account username in the comment composer to see which account you are composing from
• Added auto-complete when typing an instance url in the Login view
• Added support for reordering the account list
• Added support for following communities from Lemmy Explorer
• Added experimental support for saving comment drafts
• Added prompt to login when opening the post/comment composer
• Fixed some issues with theme colors not applying in certain areas
• Fixed issue where swiping a post with an image would not work
• Fixed login button issues in the login controller
• Adjusted the colors of red posts to better distinguish between title an body
• Sharing post, or comment urls now shares the url to the local instance rather than the remote url for the content

Arctic v0.2.2 and v0.2.3 has been released on TestFlight. I’m slacking a little and did not post about the v0.2.2 release. These are both smaller releases without many major changes. I’ve been trying to keep the updates a little smaller than usual, so I can release them faster.

v0.2.2

To summarize v0.2.2, this was mostly geared towards moderation tools. I redesigned the ModLog and added some convenience actions for moderators such as an Undo feature for mod actions. I fixed several crashes, and issues to do with the mod tools released in v0.2.1. For users I added support for sharing videos from the media viewer without needing to save them first. Fixed a crash when changing accounts that was introduced in the previous version. You can read more about this release in the changelog below.

v0.2.3

As for v0.2.3, this was a much smaller release that was mainly intended to fix a parsing issue with Lemmy Explorer. However I also added a couple cool new features. Finally some app theming support, you can now customize Arctics tint color, and comment colors. I also added a comment feed view for viewing your instance comments out of context similar to the web UI. You can also access this for individual communities, however several instances hav this temporary disabled due to performance issues. For mods, I added support for removing entire comment threads, I’ve seen this requested by several mods across lemmy. I also added the ability for admins to purge content from the database.

Upcoming changes

• Refined theming support, a few areas were overlooked in the initial release.
• A new comment jump button, for quickly navigating between top level comments
• All new swipe action design that triggers actions based on distance rather than the current drawer style actions, of course if you prefer the current style, you can use that instead.
• Comment and Post drafts so you can pick up where you left off if you dismiss the compose view.

v0.2.3 Changelog

• Added App color themes
• Added Comment color themes
• Added Remove Thread mod action for removing entire comment threads
• Added comment action to preview the comments parent
• Added Comment list controller for viewing community comments
• Fixed parsing issue when viewing Lemmy Explorer communities list
• Added Admin purge (comment, user, post) actions to mod menu (note: for now, this is only enabled on communities moderated by the admin)

v0.2.2 Changelog

• Added stats to Lemmy Explorer instance list
• Added large number formatting eg: 1.2K vs 1200
• Added support for sharing videos without needing to save them first
• Added support for filtering by all in the Mod Log
• Added Mod Log quick actions including an undo option for moderators
• Added community Mod Log shortcut to community action menu
• Added option to display user avatar as the profile tab icon
• Added backend support for instance blocking on Lemmy v0.19
• Added support for authentication on Lemmy v0.19
• Open In Browser now opens links using your active instance, rather than the original instance
• Rewrote Upload History controller
• Redesigned Mod Log cells
• Fixed profile comments being in incorrect order
• Fixed Lemmy Explorer timestamps not displaying
• Fixed a crash when refreshing the reports list
• Fixed a crash when (un)resolving a post report
• Fixed cell highlighting issue in the Mod Log
• Fixed a potential crash when performing mod actions
• Fixed a potential crash when changing accounts
• Updated date formatting to support upcoming Lemmy v0.19
• Updated post cell layout, and tweaked design for readability
• Updated settings icons
• Updated subscriptions title index to no longer require a long press to activate

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/5508813

Arctic v0.2.1 is now available for testing on TestFlight!

Sorry for the delay with this update, it took longer than I had originally planned. I’ve had a busy couple or weeks, and have not had as much time as usual to work on Arctic. Additionally this update was larger than past updates, with larger features and more commits than any of the previous updates. In the future I will try and keep the updates coming more frequently,

Notable new features

This update comes packed with some exciting new features. Arctic now has support for iPad layouts (split view, slide over, full screen). This is still a work in progress and will improve in future releases. Collapsible comment chains are finally supported, tap or swipe any comment to collapse it’s content and children. Mod tools have also joined the party! You can access mod actions when viewing content from any community you moderate. Just open the action menu for any post or comment for quick access to (ban user, remove content, speak as a mod, feature or lock a post). You can also review and resolve user reported content in the new Mod Zone accessible from the sidebar, and community action menu.

