Asklemmy @lemmy.ml

1y ago

What's the best Android/iPhone app for Lemmy?

Sticky so that we have one place to discuss.

289 comments

Memmy seems like a solid choice, very active development. It has been offered to Apple review last week and should appear in the appstore soon.
- I second Memmy. I’ve tried the others available currently, including wefwef and Memmy is my favorite. wefwef is second, but an actual native app still feels better imo.
  
  Agreed. I love wef wef but still has some weirdness being a web app. Memmy is my favorite installed app.
  
  I third Memmy, but the amount of times I’ve gone to close a comment thread and it’s brought up the new comment dialog. And I can’t rotate an image to landscape, had no idea how often I did that. Still, old Apollo habits die hard. It’s a great contender.
- Another Memmy user here - if you’re a fan of Apollo Memmy is the perfect substitute!
  
  Agree!
  
  for android users theres wefwef/voyager
- It’s on the AppStore too now. Go go go!
- Seconded Memmy here. I was originally using mlem and Memmy but I’m afraid Memmy has taken the league in my books. Honestly already at this point, it supersedes Apollo in some ways (like customisation of themes).
- Memmy is very polished! I’m astonished how well they’ve designed the app. It’s very familiar to anyone who has used apollo but, dare i say it, better!
- Memmy feels like Apollo did. I like it.
- I’m currently using Memmy and it’s nice to navigate. Unfortunately, it crashes fairly often for me.
- I’ve been usign memmy for a few days, its really cool!

Not a native app, but i’m using the wefwef web app, and it’s pretty awesome and getting multiple updates a day.
It’s a web based clone of Apollo
https://wefwef.app/
- Wefwef looks nice and I really want to like it but I keep tapping the back button and getting sent all the way back to my communities list, and therefore losing my spot in the scroll. It's getting old really fast.
  
  PWA always have a ton of UI quirks that make them hard to use. It’s a cool idea and I wish they would take off but they just aren’t there and I’m not sure wefwef will be able to overcome that, as good as it looks.
  
  Me too - it has weird quirks that at this stage may be turning potential users away.
  To be fair though, it's something that's been put together very quickly. I think it's had 2 updates even just in the last 24hrs, to resolve some of these teething problems (and accidentally introducing more). I'm happy to stick with it and be patient; it's still in beta and would be unreasonable to expect a fully functional product at this point.
  Some frustrations will also be coming from the decentralised nature of Lemmy. I've noticed issues with using my lemmy.world account or looking for content on lemmy.world from a different instance, and this isn't really a fault of wefwef or anyone to be honest (as .world is really struggling with excess load atm). It's early days, it's going to be rough, we just need to be patient and mindful.
- I second wefwef. Incredible app, very close to Apollo.
- Any plans to make it an iOS app that you know of?
  Memmy is great too!
  
  It's a PWA which means you can install it on any phone
  
  They are actually planning on submitting to the App Store, but it’s still going to be a pwa
- Little update for anyone stumbling across this: it’s now called Voyager (https://vger.app) and is also available as a native app (web wrapper, but still):
  iOS: App Store Link
  Android: Google Play Store
- Same here. I never thought I'd love a webapp so much, but here I am...
  
  As a web app developer… ouch! Web is good now!
- Wefwef is now Voyager and has native apps for iOS and android as well as web app (WEP) and yes it’s still the best option imo
- Great app!

There's a comprehensive list of Lemmy apps being curated here.
Right now I'm using Liftoff.
- +1 for Liftoff
- I'm another Liftoff user!
  I've also tried Jerboa, Connect for Lemmy and wefwef, but lately I'm using Liftoff a lot.
- I like using liftoff, especially the everything feed since I have multiple lemmy accounts
  
  Does this function shows ‘everything’ of all the accounts you have in one feed?
- I like Liftoff and Jerboa. I flip between them depending on my mood.
- Is there a way to copy the posted link to an article straight from the feed in Liftoff? When I hit "copy link" it copies the link to the post on lemmy. I do not want this.
- Is there a way to search for other communities in other instances without having to add those instances on Liftoff? For example, I'm on sh.itjust.works and want to search for /c/Canada on lemmy.ca. The only way to do that is to first add lemmy.ca and then I can search.
  
