With all these new options springing up, I’m a little outdated. What’s the best app to use right now?
I’ll put my thoughts on this post as it showed up as I scrolled to get to the one from a day or two ago…I have 5 different Lemmy apps installed right now. Figure that there is going to be a lot of experimentation and work being done right now, so it’s nice to see what everyone is doing.
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Jerboa - Personally, I really like Jerboa. Being the most mature of the bunch shows. It’s well laid out, has just enough UI options, and works. Except that now Beehaw isn’t on v0.18.
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Connect - Not open source at this time, I get why that matters to people, but not a deal breaker for me. Typing this comment in Connect. Just updated this morning with additional and redesigned settings. There is about a thumbs width of space between this comment box and my keyboard. That’s kind of yucky.
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Liftoff - I’m hopeful for this one. It LOOKS the best to me, but there’s some weird UX issues. Biggest being that the only place to see your replies/notifications is the top of the Home feed with no quick way to get there if you’ve been scrolling.
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Thunder - I can see the potential, but it’s not for me right now. No buttons on comments, you have to use swipe gestures. But posts have buttons. Changing UI options doesn’t actually change anything 95% of the time.
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Summit - You want a zero frills, dark mode way of browsing and interacting? This is that. I’d love a FEW options (like light mode), but it’s fast and easy. Uhh…just realized I can’t find a way to make a new post…
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Wefwef.app - Last one. Really slick looking and responsive, but too iOS-y for me. It also claims to have light mode, but I can’t figure out how to switch it. Really polished though.
I just want one that will allow me to hide a posts so I’m not scrolling past the same things over and over. None of them do it.
This is the feature I need…I can overlook a lot if I had this.
On Jerboa tap once on the comment to collapse it
That’s a useful feature, but I think what the other person wants to hide is posts on the front page. A lot of Reddit apps let you permanently/temporarily hide posts that you’d already seen, which was really useful as a way of ‘resetting’ your feed when you’ve already scrolled through it recently
Ah, my bad lol
I want Jerboa to add swipe to go back from a post and then I’m set
They just did and its great
That’s a lemmy feature. Some apps have this others don’t (I mean the option to change your lemmy user settings), but you can just log in your instance on a web browser, click on your name, then settings and then disable ‘show read posts’. Any post that you vote (and I think open?) counts as being read, so next time you reload your feed you won’t see them.
That’s a good tip, but only half the solution. An account wide flag is the nuclear option, but granular control by post is important in conjunction.
Thought you meant you didn’t want to keep seeing read posts on your feed. If it serves of any consolation you can turn the setting on/off so read posts show up again, also you can save posts, so you can see them on your profile’s saved section, even if they don’t show up on your regular feed anymore.
Hah, well, leaving the app to go to the mobile site to toggle the option on and off isn’t much consolation.
That would be an amazing feature. I am just switching the sorting options to avoid this issue. Active seems to be the most “stable” sorting, meaning the same stuff stays on top for the longest time. Hot is better, imho, as it fluctuates a bit more. If I can’t find anything new/interesting on active/hot, I switch to “new”. Tends to be full of irrelevant stuff, but at least it’s new.
Similar to what I do. Browse by hot, and when that looks too samesies, switch to new.
Even worse is some of the apps (Thunder, Liftoff) don’t even distinguish read posts from unread. At least Jerboa greys it out somewhat.
How would you decide when a post should be hidden? Explicitly marked by the user? Upvoted or downvoted? Visited the link or comments? Just curious what the user experience should be like.
All of those options.
A settings flag for “Hide read posts” A settings flag for “Mark upvoted/dowvoted posts as read” And a toggle on each post to hide/unhide. I use the feature so much that having it as a swipe action would be a dream (like archiving emails on mobile).
Is there a reason why thunder is only on a weird, very 90s looking app store and not F-Droid?
Izzyondroid (the weird 90s looking store) can be used with the (or any) fdroid client. You just have to add the repository in the settings. Fdroid builds all the apps from source themselves. You need to add a request for packaging and even after that it takes a bit of time until the app is approved. It seems nobody has requested the inclusion yet. Izzy on the other hand takes the developer build binaries and publishes. The requirements are lower to be included here. So apps tend to be in izzy first and then get eventually added to fdroid proper.
The apk is available on the github page, so you can just download and install from there.
My biggest gripe with connect is that I can’t block communities within it :(
Thanks for the detailed write up!