Mod tools and iPad support are still a work in progress and any feedback on theses features is more that welcome.

Less notable new features

Arctic now has Lemmy Explorer (lemmyverse.net) built in. This allows for browsing and searching thousands of instances and communities inside Arctic. Currently, you can access this through Lemmy Explorer in settings. However, I’m working on integrating lemmyverse databases directly in the Search tab, and in the Community browser to allow for better search results, and increase community discovery.

Media viewer action buttons are working now, not much to explain here. You can now vote, share, save, open in browser, etc directly from the media viewer.

Upcoming features

Better iPad support. I plan to add support for 3 column layout, and a context aware sidebar. I’m also working on adding support for multiple windows, so you can browse multiple accounts, or use mod tools while browsing etc. this may take some time and likely won’t be coming in the next release.

Mod tool improvements. Better UI support for moderation, currently the UI doesn’t properly update for all mod actions. Additional convenience actions for mods, such as speak as mod, and feature posts etc before submitting the post/comment.

Comments feed, view instance or community comments in a feed similar to the posts feed, this is to match the web UI.

Chat mode for comments. Disables hierarchical comments to view comments with absolute sorting. Additionally, child comments of deleted or removed comments are not shown.

Adaptive layout. Currently long usernames, or deep nested comments, etc cause some wonky UI, where elements will overlap. I’m working on adding better support in these cases to allow the UI to adapt.

Accessibility improvements. Voiceover should already be working fairly well, however there are a lot of areas for improvement. I’m working on going through the whole UI to ensure all elements are properly supported.

State synchronization. I know I’ve mentioned this before, and I haven’t gotten to this yet. I have a pretty good idea of. How I’m going to handle this, it’s going to take some time to implement though.

Customizable swipe actions. Adding support for user customizable swipe actions. This will also come with distance based triggers rather than the current drawer style swipe actions.

Until next time

As always, thanks to everyone for testing Arctic and providing feedback. We still have a fairly small community here, and I would like to increase engagement, so everyone feel free to post any feedback or suggestions here.

V0.2.1 changes

v0.2.1

• Added support for collapsable comment chains
• Added split-view iPad layout support (also supported on full size iPhones)
• Added option to select app layout (iPhone, iPad)
• Added Moderation options to post and comment action menus (must be a moderator for the community)
• Added Mod Zone for viewing post/comment reports, and resolving them
• Added Lemmy Explorer for browsing communities/instances
• Added support for uploading images from the Files app
• Added support for loading video thumbnails (WIP)
• Added option to save, copy, or open in browser any media
• Added swipe actions to the posts feed
• Added option to select text from the detailed post view
• Added support for refreshing the profile page
• Added open in browser option to community feeds
• Added alert for viewing detailed account score, and account age
• Redesigned settings page, and organized options
• Increased the posts feed page size
• Optimized image loading, and memory usage
• Refactored the profile view and added support for viewing save comments
• Fixed posts with no comments not displaying a no comments message
• Fixed issue that could cause community feeds not to load on certain instance
• Fixed issue where canceling an image upload would result in an infinite loading screen
• Fixed crash when deleting an image from the Upload Manager
• Fixed search bars on iOS 16 to match the layout of iOS 15
• Fixed layout issues after device rotation
• Fixed media viewer action buttons not working
• Fixed issue where posts would fail to load due to unencoded urls (matrix urls)
• Fixed crash that could occur when submitting a new post/comment
• Fixed sidebar banners displaying the icon rather than the banner
• Fixed comment reports opening a post report
• Fixed alerts displaying underneath the media viewer
• Fixed moderator list in profiles always displaying your own moderator list rather than the selected user
• Fixed crash that would occur when adding or changing accounts
• Fixed delated/removed comments always displaying "deleted by creator"

Arctic v0.2.1 is now available for testing on TestFlight!

Sorry for the delay with this update, it took longer than I had originally planned. I’ve had a busy couple or weeks, and have not had as much time as usual to work on Arctic. Additionally this update was larger than past updates, with larger features and more commits than any of the previous updates. In the future I will try and keep the updates coming more frequently,

Notable new features

This update comes packed with some exciting new features. Arctic now has support for iPad layouts (split view, slide over, full screen). This is still a work in progress and will improve in future releases. Collapsible comment chains are finally supported, tap or swipe any comment to collapse it’s content and children. Mod tools have also joined the party! You can access mod actions when viewing content from any community you moderate. Just open the action menu for any post or comment for quick access to (ban user, remove content, speak as a mod, feature or lock a post). You can also review and resolve user reported content in the new Mod Zone accessible from the sidebar, and community action menu.