  Yeah this confused me at first too. You don't need to add other instances. You just go to the search tab, and search via sh.itjust.works as normal, and it will show communities from anywhere. I am also on sh.itjust.works and can verify I was able to find /c/Canada on lemmy.ca that way. :)

for Android I think Connect for Lemmy is the best around. also, it gets literally better day to day since the dev is following the app's community and fixes bugs, implements things from there super rapidly.
- By far the best interface on android so far. Looking forward to Sync for Lemmy and Boost for Lemmy as well.
  
  I prefer Sync because of the font, the design, and the way the options are arranged.
- Using it right now. Very nice interface, especially comment field
  I love the formatting tools
  that are placed at the bottom
  And enable easy text fancification
- I agree. So far it's the best one I've used on Android. It has things like settings for font sizes.
- Where do you get that app from?
  
  google play store
- Now supports "mark read on scroll" if you like to keep the Frontpage fresh. So good!
- I can't say much because it's the only app I tried so far and I joined Lemmy 30 min ago.
  But I like it pretty much. Small cards (inversed lists), high refresh rate option (disable by default I suppose to save battery when scrolling), etc.
  ~~Maybe I'd change the expand/collapse from hold to single tap. (It's something I'm starting to like to do).~~ oh this option is already there. Some reverse option for the comments. Awesome.
  But the app can't be faster. Running it on a Pixel 5.
- Very good UI. I keep getting connection issues when trying to upvote or navigating. Not sure if it's my instance or the app.
- Voyager for lemmy is awesome

https://wefwef.app is amazing. PWA and hence cross-platform.
- I've got it installed as a PWA (Firefox Android). It's great but is there any way to get it to open links in my proper browser rather than the web view type thing?
  
  Android Firefox user here. You should be able to three dots > open in Firefox when it opens the web view
- Just installed it. It looks like Apple's UI, which gives it a kind of uncanny valley on my Android phone. Will use alongside Liftoff until I like one better, thanks for mentioning it!
  
  It’s based on Ionic, I believe and Android UI is on the roadmap.
  
  Update: I won't be staying on Wefwef because it keeps causing Firefox Nightly to crash and not saving my spot when I switch apps, and I'm not willing to get the Firefox stable release again because the way it reloads pages every time you switch apps drives me mad.
  Also, it seems to cache images so that you can open them immediately upon tapping, rather than having to wait for the image to load after your explicit tap for it to do so. I really liked this at first, but it comes at the cost of taking around eight full seconds to load everything, as compared to one or two seconds with Liftoff and Connect.
  I do wish Liftoff and Connect had the compact view with image/link previews that Jerboa and Wefwef have, though.
  
  I don't mind it, it feels pretty clean. Probably helps that I haven't touched an iPhone since 2015 or so, so I'm not terribly familiar with Apple's design language anyway.
- I also like wefwef the most, so far. But is there a way to hide the posts that i have watched, so that i don't see 90% of the same content everytime i open lemmy?
  
  You can swipe on posts to reveal more options and one of them is to hide it.
- wefwef is fantastic
- Where are you guys installing this from? Obtanium says it can't find a suitable release. And it's not on Play Store or F-Droid.
  
  It's a PWA. You can just install it with your browser.

Sync for Lemmy (android)
- I've been using Sync for a couple of hours and already uninstalled Liftoff and Connect hahaha. Don't get me wrong they're both great, but Sync is that much better
  
  Same, already paid for year's subscription too. I used Sync for reddit and trust the developer to make a quality app.
- It's unbelievably polished for a first release. Not 100% feature complete mind you, but it's mind blowing the dev pull this off.
  
  It inherits all the lessons learned with Sync for Reddit until it died.
- I'm so happy it's here, made the transition so easy with the effort they made to make the experience so similar to browsing reddit.
- I left Reddit when they killed RIF. In Lemmy, I wanted something similar and tried Jerboa and Connect. Those apps didn't really feel like RIF no matter how much I customized it. Sync really is the definitive replacement for the RIF experience. I gotten my version to look and feel like it exactly.
- Sync and Boost are indeed outstanding, just like they were on Reddit. My two favourites, no doubt about it
- Sync is the reason I'm here, and the reason why my Reddit account is practically dead. For me, Sync was Reddit, and without it I have no reason to stay.

It was previously my least favorite android option, but Jerboa is coming together nicely.
I also have Thunder and liftoff installed. I bounce between all 3.
I'll most likely be jumping to Boost if/when that comes out because I'm just so used to it.
- I kinda like jerboa because it reminds me a bit of Sync. The dev for sync is actually making a Lemmy app though, so I'll probably switch to that one when it comes out.
- Boost is coming to Lemmy? Where can I follow for info on that? That was the app I used for Reddit, and while Jerboa has similar features it's not quite the same for me. Especially the swipe gestures...
  Also, surprisingly, Boost is still working for me fot Reddit. I'm still waiting for it to crash.
  
