Hi, it's been a while since I've done one of these so this will be changes between 150 and 171. I've been focused on resolving image and performance issues mainly in this time but I also added a couple new things too. Youtube links now open in-app (configurable in settings), there's an option to remove special characters from display names which also changes bubble letters into plain letters, search results are now sortable, and mentions now show up correctly in the inbox.

Added

• Tagged comments (person mentions) now show up in the inbox
• Option to control where Youtube links open
• Option to hide special characters in usernames (and transform bubble letters)
• Added sort options to search
• Youtube links now bypass the webview and open directly in app
• Added experimental setting to highlight new comments (defaulted OFF)
• Added back navigation inside web views
• Added scaled / controversial sort options
• Added initial support for Lemmy 0.19

Upgrades

• Upgraded various libraries
• Upgraded Fliutter 3.13 -> 3.16

Fixed

• User Profile comment links on foreign instances now resolve correctly
• Fixed an issue clicking on saved comments from foreign instances
• Fix a flash when expanding images in some scenarios (not in cache)
• Fix a minor flash on user avatars and community icons
• Video Player bar text is now always white
• Fixed an image flash when a cached image is no longer held in memory
• Fix an issue with how I'm calling the Pictrs API on Webp images
• Added a secondary image cache for avatars/icons
• videos now start smaller while loading instead of taking up full height
• Fixed an issue where images could fail to load when clicked
• Fixed comment notifications not showing the correct comment thread
• Smoothed out the image close animation a bit more
• Possibly fixed a bug with clicking comment replies from the inbox
• Fixed a bug with the link handler resolving post card clicks
• When link handler resolution fails now loads posts from the remote instance
• Fixed a comment display error with inline videos
• Fixed a link handler issue where it could fail on posts from different instances
• Fixed an issue with urls similar to Lemmy format being mistaken for a Lemmy instance
• Fixed a crash related to link handler finishing before its transition completed
• Fixed issue with vote actions not refreshing post cache
• Refreshing post list now scrolls to the top
• Fixed an animation flash when expanding images
• Fixed a login issue with instances on v0.19
• Video player now mixs with other audio instead of taking over
• Upgraded various libraries
• Fixed an issue with thumbnails apppearing blurry
• Fixed a bug where links without any protocol prefix would crash
• Increased the cache size from 100 objects to 200

Thank you everyone for all of the support and suggestions, please keep them coming and we'll continue to make Connect the best app for browsing Lemmy!

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Currently the 'Parent' button takes you to the top-level comment of the thread. Could it be split into two buttons, one of which takes you to the immediate parent comment?

My phone freezes once or twice a week when opening Connect, and only with that app. It's been this way for a couple months maybe. Just curious if anyone else has experienced this.

For reference, my phone is a Galaxy S21 Ultra.

When I post a comment in a long thread, submitting that comment causes the app to jump back to the top of the post. On long posts, it's a pain in the neck to scroll back to find where I was.

Is anyone else having this issue?

I was just making a post on another community, and after writing it out, I went to revise the title, and subsequently the post body disappeared. Might be related to including an image upload. Had to rewrite the post body and ended up shortening it quite a bit.

When I started using Connect, all the other apps I'd tried for Lemmy were so janky that I considered this too small an issue to ask about but after many versions I'd like to get to the bottom of it and see if it's just my phone.

In landscape mode, images will frequently not scale to fit the screen so you're essentially looking at a small section of the image greatly zoomed in. This would be frustrating at the best of times but it couples with another oddity of Connect, which is how it handles standard touchscreen ways of interacting with images. When the image is incorrectly scaled as I described you can't zoom out so you have to have this zoomed in view and try to pan around to view the image in sections but that can't really be done either because there's flow on effects to this glitch making that impossible. You simply can't move the image around enough to be able view the whole image when no matter how careful you are because there's some kind of imposed limit on the movement which is very small and if you exceed it, the image closes back to the comments again. Often though no always, if you zoom in by double tapping, you can't then zoom out again to where you were before and sometimes this also goes for pinch to zoom, if you try to move the image around to see at least a bit more of it, you have to do so very carefully because if you move by too much, or too quickly it closes the image and returns to the comments or posts view. Also if you single tap an image, it closes the image as well. It will also frequently kind of rubber band the image back to where you started if you didn't move it in just the right way.

