Remote View

2y ago

Introducing Connect for Lemmy

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

NZ Off topic @lemmy.nz

sylverstream @lemmy.nz

2y ago

Introducing Connect for Lemmy

2 0

Lemmy App Development @lemm.ee

Spzi @lemmy.click

2y ago

Introducing Connect for Lemmy (Android)

25 10

193 comments

Hey, black cat! From the screenshots, your app looks very promising. Would you consider making it FOSS, though? Just asking.
- I am also looking forward to having access to the source code!

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!
- Yes. Open the code, please.

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!

Thank God there's a filter setting 😭😭😭 sorely missed coming from infinity. First thing filtered? "reddit."

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 =]

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

That UI looks really clean. I love it. Is it open source? Not that i dont trust you but i try to not use any closed source apps anymore, i would appreciate it if you would share the link to the source code.

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.
- 'Subscribed' is called 'Frontpage' in the app, you can find it in the sidebar. Edit - oops, looks like kuro_neko beat me!
- 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!
- I think the "subscribed" page exists and is just called "frontpage" here.

And you designed, developed, tested and published it in a less than 10 days? Your first android app? Really?
- I switched over when the subreddits started going private. It's been a lot of long nights haha.
  Not my first app :)
  
  Oook.

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.
  
  Also thinking long press option to download/share images as well for proper meme redistribution.
  And I forgot to say on my first message, thank you for taking the time in developing this, this type of work is often thankless and I appreciate it.>

Looks great from the screenshots!
The Google Play link doesn't let me install it though and I can't find it via the Google Play app.
Edit: it says that the app is not available for any of my devices. I'm using a Pixel 7
- Strange - I'll take a look! I'm testing on a Pixel 6 so I would think it would work.
  
  I'm on pixel 6 and it doesn't work with logged in aurora store.
  Edit: it works now!

I love the look and layout, but I can't get any threads to load. It just says "No posts"
- I'll take a look! Do you have any filters applied? Is that across all instances?
  
  No filters. Seems to be across all instances as far as I can tell. I'm on a Pixel 5a if that helps.
- Seconded. I logged in but the posts don't show up. Also only my subscriptions on my main instance are listed, not subscriptions from other instances.
  This app looks really promising. Reminds me of Boost.

Nice job. But not available in my country (Germany). Looks really nice and familiar to reddit apps.
- Just added Germany to the list of countries! I think it will take Google an hour or so to update.
  
  Thanks!! Would be nice if you can setup the f-droid app.
- Hab sie gerade installiert. Probier's noch einmal ;)
  
  jetzt klappt es!! Danke!!
- Not available in Switzerland either
  
  Nor the Netherlands :(

Will you be making this open source?

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.

Nothing is showing up in my feed when signed in to lemmy.ml
Also, the Google password manager is trying to input the password into the instance text box when trying to sign in. Pixel 7 Pro.
- Hi, this should now be fixed on the latest release (1.0.25). Thank you for your feedback!
  
  Thanks man! It's working now. Super smooth for the most part. Upvotes/downvotes still take quite a while to register. An Amoled black would be awesome as would a Small Cards view.
  Edit: Another suggestion is to add a way to jump to the next parent comment in a post. Looks like Jeroba just added this and I've been missing this feature from some of the reddit apps I used to use.
- Might be because lemmy.ml is already on the new lemmy version.

Looks great but it says it's not available in my country (Brazil)
- Just checked and was able to get it to install on my end, OP might have updated it in the meantime.
  
  yeah it's fixed now, thanks anyway
- Just added Brazil to the list of countries! I think it will take Google an hour or so to update.

