I’ve had enough of the text editing issue, where when you press backspace it highlights the space before the word and ends up deleting it. The developer passes off responsibility for this to the engine they use and seems to have no intention of addressing it.
What are the pros and cons of the other Android apps? I’m only considering ones on F-Droid, not the Play Store, so that rules out Summit and Boost. Ones I have available are:
- Thunder (IzzyOnDroid)
- Interstellar (IzzyOnDroid)
- Voyager
- Eternity
- muffed (IzzyOnDroid)
- Combustible
I’ve been using Voyager for a few months and I love it. Highly recommended.
I’ve tried pretty much every app there is and ended up with Thunder. It’s got a huge amount of features and polish, a clean UI and gets regular updates. The only issue is that I don’t see the number of upvotes on posts since my home instance upgraded Lemmy, though that will probably get fixed soon.
I’ve been using Thunder since I came to Lemmy, and I’m shocked to not see it mentioned more. It’s fantastic, and seems to just feel right as someone that used rif for reddit
I tried thunder looking for exactly what you’re saying but it didn’t feel like rif with so many of the customization and settings that rif provided not being present. I don’t just want something that looks like rif, I want something that works like it.
That’s why I ultimately fell onto Summit. It is basically the one app I’ve found after trying them all that genuinely feels like rif, because it’s packed to the brim with customizations and settings, with a very responsive dev, and fits the rif aesthetic (though you can change it to be however you like). It scratched that rif itch and I haven’t touched another app since.
I might give Summit a go at some point then. I was never a power user of rif, so thumbnails appearing in the same places and general text size / layout etc was enough for me to draw comparisons.
I’m also way more active on Lemmy than I ever was on Reddit, I probably have more comments here in just over a year than I did in like a decade on reddit, so my use case has also changed I guess.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Voyager is fantastic.
I went from Jerboa to Eternity to Thunder. I liked Eternity a lot but it doesn’t get developed very actively which causes issues. Spoiler tags for example aren’t implemented correctly. Voyager seems to be great as well from all I have heard, but I don’t like its UI.
UI preference is a key decider, imo!
That’s why I support Eternity (and Infinity before that), but also use Voyager (I have a lot of others installed too, but they sleep).
I went from Jerboa to Eternity to Raccoon to Voyager. I have to say Voyager is the most mature lemmy app when it comes to current features, development of new features, customizability and stability.
FYI lemmy is a Progressive Web App you can install from your mobile browser of choice
Never bothered with any 3rd party apps
So is Voyager (also on fdroid, but is just a pwa) and its miles ahead of the native Lemmy UI.
I’m using an app called Hermit for this. It makes webpages into apps and gives flexibility to customize them heavily. User scripts as well. It works great with my instance (lemdroid) since they offer a few front end options.
You can also solo apps from each other. Definitely check it out.
Hermit is closed-source, unfortunately. I wish there would be a FOSS alternative to it.
Damn. Let me know if you find it.
I use Jerboa with zero problems. My keyboard is OpenBoard with Gesture Typing (similar to Swype) and I have none of the issues you report.
Yeah others are saying it’s to do with the keyboard, or rather that other keyboards seem to get around the bug. However it’s only Jerboa that I have this issue with.
I’m using the standard Android Keyboard (AOSP), so it’s not something you would expect to have errors. Don’t really want to change as I’m used to it and have it set up for different nationalities (Greek for maths, couple other countries for their funky accented letters).
Once you try swiping to type, you never want to go back. And OpenBoard has Greek letters of course. Honestly, give it a spin - regardless of your problem with Jerboa: I bet you’ll love it. Worst case, you’ll have wasted 10 minutes installing it, trying it out without success and uninstalling it 🙂
I understand you prefer f-droid, I’m also an old FOSS user, but I used Sync for reddit for like 13 years and bought the “no ads” version of Sync for lemmy in the first hour it came out too… I only used Jerboa in the beginning for a couple of months.
I can’t get anything else to look and feel as nice as Sync, either. It’s even worth spoiler tags not always working.
Using a closed-source app to browse an open-source, decentralized site is ridiculous for me.
Yeah I never really liked Sync on reddit, I went for Relay as its UI suited my workflow. However in hindsight Relay was dodgy as even the paid app included trackers.
I tried Thunder, Sync, Liftoff, Boost, and settled on Eternity.
what phone do you have?
use whatever app you want, I’m just curious because I’ve been using jerboa since the beginning without any issues, im on a pixel 6.
did you try using a different keyboard?
Part of the reason for the move is upgrading from a Poco F3 to a Pixel 7 Pro (although I’m sad to lose the IR blaster). However I run custom ROMs, so I’ve been using the keyboard that comes with DivestOS and AXP.OS. Don’t really want to try another keyboard lol but others have said that might fix it.
got it.
i hope the 7 is good, I’m donnne with pixels after this guy.
i hear they’re great with custom roms but haven’t tried replacing mine yet.
Yeah DivestOS ticks nearly all the boxes for me (eg call recording and custom gestures eg long press back to force close), however there were a few little niggles that custom ROMs have with other manufacturers - the camera is usually closed source so you can’t quite get all out of it, and also I was having issues with pocket detection where a message or call would turn my screen on and then it would either answer in my pocket or mess with the audio player on the lock screen. Not had any of those issues so far with the Pixel.
However curved screens suck balls, and the cheap screen protector I got is already cracked lol.
haha, dang. man the stock camera pixel 6 app is horseshit for me, even taking .raw photos it applies filters and effects that there’s no way to disable.
over been wondering if camera apps are the alt option to go for, but i take videos much more often than I take photos anyway, so it isn’t too frustrating…except every single time I want to take a candid picture haha.
yea curved screens can get outta here.
have you tried grapheneos? everyone was encouraging me to try that on one of my pixel 6 rants some months ago.
I was tempted by GrapheneOS, my son used it for a while on his older Pixel, but I always resented all the diva drama from the devs. AXP.OS seemed like an easy transition, basically using the same ROM as my old phone (AXP.OS is a DivestOS fork).
yea that one dev sounded like such a douche I stopped considering it, didn’t really want to be associated with the whole scene.
well nice, enjoy and good luck on finding your next preferred client app.
Muffed & Combustible, seem to be dead, Interstellar early development it seems & more geared towards Kbin… Eternity (very good) recently had a update after months of inactivity, whereas Voyager & Thunder (both excellent) have active devs and continuous support & updates…
Looks like I’ll lean towards Voyager and Thunder, might give Eternity a go also. I had Voyager before but was sticking it out with Jerboa, we’ll see how I feel this time. Thanks!
You can’t really go wrong with either of those, I do lean towards Voyager as a personal preference… Raccoon is another that I really like, but I’m not sure if that will see any further development…🤷🏻♂️
Sorry to fork the conversation, but I noticed nobody mentioned connect. Are these other apps really a lot better?.
Based on the Megathread, Connect doesn’t have an F-Droid repo.
Oooh. Yup. I need coffee. Thanks.
You can get Summit from the repo (https://github.com/idunnololz/summit-for-lemmy) using Obtainium (https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.imranr.obtainium.fdroid/)
I want it through an F-Droid repo so I can use the elevated priveleges I give F-Droid, such that I don’t have to approve each install.
Makes sense!
I tried the paid ones like Boost and Sync but eventually have settled on Thunder. It mostly just works and is still being actively developed
Seconding Thunder. It’s my daily driver. Eternity is also nice if you want to quickly swipe through a bunch of posts.
I cycled from all apps but keep ending in Summit. Yes I understand the FOSS attitude I really do but it all comes down to usability and UI and active development. Voyager and Eternity are my next options.