If you view in portrait mode, things are a lot better, but still odd. You still have all the weird image navigation issues described above, but they are made worse because to adequately view most landscape images in portrait you're really going to have to zoom significantly but that means lots of extreme movement and if you're not very careful with this, you end up closing the image and also sometimes you'll zoom in on a feature and now it won't zoom out again and you need to reload the image. Also in portrait mode, the image loads at the very top of the screen under the UI 'x' in the corner for quitting the image which means to actually see that part of the image unobscured you have to move the image by a large amount which puts you at great risk of accidentally closing it. On phones with notches this is especially annoying because loading the image at the very top puts it below the notch as well.

Long pressing on a comment has always collapsed it unless you were replying to the comment, then you could long press to highlight a string of text to quote for a reply. Now, long pressing closes the parent in reply mode and there is no way to highlight text to copy for quoting purposes.

Same problem as the original post linked. In the comments someone gave the solution but deleted the comment. I've tried to copy-paste to see what it was, but it says Permanently Deleted. Any help is greatly appreciated.

I've enjoyed using Connect but I've got no clue how it got this big.

Connect automatically hides every post I click on. It also, at least on my phone, often closes down and restarts when I switch apps or lock my phone which causes to me lose any comment I was in the middle of typing because, even with drafts ON, it would forever hide that post and there's no where for me to find it again. This has been the most frustrating app feature and nothing comes close to it.

Btw I tried to disable every 'hide post' option in settings, but Connect still hides every post I open once.

A history of visited or hidden posts will solve the issue.

I'd also like to thank the app devlopers for keeping the app light, fast, and ad-free at least for the time being.

Would be nice to have a user's instance displayed in the results on the user search page. I was glad to see the change for the feed and post page and it would be helpful to be able to distinguish who's who at a glance. Particularly when you're trying to find a specific user and there's multiple accounts across instances with the same nickname.

Is this a Connect issue or a Catbox issue?

When an inline video is present, Lemmy Connect doesn't display it - just a blank space.

Eg. This post, number 10: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/28135123

On the web interface it works, so it ought to work in Connect too.

Lemmy Connect attempts to add ?format=webp to the image URL when loading .gif image, this makes many Lemmy servers return an error. When opening the post in the web browser, without the extra addition to the image URL, the image loads correctly.

Post where the bug is present: https://lemmy.world/post/19556846

!

I'm upset that a meme I tried to remake with Unicode box drawing characters lines up terribly in apps: https://lemmy.ca/post/28490027 Shouldn't code blocks render in monospace?

On Lemmy's web frontend it's perfect: !

On Connect it looks like this: !

On Jerboa it's basically the same: !

Eternity does use monospace but the box drawing characters seem to be too wide.

All I can find about it here is one post from a year ago: https://lemmy.ca/post/1492857

Hey, I saw the link to this community in my settings today and just wanted to say thanks for the app. I use it every day.

Like "don't preload images on cell network"

Hi there, I've got this issue that when I try to upload an image it just doesn't work. It doesn't give me any error messages, the image is simply not uploaded. I click upload and nothing happens. If it's a screenshot, sometimes it'll work, sometimes it won't. Connect doesn't give me any feedback if the image is uploading at all, or if the request was denied or ignored or whatever.

The issue seems to be worse when trying to upload an image in a comment. Has anybody else encountered this problem?

This seems to have surfaced when trying to open an Mbin magazine from Connect (via Lemmy of course), by tapping on them in the subs list (or searching/tapping).

If I search for !teletext@fedia.io or !FloatingIsFun@fedia.io they both give this error, so I think it's something to do with Mbin magazines. I haven't seen it happen on Lemmy communities.

Hopefully tapping those links will show the error - they do here.

Right now, youtube has its own preference option, for method of opening. Could we expand this to allow users to input domains and select an opening method for them?

Generally, I want to open videos in app and articles in browser. I don't know if there's a better way to achieve this than giving users an option per domain, with custom domain input, but I'm open to other methods.

I often want to copy some phrase from a post to search it on the web. Long-pressing post text minimizes this post into a single line, which is not very useful IMO, I would rather have text selection cursor like in a web browser.

Say I start typing a comment, then decide to not bother. Instinctively I delete what I had typed, then press back. The UI asks me for confirmation to leave even though the field is blank. It should just go without confirmation if the field is blank.

I suspect it does this because it has a draft saved, but the current contents of the text box should take priority over a draft.

EDIT: Can confirm the update just fixed this, thanks for the quick fix!

Since the last update, I can't back out of the Post screen using hardware or in-app back buttons. The only way to back out is to first type something then hit back, which triggers the Stay/Leave popup. Before picking either option it already backs out of and discards the post, then choosing Leave backs out one more screen. Picking Stay does nothing.

