Hi lemmings, I switched over from Reddit 10 days ago now but I couldn’t find a mobile client that I was happy with with an experience similar to the Reddit experience I was used to. So I decided to build my own and I hope you will like it as well!
Play store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kuroneko.lemmy_connect
Features:
- Material U
- Dark and Light themes
- List view / Card view / Fullwidth view
- Filter lists for hiding posts
- Multiple accounts + switcher across multiple instances
- Guest accounts for viewing an instance without signup
- Search and community autofill
- Markdown support + attempt to navigate links correctly (/u/foo will open that user instead of browser kickout. Same for /c/, !, and @)
- Saving posts
- full sort types
- NSFW view options (hide, blur, show)
- copy text and url on all posts and comments
- add comments, replies, and new posts
- comment replies with line indicators
Here’s other screenshots:
Future plans:
- Improving the inbox
- Swipe actions
- Multi-~~reddit ~~communities
Thank you for taking a look. I hope others who are migrating from Reddit like me will find the app useful and I’d love to know your thoughts!
Edit: Community for the app is here: https://lemmy.ca/c/lemmyconnect
The app looks great! Feels very fluid.
I have only three requests:
- make it FOSS in spirit of the fediverse (obviously you don’t have to, that’s your choice)
- give me a way to download pics from inside the app. I very often download memes and share them in other chats. You’ve got open external, which works, but it’s an extra step. Downloading in app would just be more convenient.
- lastly, give me a way to buy you a beer 😁
Hi, thanks for the feedback and I’m glad you’re enjoying it! I’ve added a download button to media views. Open source is on the roadmap as well if there’s enough interest.
Holy crap. That’s awesome! Thanks!
I would strongly recommend open-sourcing it! There are several FOSS apps already and it would be hard to compete against them without opening up =]
Hey, black cat! From the screenshots, your app looks very promising. Would you consider making it FOSS, though? Just asking.
Thank God there’s a filter setting 😭😭😭 sorely missed coming from infinity. First thing filtered? “reddit.”
Congrats for the release! I finally have alternative to Jerboa!
Some feedback if you don’t mind:
- Full Height view. It’s like the full width view, but display the image without any cropping.
- Tap and hold to show image in full screen, release to close. Very useful for compact views. Also should works for articles thumbnails.
- Native imgur support. Right now it’s treated as a web page. If it’ll require using paid API, just disregard this until you have some funding.
- Preload images when on wifi (optional setting). Basically preload the next N images in the list so they’ll appear instantly.
- Show full community names and user name. Right now it only show the community name and user name, but not the instance name. This is confusing if you subscribed to multiple communities with the same name from multiple instances. Same for usernames.
- option to toggle denser comments views with minimal whitespace.
- (possible bug?) The community list on the side menu doesn’t show all my subscribed communities.
These are very good suggestions! would also like for it to show the instance name of a post as well as the hold-to-show-image
Damn that looks awesome! Did you find any good docs on the API? I only found the lemmy-js-client, which is a library, though. Wanted to do some shenanigans with Python and Lemmy, but there doesn’t seem to be too much documentation…
I had a hard time with the API docs too to be honest. I read through https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/04-api.html first but it was pretty high level. My main reference was the typing on the lemmy-js-client as well. I used the Dart Lemmy API client here https://github.com/LemmurOrg/lemmy_api_client but unfortunately it’s not being maintained (and didn’t work without modification since the API has changed since then).
For what it’s worth, it should be possible to use the ActivityPub API, which is just a traditional JSON API with a JSON-LD
@context
field you can probably safely ignore (as long as the context uses vocabulary from activitystreams). For example, try running this request:GET https://beehaw.org/c/technology/outbox accept: application/ld+json
The nice thing about the ActivityPub API is that all the fields should be documented. If you run your response through a JSON-LD expander, you can often take the resulting field names and “dereference” them (aka open them in a browser) to find documentation on what those fields mean.
so far I’m really liking it. I would like alternating backgrounds on comments just to help separate them out a little.
I also really like the colored line on the side of comments that the pwa has to help you be able to easily see comment chain depths at a glance.
Hi, thanks for the feedback and I’m glad you’re liking it! I’ve added some more spacing between comments on the latest release which should help to separate them. Please let me know what you think! Also added the ability to edit comments.
Yeah that’s a lot better. I do think that you should make the names, points, and time a different color to make the poster information more prominent. Also would help it stand out a little better
just downloaded the app. I really like it. please keep up the good work
Thank you! I’m glad you’re enjoying it!
It’s interesting. Needs some more formatting options imo. I liked how in boost for reddit the titles of posts were always at least as big as the preview of the body of the post. Just makes it look much cleaner imo. Could use a font size option. Could use some color options too eventually.
Also, it needs a “Subscribed” page. Default lemmy has this page that only shows you content from communities youre subscribed to. You should see about getting that feed on your app.
Overall though great work, it looks really promising thus far and I’m impressed with how quickly you’ve put this together.
I’ll take a look at how Boost for Reddit formats their titles, thanks! The ‘Frontpage’ once you’re signed in should be equivalent to the Subscribed page.
Just adding a +1 for Boost’s formatting!
‘Subscribed’ is called ‘Frontpage’ in the app, you can find it in the sidebar. Edit - oops, looks like kuro_neko beat me!
I love the app! I just wanted to give you some debug info. I can’t log into a second account on my current andoid tablet or andoid 10 phone. The button to do so does nothing.
Hi! could you confirm you’re on the latest version? it should say 1.0.31 under settings
That fixed it! You and your team are doing great work! It is appreciated!
That fixed it! You and your team are working very fast! Keep up the good work! It is appreciated!
That fixed it! You and your team are working very fast! Keep up the good work! It is appreciated!
Will you be making this open source?
Looks good and I was able to get it on pretty quickly. I was about to post this from the app but saw it’s missing the web’s markdown shortcuts and image upload option.
Also looking at this post the screenshots are cropped and I didn’t see a straight forward way of looking at the whole image.
Thanks! I’ll make a note to add markdown shortcuts and image upload to the next release. I should probably make those cropped images expand out on click.
Wow, you are really fast! I’ve been using Jerboa and the PWA, but not super happy with either. Yours look great! Will use it more and feed back to you if that’s okay.
One thing I found is that it doesn’t show the number of new comments. I usually sort by NewComments, and I would expect to e.g. see “49 comments (14 new)” like Jerboa/PWA.
Thanks for the feedback! I’ll add the new comment counter in the next release.
Can you also host the APK or upload it on F-Droid?
//edit
I ask because im on a de-googled pixel 5 running lineage OS so I cant exactly just go get it off the Play Store.
Yeah I’ll look into uploading the APK and add a reply here when it’s ready.
Thanks, open source/foss is even better but thanks for at least looking at distributing it on other platforms!
I think I will open source it in the future but right now it’s a very messy codebase coming from essentially a long coding binge.
A lot of people think that way but don’t be afraid to post code because it isn’t perfect. Lots of enterprise software looks awful. Also anyone who wants to be an ass about your code for such an early release isn’t worth listening too. Most are just happy to help and can do pull requests to make your project better.
Agreed. I’ve seen some horrors in corporate code bases in my time. Created some, even. 😁
My keyboard constantly tries to switch to caps as I type in Connect. I am using Grammarly. It will flicker the upper case layout between each key press. It’s unusable as it is.