Hey I figured I’d make a post and see the state of current lemmy appage, since I’m looking for a good one. So far I’ve used Jerboa, Thunder, Eternity, and Voyager.
Eternity seems to be a dead project, it’s full of bugs and hasn’t recieved an update since The Exodus
Thunder seems ok and is what I’m using right now, but I can’t seem to send direct messages, and can’t “Don’t blur NSFW preview on NSFW comms” which sucks. The messaging is the dealbreaker for me.
Voyager I used momentarily but the UI was not my favorite.
Jerboa seems OK if unpolished (which is ok to me) but I don’t trust the rabid idealogue that makes it and using another instance of his site is one thing, but installing an app is another. Has it been audited to confirm lack of spyware?
Ideally through this I can find one with instance blocking, DMs, and a decent UI. What’re your experiences with the current state of lemmy apps?
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Eternity got a big update just a week ago
Not seeing it on f-droid yet.
The dev just submitted another build today
I’m a Boost truther. I loved Boost for Reddit, and the dev is usually super responsive in the subreddit when it was a thing. I also used many Reddit apps; BaconReader, Relay, and Apollo on iPhone back when I had one. Boost was easy favorite. I’m not entirely sure how it plays with every lemmy instance though, as I’m just on .world
Boost user checking in, also currently on .world but I’ve been on several and… it’s fine. No problems.
I used to use Sync, but the sporadic updates lead to rapidly piling bugs.
I remember using Sync, but it didn’t really stick for me. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, it’s like Relay but slightly worse?
No one was like Relay. I went from Boost to Relay to Infinity (Eternity for Lemmy). From all the closed source clients Relay was my favorite, but Infinity was also great if you bothered to configure it - and open source definitely has some priority for me if there’s a good alternative.
Hated Sync and many of the other praised ones, as most of them were card view focused apps, which I can’t stand - it’s like viewing every single submission. And those who had compact views usually had ridiculously tiny thumbnails for some reason, even though there was plenty of space left for padding around it. Never understood why apps don’t fully use that space.
Don’t know when you tested, but Sync definitely has Compact. I agree with you and I’ve only ever used Compact on Sync. In fact, last time I tested a bunch of apps I felt Sync looked the nicest in Compact, but that’s of course a matter of taste. And Peek is a great feature for viewing thumbnails.
Sync’s compact suffered from the mentioned tiny thumbnails. I absolutely hated that app.
Boost also. I had it for Reddit but used Sync mostly. I open Lemmy on my phone a few times a week, so found Sync for Lemmy a bit too pricy. Love Boost!
I also use boost, everything about it seems to work apart from spoiler tags (think because the app still uses reddit’s format instead of lemmy’s).
Yeah, spoiler tags are the one big feature that is missing. There are also some minor things on the moderation side that aren’t there. For example, admin accounts don’t have a full list of options in the moderation menu.
I like Tesseract but I may be a bit biased since I maintain it. Lol. If you liked “new” Reddit from before the exodus, it’s a lot like that.
Also, there’s https://www.lemmyapps.com/ which is a nice directory you can filter by platform and features.
Sync is fantastic, IMO. I switched from Jerboa and Connect a year ago and never needed to look back.
The dev isn’t super active, but updates seem to drop when they need to
Ooh Sync is another one I enjoyed! I swear I bought every large 3rd party app to try out fully. Google Pay Rewards, thank you. Lol
I’m currently using thunder so haven’t tried the new version but eternity isn’t dead, it got a big update recently https://feddit.uk/post/15818616
The Eternity Dev has returned, and released a new update for it. Last I checked the update hasn’t released on f-droid due to the build failing, but it is available on aurora or play store.
I loved the original Reddit client (Infinity), but the long absence for Eternity makes me worried about the planned mbin implementation for it.
Oh good to know! Maybe I’ll give it another shot, thanks!
I can’t get away from Sync. Maybe it’s about time I do another sweep, but last time I evaluated them I couldn’t make anything else look and feel as nice. Lots of customization options too.
Same, used Sync for 13 years on Reddit, bought it, then bought the Lemmy version a few hours after it appears.
It’s the best client
Same. But mark read has been broken for a while and at $20+ for no ads or ultra dev really needs to be on top of these updates to justify the price. My ultra expired a few weeks ago, but I’m not paying again unless he stops treating this like reddit. Reddit was pretty stable so didn’t mind the long gaps with no updates. But at 5x the cost …update
I honestly regret buying Sync for Lemmy. With the higher price I expected better communication, but it’s continuing the same as it was - going AWOL for months at a time, with very sporadic updates.
He does a years worth of updates in like 3 or 4 weeks and then takes off for like 6 months. For me that’s acceptable. When he does get around to it, he pushes updates like the Flash on speed and fixes nearly all flagged issues in addition to adding new features that have been requested.
Yes, which means that issues stay open for 5+ months, with absolutely no communication from the dev. Every time you have to pray that they didn’t abandon the app, and that they will come back and fix your issue.
This wouldn’t be a problem if they communicated more often or did smaller releases. And it was fine when I paid something like 2€, but it’s no longer fine when paying 20€.
Yeah, that’s a fair complaint. I didn’t know mark read was broken but that’s not great. I also wish it properly supported all markdown formatting. Especially with the Media Bias Bot being prevalent the broken spoiler tags are annoying.
Voyager is the best
As a designer on iOS, my recommendation is Mlem. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best of the bunch imo.
It is about to get a 2.0 release.
So far voyager is working for me, but the UI leaves a lot desired. The reply icon looks like a share icon.
I normally just use Jerboa but I’ve been trying Raccoon recently and it’s been really good. It’s definitely still beta and some formatting doesn’t work but each update has made it significantly better so it’s definitely worth checking out because the UI is the best of any of the apps I’ve tried imo
I used to only use Sync coming from reddit. No other app was able to replace it until I started using Summit. Now Summit is pretty much all I use for Lemmy.
What’s better about Summit?
I wouldn’t say anything specifically better or worse compared to sync but it’s close enough, feature wise, that I found myself using it more and there’s no ads.
How has nobody said Connect yet, I tried most of the other clients people mentioned and settled on connect.
This is after using Sync Pro for years on Reddit the pricing of the lemmy version just put me right off to the point I’ll admit I haven’t even tried it but then again I’m not interested in anything that puts ads on an adless service and I also will never try it as long as this is the case.
Connect is free and the developer is great
Another happy Connect user here and you can enable the beta branch from the play store. I ran into a bug a few months ago and made a post, the Dev had it fixed hours later.
Connect was also one of the very few apps that was very early to doing instance and other flexible filtering options. It’s so good I can browse All without getting upset.
I started with connect and never left. Some of the videos weren’t working due to API changes. But for about 2 weeks, everyday there was an update fixing one or two of them.
Yeah the dev seems to jump straight to any issues even now, seems like a great guy to me he could easily charge for such a polished app and as long as the greed wasn’t mad I’d pay it.
I’m using Jerboa but wasn’t aware of any issues with the devs. As far as I know the app works great. Can you go into that a little more or point somewhere to read about it?
Jerboa is by dessalines, the same dev as Lemmy and the owner of lemmy.ml so it’s basically just all of the drama inherited from that.
Boost
yea that’s the porn one