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:
  http
  
  GET https://beehaw.org/c/technology/outbox accept: application/activity+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.
- There's a couple Lemmy API python bindings now. One is lemmypy or pylemmy and I forgot the other but a search should turn it up
- https://join-lemmy.org/api/classes/LemmyHttp.html

Google Play say that is not available/compatible for my Xiaomy 12 Pro

I cannot find out how to change to list view.
EDIT: For some reason the play store didn't download the most recent version. Fixed now.
The list view only showslike 2 posts on the screen. Is there anyway to get multiple posts on the screen at once?
- It's under Settings -> scroll down to Card Type
  
  Thanks, the app wasn't updated.
- Should be in Settings Card type switch to list Press save at the bottom

I signed into my dataterm.digital account but when I go on profile I see my feddit.de profile even though I didn't login with it.
- Ah I must not be filtering the username with the instance so it's grabbing the first username match it sees. I'll fix this in the next release :)

Posting from the app. Awesome progress for only 10 days.

Downloaded and used for an hour or so. I'd like to see an option to change the font size. I like my stuff to be small so I can get more content on the screen. 1.6 posts is pretty bad for me. I also couldn't find a way to change my default homepage to "subscribed - new" but maybe I just didn't search hard enough. Either way, it's good to have some competition for Jerboa!
- I'd also love to see an option to change the font size, but for the opposite reason - my eyes suck and I need bigger text! Lol. I love it so far either way!
  
  Options for text sizes coming up in the next release :)

just a quick feedback, when being in the dark mode, the user switching remain in light mode. Also the node selection suggesting the possible nodes would be appreciated.
also, adding new accounts after the first one, doesn't seems to work.
I added my lemmy.world and it seemed to work.
anything else besides it, didn't work (tried, lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, etc.)
overall it's a good mvp, well done, need a little more work and i would appreciate if it was a FOSS to absolutely avoid situations in which an app become the unofficial-official app but then a sudden surge of egocentrism from an individual take it away.

looks good, been using jerboa for the past week. will check this one out too. cheers!

Tried it quickly and was not well surprised. I appreciate thr approach a lot! The app is nice looking but feels too chewy. Prefer the mobile browser.

Thanks for making this!
My first impressions upon downloading are that I'm glad it exists but I think I'll stick to Jerboa for the time being. It looks really well made for those who are into the cards display format, however I'm personally not a fan of cards views on apps and I feel the list view isn't quite there yet.
One interesting quirk I noticed worth noting for the developer, not sure if it's a bug. I signed in with Urnchos@sh.itjust.works and when I click profile it seems to display my comment history of my Kbin account by the same name. I'm not certain if the profile would display the comments and whatnot of all instances that have that name?
- Thanks @Urnchos@kbin.social for the feedback. I'll work on improving the list view and I hope you'll check out future releases!
  
  Definitely will pop back in occasionally and check it out! You're doing great work!

Maybe bug: in list view, the width of post title and content seems to be limited to around 80% of my screen width.
- That's a bug! Thank you. I'd guess it's leaving the 20% space for an image thumbnail which doesn't exist. I'll fix this in the next release.
- Hi, just wanted to make sure you saw this but that issue is now fixed. Thanks again!

runs very smooth on my 5 year old phone. Some suggestions for improvement
With All selected not all feeds were showing up on the sidebar
Adding a compact layout for sidebar and comments

I'm checking it out and it looks beautiful!
Question: does it have collapsible comments and if not is that a planned feature?

It looks and feels great. I'm guessing that Frontpage is meant to be Federation. Also the comment boxes need more definition and text options.
Otherwise, it's decking beautiful. Leaps and bounds above Jerboa.

Looks nice, but not available in my country.
- Which country? I'll add it to the list of supported countries.
  
  Curaçao. Thanks!

Looks great! I'll also chime in that the Play Store website tells me it's not available for any of my devices, and the Play Store app says it's not available in my country (Chile).
- Added Chile to the list! Will be available in an hour or so I think.
  