  Where can I follow for info on that?
  The dev created a community at !boostforlemmy@lemmy.world.
  
  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rubenmayayo.lemmy
  
  You can find boost for Lemmy in Google play store where you can register for access when it launches.
  
  I patched Boost just in case, so I check the sub every day to see if it's still working.
  Last I saw, Reddit is ending the API over the next few weeks. Because of course they are.
  
  There is no info from dev, but it's listed in Play Store as coming soon. You can also register there.

For me personally, Jerboa is the best Android Lemmy app that I've tried, and I have tried several of them. I'll just be glad when Sync for Lemmy is released.
- I have tried Jerboa, and have just tried liftoff. I prefer the UI of Jerboa and it's in fdroid also!
- Yeah I like Jerboa. Development has been pretty fast too.
- Tried Sync, Liftoff, Connect and Lemmotif (I think that's all the free ones on the playstore as of August '23), and I am always preferring Jerboa.
- Navigating comments with volume, yeah baby!
- Same, I'll be on Jerboa until Sync launches. I can't wait.

'Connect' seems to be quite good.
- Is it just me or is there no mod tools or chat messages in connect?
- Other than minor quibbles with layout anda "back" function ilI prefer connect to others.
- So I just got here to Lemmy, and only briefly have checked out some of the apps, but Connect is my favorite so far. It looks good and let's me hide posts.

Android user here, I'm quite happy with Connect for Lemmy
The official community is at /c/lemmyconnect
- +1 on connect. The things it can't do well, namely searching, I do in wefwef

Really liking thunder, now that I can view profiles and edit comments.
- How does one view profiles in Thunder?
  
  Currently only opening post author profiles is possible, long tap a post, or tap their name in the post view. Same is coming for comments.

Android user here. Liftoff is unmatched in terms of its visual presentation.
- I love the look of Liftoff. I just wish it had the functionality of Connect.
- I find Jerboa scrolls nicer. And it seems stable now.
  
  Interesting; I fled Jerboa because its scrolling wasn't smooth. I'm using primarily Liftoff now because it looks and feels so good and works for everything I need. Its search function also allows filtering for posts, users, and communities, a feature which Connect does not have.

Well the app is currently in the earlier phases of development but i think more people should know that there is currently an attempt at porting slide for reddit to lemmy. here is the releases from the repository https://github.com/bqv/slide/releases, but its very early in development
- Wow, did not expect Slide for Lemmy. I used Slide for years until the api shutdown. I'm really looking forward for this app
  
  I am hyped for it aswell!!
- Just want to note that this is an extremely early pre-alpha and is in a "barely usable" state at the moment.

A bit biased since I am the creator, but using Lemmios has been pretty sweet!
- Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using an URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !lemmiosapp@lemmy.world
- Is it on the app or play store (not seeing it on play store or online). Would like to give it a try.
  
  It is current just in TestFlight (so iOS only) and the link is https://testflight.apple.com/join/BF7pq1hn

Been using Liftoff and I'm enjoying it so far, after using/trying Thunder, Jerboa, Wefwef, lemmotif
- Also really liking liftoff. Tried a bunch of others and it honestly just works so much better than the others. Waiting for boost for lemmy though.
- I also ended up using liftoff for now, but only today I realised that it apparently does not do notifications??
  Please tell me I am wrong.
  
  They plan on adding notifications in the near future, in case you were still curious
- Really like Liftoff myself as well!

You can checkout all lemmy clients here:
https://lemmyapps.netlify.app/

Idk, i use Eternity (Infinity Fork).
- I love eternity! Although it's probably because I was so used to infinity beforehand.
  I tried jerboa and liftoff as well and they were fine, but eternity just has that familiar feel

for me liftoff is the least buggy and runs smoother than thunder or jerboa
- How to find sublemmy, I mean, community, on liftoff app ?
  
  There is a search on bottom. Search a name then switch to community tab. Or just select it from posts.
  Only thing, it cant search more than one instance at once (I think). Otherwise best app imo
  
  I just look through all until I find something I like

I’m enjoying Memmy for Lemmy on iphone:
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/memmy-for-lemmy/id6450204299
- I’m trying to sign into that app.. but I have no idea which server I’m connected to.. I couldn’t figure out how to leave a question in asklemmy. I think I’m using the website as a hot link on my phones Home Screen.. it doesn’t have a lot of options. Can you tell which server I’m connected to?
  
