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I like the web app more.
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Voyager is free and the pwa feels close to a native app.
Voyager just started their TestFlight app version a few days ago and it’s really great (on iOS.) It added haptic feedback which is very nice, and fixes the freezing issue. Otherwise it’s identical, I think. I’d guess there will be an android app sometime.
I’m also testing Memmy and using Mlem - both are coming along great, but Voyager app version is the cleanest and my favorite atm.
Looking forward to trying Sync when it comes to iOS. Never tried it for Reddit - only used Apollo.
I can't tell if you're being serious or not...
I was just trying to be nice to the dev and fans tbh. I went straight to Apollo when the official app started burning up my phone years ago and never looked back, or at other apps. I had no idea Sync was never on iOS. 🤷🏻♂️ But if it ever is, I’d try it.
I understand. Sorry if I was being harsh.
I didn’t think it was harsh at all. You’re good!
There was an iOS version of Sync, but it was on TestFlight for years with no actual release. It was also developed by a different person.
~~Yeah, it's not the same. That seems just like plain stealing at that point. LJ wouldn't do something like that after spending a decade or more working on sync.~~
Correction: Sync for iOS was created by the dev's friend.
Voyager is indeed great, especially now that it has a native version.
However, I'd be really surprised if an iOS version of Sync for Lemmy came out. The Reddit version was developed for iOS by a different person and was in a preliminary stage for years. A production-ready release never actually came out.
I wish they also provided a way to disable haptic feedback. It's annoying when I'm up late upvoting dank memes while my wife is sleeping
I think it’s very noble of you to upvote dank memes. You can show this comment to your wife: Fluxion is awesome and deserves to upvote dank memes whenever they please. This is the way.
Thank you kindly, just doing my part 👍
I used Voyager since it was wefwef. Sync has far more customization. Like multitudes more.
So you can confirm the swipe back freezing issue is resolved on the iOS app? I’ve seen people say it’s still there.
If it is resolved, I am very excited to use it!
It’s technically still there, but it resolves immediately when you lift your finger now.
In my experience: In the PWA it consistently required lifting your finger and waiting for 1-2 seconds before attempting to scroll again. If you didn’t “not touch it” for 1-2 seconds, it would stay frozen indefinitely when trying to scroll up or down. This sometimes felt like an eternity for an otherwise very responsive experience.
In the TestFlight app, that 1-2 seconds is down to maybe .2 seconds or less. It’s nearly imperceptible - enough so that it feels like it’s fixed. But if you do use it in such a way that you encounter a freeze, you just lift your finger and immediately try again. There’s no additional waiting - just lift and continue.
So it feels fixed to me and I rarely freeze in the first place, but maybe the underlying problem still exists.
IOW: It’s as if an invisible overlay blocks your interactions after swiping back to the feed. That invisible overlay is now removed almost instantly instead of after 1-2 seconds. But if you try to scroll too quickly after swiping back, you might catch it while your finger is down. In that case, you can now lift and immediately continue. It’s consistent enough and minor enough that it could be played off as a feature that prevents you from accidentally scrolling after swiping back.
I haven’t personally experienced any bugs that would hold it back from an App Store release, so hopefully you’ll get it to try it for yourself soon.
How can I get it on Testflight? I am using Mlem currently and tried Memmy a bit. For now I look at Mlem as my Lemmy-app, because the comments are well formatted compared to Memmy, but Memmy is Open Source and has definetly the the better Icon. Yes, such things are important for me, too.
Voyager TestFlight link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/nWLw1MBM
I joined early on, so it may be full like they often are. If it is, bookmark and keep checking - especially during off hours.
Thx, I got it. (:
I quite like Voyager. Works really well
Voyager has an app that respects navigation panes, UI refreshes and haptic system gestures now, so all those "but it doesn't FEEL native" complaints have been put to the ground to begin with.
Yeah i'm using pwa, and currently testing Thunder, liking it so far. Still not a good replacement if i want to do mod/admin work.
Will totally buy Sync ultra despite the bitching, but until it has mod tools and community browsing, amongst a list of missing feature found in the web app, i can't justify the spending.
And if you're on Android, the free apps that fully function are...
Liftoff (amazing)
Thunder (amazing)
Connect (great, but not sure if it's open source?)
Summit
Nemmy
Beyond (tried it and didn't like that it defaults to Lemmy.ml)
Lemmitof (haven't tried yet)
I am using Memmy on iOS. It rocks! Does everything I need without any adds. Very happy with it.
Fuck PWA. I want a native, fast app with no JavaScript.
It's fast and it's about as native as most apps get nowadays. Kotlin on Android or Swift on iOS still run in virtual machines with GC not unlike Javascript. Nobody writes apps in C++ either. Maybe one day we will do it in Rust when there's ever a good mobile GUI framework.
Also by fast I do mean fast. Much better than any other PWA or website I've ever used and on par with good native apps. There do be some bugs, I've run into two and they're a bit annoying, but I'm sure they'll be fixed soon enough. The dev is super active and it's open source so anyone can contribute.
Much of the time you can't really tell it's not Apollo and that was the best reddit app hands down.
I do have a recent iPhone though. Maybe an older or lower end phone won't be as fast. But even so, I would still recommend trying it.
Your argument for "as native as most apps” falls apart pretty quickly though.
I'm not saying it's a bad app. I'm just saying it's a badly made app, because JavaScript was a joke 30 years ago, it's a joke today. (ThePrimeagen)
Most apps aren't native, so being "as native" as the baseline average or better isn't even saying much at all. They're all using V8, and I'm slightly less disgruntled if they use something like React Native or whatever instead of Vue and virtual DOM stuff. This was brief but you get the idea.
Also, Xamarin and Flutter/Skia do exist.
React native, Xamarin, Flutter aren't REALLY native either. Neither are, like I said, the main languages either mobile platform's owner wants you to use.
Mobile apps are rarely native for real these days.
Voyager uses React so it uses the Virtual DOM much like Vue (which often tends to be faster) or React Native. I can't see how using React Native instead of React like you suggested is all that much better. It's all the same shit.
You want native, there's Dioxus for Rust or I guess QT for C++. Those will compile into actual binaries rather than some sort of bytecode running in an interpreter. But these take much more time to write complex apps in and in a world where we want all our apps to be free, they're hard to justify.
It's interesting you quote ThePrimeagen about Javascript, because it's literally the main language he uses/used at Netflix and he often says it's not a bad language. He's got a workshop on Javascript coming in November.
I hate the language as much as any and have avoided using it professionally, but your arguments are pretty weak. Modern Javascript engines are ridiculously fast, which is why a WELL MADE web app can be much faster than a shoddily made "native" app.
Edit: It's now available on the app store, making it native by your definition. Which is to say it has direct access to some system APIs, but it still renders a vDOM like any other react native app.
There’s acyually an APK version for android as well of Voyager.
Are you sure it's legit? From a quick look at the official GitHub repo's README, I saw no mention of a native Android app (however I did see mention of the iOS app).
EDIT: dug a little deeper and saw mention of the Android app in the latest release notes (beta coming soon to the play store) as well as an empty Android studio project folder in the source. Maybe the actual code is somewhere on a different branch, but even so, I would be hesitant to install random APKs not coming from the developer themself.
Here it is on the google play store: https://lemmy.world/post/2613340
Damn, the Voyager dev works fast! Thanks for the link.
The instance I'm on has a beta of an interface called "photon" that looks very similar to Sync's cards view.