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Waiting for Sync
Sync is what I used for reddit for years. Is there a timeline for sync for lemmy or is it just started?
See r/SyncforLemmy. The dev stated an ETA of 3-6 weeks for a first release with very basic functionality.
I’ve been using Connect for Lemmy and so far it’s unbeatable
Jerboa seems to be having stability issues more and more so I have been trying connect and liftoff. Liking connect best so far. I wish I could alter the color scheme a bit. I can’t tell where the posts separate because the shades of white are so close together. Otherwise it’s my new favorite as well.
I like liftoff as well but it has this weird big where any time I back out of a post it opens the keyboard which is crazy Obnoxious.
I was using Jerboa, but recently moved to Thunder and enjoying it a lot more.
Although the Reddit Sync app Dev said he’s going to make Sync for Lemmy, so I’ll swap to that once it’s released.
Thanks for actually linking to the app. I’m not only looking for am android app but also stupidly lazy right now. I’ll check it out now.
I’ve had the best luck with Liftoff so far. I used Jerboa for awhile until it kept crashing within seconds of opening it. Not sure how much this affects it, but I’m using GrapheneOS instead of stock Android on a Pixel 6
Is liftoff in the play store? I can’t find it.
Here’s the github link for the latest release:
Thanks!
No problem. Happy to help!
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After the recent patch I don’t have to look at my comments twice under each post, which is nice :)
I’m still using the mobile website until the apps mature a little bit. it’s surprisingly functional.
I was using Jerboa but I’ve been having problems with it over the last few days and was getting annoyed. I saw this morning that there was another app, Connect for Lemmy. I’ve deleted Jerboa now because the connect ui is much nicer and hasn’t been crashing so far.
I had this exact same thinking culminating in me downloading Connect this morning. Also looking at Liftoff, since I’ll have a better chance to contribute, but so far I’m enjoying that Connect works better and I can actually leave my local instance.
I’m enjoying liftoff for lemmy right now but will switch to sync for lemmy once it’s out. The reason why is because of gestures. I feel that it’s intuitive to swipe to go back and forth between posts and voting.
I’m using jerboa for now, I intend to investigate in a couple months to find the best one, things are changing way too rapidly right now and I’d end up going through so many and that can’t be great for security.
On Android…
I am eternally grateful for the welcoming start to fediverse apps in Jerboa.
Connect is visually nice in places, but not a fit for me (so far).
I’m REALLY enjoying functionality of Summit so far - don’t know how to submit a new post in a community in app though and it’s driving me crazy that I may be missing something obvious…
I’ve currently settled with Liftoff. I got very used to Jerboa and was perfectly happy with it, but the last few updates broke it to the point of unusability for me.
Liftoff isn’t perfect, though its pretty good. My biggest gripe is that as far as I can tell there’s no button to go straight to the top of the feed, which is really annoying when you’ve been scrolling for ages and have to scroll all the way back up. Hopefully that will be added soon.
Jerboa seems to be more than usable for now, UI isn’t as pretty as others but it’s pretty functional
I switched from Jerboa to Connect. I like Connect a bit better. Really excited for Sync for Lemmy, and will likely switch to that.
Is Connect open source?
Nope
Another vote for connect. It’s my current go to after trying jerboa, liftoff, summit, and thunder. Although thunder is a close second.
As a kbin user, I’m really excited about Artemis.
I prefer using a firefox PWA but I have the scrolling bug no matter what browser I use - the page keeps jumping to top when I’m trying to read.
So I’ve started using liftoff this morning and so I agree with others in this thread, it looks the best to me. It’s not as smooth but I find it each much easier to tell which post comes from which instance than with connect. The community icons and titles are larger and the cards seem more separated.
On Android…
I am eternally grateful for the welcoming start to fediverse apps in Jerboa.
Connect is visually nice in places, but not a fit for me (so far).
I’m REALLY enjoying functionality of Summit so far - don’t know how to submit a new post in a community in app though and it’s driving me crazy that I may be missing something obvious…
I also use Jeroba, as it’s in the FDroid repos. I’ll look into those others you mentioned, but I’m quite happy with Jeroba so far.
I still need jerboa for replies and messages, none of the others fully work for me right now. But jerboa also doesn’t have clipboard access in long press context menu during text input, summit does have that (but doesn’t allow net new posting capability yet it seems)