  Yeah it was a bit confusing for me at first as it asks you on top of the page if you want to sign in or sign up, if you try to sign in you need to enter server name and obviously I didn’t know that either… But then you can just select one of the servers from the feed and join there. It should be a separate step, sign in or sign up and see list of servers.
  
  It’s Lemmy.ml. Holy shit I hate being alive.

Loves me some Boost. Boost is the moost.

I am using Connect for Lemmy. It is straightforward.
- I like connect, considering thunder or infinity though

Jerboa seems great to me

For Android I'm finding Liftoff to be the best comparison to RIF so far.
However, I I am waiting to check out Boost. But for now, I've stopped using the other 2 big ones (Connect and Jerboa) altogether in favor of Liftoff.

Infinity for lemmy is coming along really nice!
- Found one on F-droid but it is a fork of the original one. Is it made by the same dev?
  
  Yeah a fork, it's not the same dev.

I use Thunder and it's sooo good!
- Finally on play store too

I have about 6 installed. Connect is good. Liking Infinity right now. Jerboa is really good, but I like to have comments sorted by top as a default which is doesn't do...yet.
Really, I'm waiting for Boost, but likely jump between a few for now.

For me, Sync For Lemmy

I have tried all of the ones on Android.
Wefwef / Voyager is extremely impressive for what it is - webapp
However it and all of the other android apps glitch a lot. I'm on a pixel 7 pro so it's not a legacy hardware issue either
Sync is by far the best app by a large margin. Everything has a high degree of polish. UX design is perfect, though I may be biased since I've been using it for reddit for the past decade.
Sync only has ads on the post pages, may be once every 10-15 posts. No ads on the comment page. Honestly it's got the little Google ads that are not a big deal at all
If you'd like you can remove ads for $30 but honestly it's not a big enough issue at all
- Voyager is extremely impressive for what it is - webapp
  It's not only a webapp anymore, but also available as native app now
- I'm also partial to Sync. It's impressive how much of the UX was kept in making the transition to the Fediverse. I honestly can't tell the difference between the previous Reddit client and the current Lemmy client

After trying (imho) all android app, for me, Connect works the best.
I think it depends on one's taste which app is the "best".
- Having tried lots of them, it is definitely dependent on the user. Try them all and pick your favorite!
- Yes, but even connect has some issues e.g. triple notification.
  
  That is something I personally can live with. So far, non of the tried android apps for Lemmy gave notifications properly.

On Android, definitely Sync. Yes, it has ads, but they're way less obnoxious than the ones on the official Reddit app, so I will keep putting up with them and u/Spez can go fuck himself.
- You could just use AdGuard DNS anyway so you won't actually see the ads.

For me Summit.
- I second Summit.
  Very active developer, he just released mod tools and multi communities. I spent years browsing Reddit with Relay and felt miserable with every other Lemmy app, but with Summit, I felt right at home.

Butting in again to complain that most apps STILL auto-load images in comments with no way to disable it.
A travesty.
I want to move away from voyager, I really do. But I can't as long because I just know someone will post that 720x38900px tall zelda fanart and ruin a whole thread. Or goatse.

Android: Eternity (A Lemmy client for Android, forked from the Infinity for Reddit project.) https://f-droid.org/packages/eu.toldi.infinityforlemmy/

Not out yet, but the (IMO) unquestionably best Reddit app, Boost, is currently being ported to Lemmy - follow here for updates: https://lemmy.world/c/boostforlemmy
- Link it like this so people can view it on their instance: !boostforlemmy@lemmy.world
  
  Thanks - still learning!

Sync or jerboa

On iOS the one I’ve come to prefer is Memmy. Tried liftoff and was not a big fan. Kept defaulting to Memmy without thinking.
Will be checking out Wefwef/Voyager as I like to e idea of PWA vs a full app install.
Edit: installed wefwef/Voyager. This is going to be the daily driver from now on. Able to login to every instance (exception being Lemmy.world getting connection errors.) Colors are fantastically readable in dark mode. Still poking. Around but loving it.
- Memmy is at the front of the pack on iOS for native apps. Biggest feature set, first in the AppStore, cleanest UI. Mlem is also looking good and is proper native in Swift. Should be in the App Store in a few days. They’re about ready to submit for review.