  I just downloaded the app, thank you!

more feedback, when I reply to a topic, I would like for my reply to be on top so that I can easily see replies to it and edit it and stuff. (Uhh I just refreshed and both were at the top. I just be crazy or slow)
case in point, I made a mistake in my other comment thinking that the colored lines on the sides of comment chains weren't there (they very much are, I'm clearly blind).
Also for some reason the comment box doesn't auto capitalize the first letter of a sentence.

i'm currently using this and it's great!
- I'm glad you like it!

Hey, i like your app a lot! Jerboa doesnt work on my Motorola, so i installed your app. Looks very nice and works well as a first impression!
I just want to tell you good luck, we are all counting on you! :D
- Thank you @Hovercat90@feddit.de! I'm glad you like it.

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 working very fast! Keep up the good work! It is appreciated!
  
  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!

I can't even be accepted to join Lemmy. I'm on Kbin right now.
Tbh, these platforms confuse me. The Kbin app is great though, so I guess I don't need to change.
Would like to know how to follow a group though.
- Lemmy is not one thing, it's a way for different sites (called instances) to share content with each other.
  What instances (i.e. domains) are you trying to create an account on? There have been some big bot waves in the last few days, but even without that every instance handles signup differently. Some are totally open, while others require manual review of some kind.
- On Kbin, Lemmy groups are called "magazines," so all you have to do is go to the magazines list, search for what you want, and subscribe. You can even subscribe to magazines hosted on other servers from there.

The screenshots look good, but I'm not able to test it because it's not available in the netherlands :(
- Added Netherlands to the list of countries!

so far I'm really liking it. I would like alternating backgrounds on comments just to help separate them out a little.
I don't see the ability to edit my comments. I had to pull up the pwa to edit this one.
- 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

Looks good. Now we just need a good iOS app

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.

Looks amazing! I'll try it out!

Anyone figure out how to add a 2nd account (or log out for that matter)?
The app is great once you're logged in, but I don't see any way to do it like in the promo pic.
- It's the three dot menu on the top right of the sidebar
  
  Thanks. I uninstalled and reinstalled to get the app to update. It was missing for me in .42 but returned in .46, so all good!

A good start! but the card view's background color is too bright, and honestly a lot of the space feels wasted. I know it's a really fine line between wasting space and having everything be too dense, but I think you erred too far towards having everything spread out -- contents are indented too far, cards are too big outside the borders of content, the space between UI elements is too large, stuff like that. Also, I can't see subscribed communities outside of my instance, which almost immediately made the app unusable for me. But with all those criticisms in mind, this app is the closest one I've seen so far to being a lemmy app I actively want to use, it's just not quite there yet imo. Good luck with your development!!

Looks good. Now we just need a good iOS app

Looks great. Hopefully gets availabe is Irish play store soon
- Should be available now in the Irish store!

Wow, impressive work, in such a short time. I really like it.
Thank you!
- Thank you! I'm glad you like it.

I may be wrong but, are you not showing all communities subscribed in the list, just the first page? I see 10 but im subbed to somewere closer to 50...
- Yeah 10 I believe is the default limit on that API call. I'll increase that in the next release!
  
  There is a maximum for the limit, you'll need to do actual pagination

Getting Sync vibes, very nice! I'll give it a go.

Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying it!

I'm trying it out on my phone. And it's functional for sure. But it doesn't go back very far on android versions. My tablet that's stuck on 10 can't access it via play store.
It's a bit garish on the dark theme, but that's not important for an early stage of things.
No bugs that I've found that aren't lemmy based rather than app based.

How hard would it be to add a view to make it look more like old.reddit.com?
Not sure what the hate is about you can look at stuff multiple ways
- I think the List view under Settings is pretty close, maybe the biggest difference being that List view shows some of the selftext content.

Looks very promising!
Got to love the explosion of both people and development around Lemmy!

I'm very thankful to you! I wanted a nice app to browse lemmy and I found your app a couple of days ago! I've had a very nice experience so far
- Thanks @CreepyRainbow@beehaw.org! I'm glad you're enjoying it.

193 comments