Mod tools and iPad support are still a work in progress and any feedback on theses features is more that welcome.

Less notable new features

Arctic now has Lemmy Explorer (lemmyverse.net) built in. This allows for browsing and searching thousands of instances and communities inside Arctic. Currently, you can access this through Lemmy Explorer in settings. However, I’m working on integrating lemmyverse databases directly in the Search tab, and in the Community browser to allow for better search results, and increase community discovery.

Media viewer action buttons are working now, not much to explain here. You can now vote, share, save, open in browser, etc directly from the media viewer.

Upcoming features

Better iPad support. I plan to add support for 3 column layout, and a context aware sidebar. I’m also working on adding support for multiple windows, so you can browse multiple accounts, or use mod tools while browsing etc. this may take some time and likely won’t be coming in the next release.

Mod tool improvements. Better UI support for moderation, currently the UI doesn’t properly update for all mod actions. Additional convenience actions for mods, such as speak as mod, and feature posts etc before submitting the post/comment.

Comments feed, view instance or community comments in a feed similar to the posts feed, this is to match the web UI.

Chat mode for comments. Disables hierarchical comments to view comments with absolute sorting. Additionally, child comments of deleted or removed comments are not shown.

Adaptive layout. Currently long usernames, or deep nested comments, etc cause some wonky UI, where elements will overlap. I’m working on adding better support in these cases to allow the UI to adapt.

Accessibility improvements. Voiceover should already be working fairly well, however there are a lot of areas for improvement. I’m working on going through the whole UI to ensure all elements are properly supported.

State synchronization. I know I’ve mentioned this before, and I haven’t gotten to this yet. I have a pretty good idea of. How I’m going to handle this, it’s going to take some time to implement though.

Customizable swipe actions. Adding support for user customizable swipe actions. This will also come with distance based triggers rather than the current drawer style swipe actions.

Until next time

As always, thanks to everyone for testing Arctic and providing feedback. We still have a fairly small community here, and I would like to increase engagement, so everyone feel free to post any feedback or suggestions here.

V0.2.1 changes

v0.2.1

• Added support for collapsable comment chains
• Added split-view iPad layout support (also supported on full size iPhones)
• Added option to select app layout (iPhone, iPad)
• Added Moderation options to post and comment action menus (must be a moderator for the community)
• Added Mod Zone for viewing post/comment reports, and resolving them
• Added Lemmy Explorer for browsing communities/instances
• Added support for uploading images from the Files app
• Added support for loading video thumbnails (WIP)
• Added option to save, copy, or open in browser any media
• Added swipe actions to the posts feed
• Added option to select text from the detailed post view
• Added support for refreshing the profile page
• Added open in browser option to community feeds
• Added alert for viewing detailed account score, and account age
• Redesigned settings page, and organized options
• Increased the posts feed page size
• Optimized image loading, and memory usage
• Refactored the profile view and added support for viewing save comments
• Fixed posts with no comments not displaying a no comments message
• Fixed issue that could cause community feeds not to load on certain instance
• Fixed issue where canceling an image upload would result in an infinite loading screen
• Fixed crash when deleting an image from the Upload Manager
• Fixed search bars on iOS 16 to match the layout of iOS 15
• Fixed layout issues after device rotation
• Fixed media viewer action buttons not working
• Fixed issue where posts would fail to load due to unencoded urls (matrix urls)
• Fixed crash that could occur when submitting a new post/comment
• Fixed sidebar banners displaying the icon rather than the banner
• Fixed comment reports opening a post report
• Fixed alerts displaying underneath the media viewer
• Fixed moderator list in profiles always displaying your own moderator list rather than the selected user
• Fixed crash that would occur when adding or changing accounts
• Fixed delated/removed comments always displaying "deleted by creator"

v0.2.0 is out!

I believe I finally fixed the crashes some users were experiencing when refreshing posts feeds, if you still experience one of these crashes, please report it via TestFlight. Also, links in posts and comments are way easier to tap now, that was frustrating, I know. You can read about all the changes in this version below.

Upcoming features

Collapsible Comments has been implemented, and will be included in the next release. I’m working on integrating a Lemmyverse browser for exploring outside of your instance. I’m also working on proper a proper iPad layout. Browsing on iPad is a little off-putting at the moment, so hopefully I can fix that.