Fuck, I thought I was a mainstream lemmy user and now I find out that using voyager apparently makes me an outsider. :(
- Does it? How so? I'm using Voyager as well and I see it mentioned in similar posts as well so not too much of a rarity I guess.

Infinity

I use Infinity for reddit and am now using infinity for lemmy, I like the familiarity and with a bit more work it will probably become the standard android lemmy app. Having said that I liked jerboa and still use it too.

Could we get a new pinned comment for this. Some of this is our of date now and it would be nice to discuss.
Apps, interfaces, browser extensions, scripts
- We could - but we're still getting comments here. Why not continue to use this thread and sort by new?
  Also - this topic doesn't even really belong in Asklemmy per the rules. If anything, I'm more inclined to unpin it and return to dealing with posts as needed.
  
  I agree with unpinning entirely, it's an odd fit

i use wefwef/voyager and thunder app

New Lemmy user here. I have two points of improvement I’d like to note, but am not sure where the actual ‘responsibility’ lies.
It would be great to be able to mass-block communities from lists, rather than tiresomely do them one -at-a-time from ‘All’.
It would also be useful to see the list for subscribing, as I don’t know what’s out there until I see it. Sometimes I can’t think of something to search for until I see it.
Perhaps this lies more with individual apps/ clients rather than the Lemmy ecosystem…?
May I suggest that communities entirely consisting of bots re-posting Reddit links is, uh, unhelpful?
Anyone?

Boost

Wefwef. Mlem is showing promise.
- Had to scroll a bit to see Mlem’s mention.
  I believe it was the first native app for iOS around the time of Reddit API announcements. I am waiting for it to arrive on App Store.
  The app suffered a few delays as the original developer bowed out due to the toxicity and pressures from building the app. Though the app is being developed under a new team, and is coming along well!
  Till then wefwef FTW!
  Speaking of, if wefwef can figure out the niceties of iOS (tap top to scroll to the top, haptics, etc.) I would gladly continue to use it. It is a really well made web app.
  
  Right!

connect.
- This, I've been using Jerboa for a while despite the bugginess it had the most features, wefwef was the most stable but had clear ios design decisions, connect seems like a good in-between right now that's reminding me of sync

FYI Connect seems to be pretty unoptimised: https://lemmy.world/post/953025
RN I'm using Jerboa until Sync comes out
- Weird. I've been using Connect for days and haven't had it use more than 500mb of memory. I tried use Jerboa first, but it was having issues loading things.
  
  I only tried Jerboa and Connect, I liked Connect's styling and have been using it for a few days. Haven't noticed any excess battery drain or usage on my phone but I don't use it for resource heavy tasks or post / comment often. Basically saying I agree, no issues on my end but I haven't monitored memory usage really or used it for long periods either so others reading may have different experiences.

I'm happily using fennec browser (firefox fork) on android. The web ui is fine, don't know why everyone wants an app.

Are you trying to restart the lemmy app war? We finally just rid ourselves of the constant memes.
- See the topic description: Sticky so that we have one place to discuss. This saves removing multiple posts about mobile apps per day. The post has been stickied for over two months now; pretty sure it predates the memes.

They're all good in their own ways, but I'm starting to wonder if lemmy is actually still alive, I see a lot of bot transfered posts from reddit which is cool but of course there's no real interaction with them
- I can understand why you'd be concerned about lemmy falling victim to dead internet theory but I can assure you that we are all totally real and definitely not super advanced AI trying to steal your personal data.
  
  Yes I agree, fellow human

I’m using the beta of Memmy for Lemmy (ios). It hasn’t been released yet, but it’s already stable, even though there’s work to do for what concern the UI and some features. I appreciate it because being new to Lemmy, it makes things a but more approachable.
- it just released on App Store an hour ago

I've tried almost all of them and shockingly Jerboa seems the best despite being the first as far as I'm aware.
Sync comes in last for having ads unfortunately. Or basically just disqualified.
- i don't mind paying one time for the ads-free version of an app if it doesn't suck
  $99 though holy shit man
  
  The fact that there is an ad version at all as a UI front end to an ad free FOSS back-end is a bit shameful. People buy it because they want to get rid of the ads. If they just sold the software with no free with ad version then they would be acceptable.
  It's not about the cost. It's the principle of the matter.

289 comments

I love the formatting tools