Starting yesterday, Connect hard crashes when you attempt to click on the Inbox and the same happens if you click on the notification bell showing that there are messages.

As of this morning, the Inbox sidebar label is coloured Red instead of Blue.

Connect Version 1.0.190 Android v13 with latest security patches

Just started today. Possibly related to the recent updates.

Swiping to back out still works, at least for images

v1.0.190

This morning, connect is empty. All view modes are blank like the screenshot. Randomly ONE post shows up if I refresh a LOT, but immediately disappears. I can read and view my profile, but any posts I try and load from there are empty too.

Edit: I appear to be able to scroll the blank space for quite some time.

Editedit: other clients do not appear to be affected.

I just recently got the 190 update pushed. It mentioned lots of fixes. One was image handling.

I have found that now exiting an image is a bit slow or glitchy. A single gesture to go back does not exit and instead it needs two. Tapping an image instead still closes it but there is a delay that wasnt there before.

I'm on a pixel 7pro with gesture navigation.

After editing a comment, UI fails to load the next page. Haven't tested if it's only in non-native instances.

Anyway, if I want to review an edit, I have to hit back twice, refresh, then scroll to find my comment again.

Most don't load for me. Just get a black screen. The ones I've checked were mp4s from imgur. Not sure if that accounts for all of them though.

Edit: I think it started after the most recent update. Edit 2: mp4s from catbox.moe also doesn't work. It shows a spinner at the bottom but never loads.

Looking at the blown-up thumbnails while waiting for the full-size images to load is pretty uncomfortable for my eyes... they search for detail that isn't there yet, and get strained. If there was an option to just see a spinning wheel or similar, I'd choose it in a heartbeat. Alternatively, displaying the image line by line as it loads (slow scan from top to bottom) would be even better, as it would allow me back out before loading the whole thing.

I may have missed it, but is there a way to see all of my subscriptions at once?

Like in this post that showed up on my all feed: https://lemmynsfw.com/post/14828436 (nsfw, of course)

There's an image in the post url (which blurs on my feed) and there's also an image in the post body (which does not blur on my feed)

Blocking a user hides their content in comments, but it still shows up in inbox when viewing all as well as in comment chains in the profile view. It would be great if blocked users didn't show up in these places.

Let me know if there's more info needed.

Version: 1.0.187 (187)

Hardware: Google Pixel 7

Expected behavior: When swiping "back" on the main/posts page, expect to see "Are you sure you want to exit? Y/N"-type notification. "No" will return you to the app, whereas "Yes" will "close" the app (as in, reopening the app is a fresh open, not 'pick up where you left off'/minimize)

Observed behavior: Swiping "back" on the main/posts page just minimizes the app

I just upgraded from a Galaxy J7 to a Pixel 3, which seems to have fixed the following problems:

• Clicking on my profile shows me someone else's profile

• Refreshing immediately after changing profiles results in no block list being applied

So, it seems those issues were specific to older hardware.

I am still seeing the issue where trying to save redgifs videos in-app only saves a stub file instead. Though, seeing as redgifs made their videos unsaveable in browsers, maybe this is due to deliberate site shenanigans. Voyager seemingly also can't do this. Though, Voyager doesn't download anything at all, as opposed to Connect's stub files. If the resulting file is non-functional, I think saving nothing would be better, ideally with an error message saying the file could not be saved.

Just a quick observation: I cannot scroll the entirety of the comments within a post that extend beyond a few lines. I can collapse comments and get a bit further but it hits an invisible wall. I have tried adjusting my scroll settings within DeX and the issue persists. I just wanted to make a post for awareness - I am grateful for Connect and it works perfectly for me within the intended phone/app mode. Cheers!

Using a new device, I'm finding that top level comments for posts don't have much by way of padding or margin on the left (or right). On this new device, these comments can be difficult to read due to a curved screen. Is there a way I can somehow add some padding?

I mentioned this in a comment but I figured it would get lost there.

The recent update means redgifs videos now load (yay) but reveals a new problem: videos cannot be saved in-app. Attempting to do so (with file permissions enabled) instead saves a tiny file with the same name, but none of the data.

As redgifs disallows saving from their site in-browser, this effectively makes redgifs content unsaveable.

Any solution or workaround would be appreciated.

Could we please have the navigation bar be transparent?

I'd like to see an option to open a particular post as a different user. Mastodon clients have this and I find it pretty handy.

ie. Clicking the menu on a post should have "open as" which then lets you select one of your other logged in identities, and switches back to the post from that account.