Issue Tracker

I completely forgot to include a link to the issue tracker in the last release, but if you would like to submit an issue, you can visit the GitHub Issue Tracker. I will add a Feature Request option soon.

v0.2.0 Changes

• Fixed a crash that would often occur when refreshing a post-feed
• Fixed pull to refresh not working in detailed post views
• Fixed Community Settings not properly loading the icon URL
• Fixed issue that could make links in post bodies difficult or impossible to tap
• Fixed issue that could make links in comment bodies difficult or impossible to tap
• Fixed a potential memory leak in the Posts Feed
• Workaround for an unsupported KBin link type, will redirect to browser for now
• Added ability to search posts from the posts feed, for searching limited to a single community
• Added support for creating communities from the Moderates section
• Added lock indicator for locked posts
• Added a title to the report view to indicate the type of report
• Added instance sidebars
• Added support for composing, and replying to Private Messages
• Added an instance browser to browse your instance's federation
• Added instance legal information to instance sidebars
• Added modlogs to the sidebar (WIP)
• Added option to report posts from the detailed posts view
• Tapping the active tabbar item will now scroll to the top, or pop to the previous view in all views
• The Media Viewer will now allow zooming up to 30x
• When submitting a post or comment, a progress indicator will now show to indicate it is working
• When editing a post that has an image as the URL, the image will be loaded and displayed

Arctic v0.1.9 is now available for testing.

Unfortunately, I was not able to implement Private Messages the way that I had hoped due to API limitations. In the next update I’ll at least add support for composing/replying to private messages. However until the API is updated, Arctic will display messages the same way Lemmy-UI handles it, as one big feed.

Arctic will now handle expired login sessions properly, and prompt you to re-authenticate if needed. This is due to the fact that Auth-tokens can be revoked for various reasons by instance admins, and Arctic used to just display server response errors in this case, rather than stating the session had expired.

Arctic also now supports reporting content, open the menu for any post/comment and tap report.

I’ve also added experimental post keyword filtering. So far this seems to be working well, and it does support basic regex expressions. Currently filtering is disabled in the search section as it has not way to query the server with filtering options. So it would require multiple paging requests in some cases to show any results. Hopefully I can find a way around this in the future.

You can read the full change-log below, and don’t hesitate to reply or create a post here with any feedback, issues, or suggestions.

v0.1.9 Changes

• Added community settings editor, for community moderators to update the sidebar of their communities
• Added keyword filtering, filter posts by keyword in either the title or body of the post
• Added option to report Posts/Comments
• Added an option that prompts the user to log in if their login session has expired. Admins can revoke all API tokens for various reasons, and this results in errors on the client side. Arctick now handles this scenario, and asks the user to re-authenticate.
• Added proper error message for when the login session has expired, rather than just a server status code
• Added option to select text from posts/comments to copy rather than just copying the whole contents
• Imgur videos should now correctly play inline
• Animated images now pause when offscreen like videos do
• Posts now resize when loading images without animating, this may be reverted. Let me know if scrolling feels better or worse

I haven’t been posting here about Arctic updates, and I realize that is a little counter productive towards building an active community here. So I would like to change that and start posting about changes in each release, and about active development.

I have been trying to wrap up a release every couple of days, and keep them coming as frequently as I can manage. Each update I try and throw in a mix of bug fixes and new features or quality of life improvements. I believe at this point I have all the crashes fixed except one, which I’ve received a good number of crash reports about. The crash usually happens after refreshing the posts feed when letting the app sit in the background for a while. Unfortunately I’ve not been able to reproduce this crash which makes it difficult to resolve. However I do know where the issue originates, and I hope to have it resolved in the next update.

What’s next?

In the next update I’m planning a few new features. First and foremost, is private messages. Currently, you can view private messages with Arctic, but there is no way to reply or create messages. I’ve been putting it off because I don’t have a clear idea of how I’d like to design this. I’ve never been a fan of the Messages app-like design within an app like Arctic, so I’m thinking of implementing it more like a forum than a chat app. Im also planning to add in UI support for post and comment reporting, as this is a critical feature that should already be implemented if I’m being honest. I’ll hopefully have instance sidebars added in the next update as well.

Going forward

Within the next couple of releases I’d like to tackle some of the biggest issues within Arctic currently. First is state synchronization. Currently the app state is poorly managed: for instance you can open a post and vote or comment on it, and back-out to the feed and the UI will not depict the changes. This is rather cumbersome task as UIKit does not have proper binding like SwiftUI does. But I have a good idea of how I will manage this.

The second issue will be improvements to scrolling performance in posts feeds. This is also a tricky task as UIKit does not handle changes to cell height in tables very well. Currently, Arctic tries its best to prefetch images before they are displayed to prevent having to resize visible cells, but dependent on network conditions, this may not always happen in time and it can cause some jumpy scrolling. I may never completely negate this issue without the the lemmy API providing image dimension data in the responses. However, I have some options for improving this that I have yet to try.

Lastly, I’d like to address issues with links being un-tappable in some posts. This one is really annoying, and honestly I’m just going to throw out the current system and rewrite the system using official techniques.

Some more thoughts

Once stability and core features are a bit more polished, I’ll be focusing on design. Currently Arctic is quite static in design, but I’d like to offer a bit more user control over appearance. Things like app-wide color themes, comment color themes, customizable action/swipe menus, etc. while implementing all of this, the settings section will also get an overhaul and be a little more organized.

I’ll also be working on implementing mod/admin tools. This is likely going to take some time, as there is a lot to implement, and familiarize myself with. I’ll keep everyone up to date on my progress with this when the time comes. I may also seek out some mod/admin users to test these features in a private testing group to avoid issues

Anywho, I didn’t intend on this being such a blanketed post, so I will leave it at that. I’ve included change-logs below as I’m not sure if anyone reads release notes in TestFlight releases. I’ll be sure to make a new release post here every time I release an update going forward.

Thank you, to all of the users. You’ve all been great. Our numbers are still quite low at the moment, only 153 testers at the time of writing this. Hopefully I can bump those up with the coming releases.

v0.1.8

• Fixed videos failing to load in the media viewer if more than one video is in the list
• Fixed crash when trying to share a video from the media viewer (for now, only the link will be shared. I will add an option to share the video file soon)
• Fixed videos not posing when swiping to the next page in the media viewer
• Fixed the search bar not always showing on the initial load of the Search tab
• Fixed issue where some community icons would fail to load
• Fixed issue where some animated images would not animate in the full post-view
• Fixed issue where link previews would fail to display a default icon if a site favicon is not found
• Fixed markdown not being applied when opening the post editor
• Added loading indicator in the media viewer when loading videos
• Added support for cross-posting (option is available in the action menus)
• Added a community selector to the post composer, for changing what community you are posting to
• Added support for scrolling to the top when pressing the posts tab while it's already active
• Added option to open the post composer when long pressing the posts tab
• Added reply context preview to the Reply Composer, for viewing the context in which you are replying to

v0.1.7 hotfix

• Fixed crash when pressing the cancel button in the Search view
• Fixed placeholder text not hiding in the post editor when editing an existing post

v0.1.6

• Redesigned Post Editor UI
• Fixed issue that could cause the login screen not to recognize when username/password was pasted
• Fixed crash that could occur while trying to scroll the subscriptions view before it's loaded
• Fixed issue causing some comments to be truncated (cut short)
• Fixed layout issue causing odd behavior with the statusbar on non-notched devices
• Fixed an issue that could cause some animated images in the post feed not to animate
• Added a Upload History manager for deleting previous media uploads
• Improved error messages to be more descriptive
• UI now depicts when an upload is in progress
• Media in comments can now be opened in the Meia Viewer
• Index scroller in the Subscriptions view is now easier to grab
• Increased tappable area for user/community labels in post-cells
• Tapping the stats section of a post cell now opens the post
• Improved success rate for losing YouTube videos
• Improved image-loading behavior in the post feed
• Hopefully, TOTP tokens will now be auto-filled when using a password manager to login

v0.1.5

• Added compact post option (work in progress)
• Added a network monitor that will show when no network connection is available
• Added inbox paging, inboxes will now load more content when scrolling
• Added placeholder icon for users avatars in search view
• Updated Search and Profile styling to match that of the post feed (spacer between cells)
• Improved performance when scrolling posts in search and profile views
• UI now shows when you've reached the end of a feed, or the feed is empty when browsing posts

v0.1.4

• Fixed account switcher positioning issue that occurred after switching accounts
• Added Guest Mode to the account switcher

v0.1.3

• Added option to disable video scrubbing gesture
• Added upload history tracking to manage media uploads (No UI Yet)
• Fixed a crash that could occur while parsing username links
• Added image upload support to the markdown editor
• Provided default icons for communities without an icon
• Added BOT badge to post cells for showing bot accounts
• Community cells in the search tab now show more statistics
• Added option to override the interface style (light/dark)
• Added some experimental swiftUI views