1y ago

How are you accessing Lemmy now? Browser or app?

Hi fellow sync-ers,

Having joined Lemmy recently, I have been having a ton of fun. However accessing Lemmy through my mobile browser has been an awful experience, similar to my past Reddit experience till I found Sync.

I'm not sure how much longer I can tolerate the browser experience, and am hesitating jumping on a app. Where's your head at about this?

Edit (4 days later)

I've been on Connect and has been 8/10 so far. Gonna dual use with liftoff after seeing the comments.

I did a 5 minute ctr+F to see which were the most popular apps/ interfaces. Not sorted by pos/neg, just mentions.

wefwef/ voyager - 46
connect - 43
Liftoff - 33
Jerboa - 23
Thunder - 16
Firefox - 13
Thunder - 16
Old.lemmy - 5
Alexandrite - 4
Vivaldi - 2

185 comments

On mobile, I'm using the Voyager app, which lemmy.world has installed as an alternative front end. Seems to work great.
On desktop, I'm using the amazing Alexandrite UI (https://alexandrite.app/) which solves all of my interface annoyances with the regular Lemmy UI (infinite scroll, opening posts without losing place in the feed, easily accessible communities list).
I love how flexible Lemmy is proving with its UI options... there really does seem to be something for everyone!
- Wow, Alexandrite is awesome. If it rolls in an account switcher, it seems like it'll be just about perfect for me.
  
  (dev here) I had an idea for how I'd build a profile switcher recently, it's something I want to implement soon.

Jerboa for Android

For now I am using connect for lemmy. Which is great! And grown in Canada.
- I second this. Been using Connect for about two weeks, and I think it's really solid. I would give it an 8.5/10 in its current state.
  
  I'm gonna give Connect a go! Thanks for the recc
  And I'm guessing you're here at Sync due to past loyalties, and may jump ship when Sync is up and/on Connect experience goes down?
- Using Connect as well. It's working great so far.

Voyager (former wefwef) quickly turned out the best. Good updates every day just made the experience the best. Go to their webpage from your browser of choice and install it from there.
- (vger.app for those wondering)

I'm using Connect until Sync is available.
- Connect is great. Big upgrade from using mobile browser.
  
  Hey look at us Connecting here!

Highly recommend Connect for Lemmy. I've been using it practically since I started, and it's been consistently great (as long as your instance is up of course)
- I am writing this through Connect. It's the closest thing to Rif I found, for Lemmy. I've had some login issues at the beginning, but that seems to have been solved.
- Same. There were SO many bugs with Jerboa. I jumped ship fast to Connect. But it'll be nothing but Sync once it's released.

Thunder. I tried every single Android app, and this is the only one without any major issues.
- You should try Voyager again. It wasn't the best day one when migrating from Reddit but right now I feel it's turned out to be undisputed.
- Have you tried Liftoff? I've never had any issues with it.
  I do like Thunder, but it's harder to navigate to people's profiles and communities.
  
  yeah, same. from all the ones I tried, I stuck with Liftoff. seems like the most functional and simplistic one to me.
  
  I did, at some point settings got lost between updates and then a later version crashed on startup, that's when I switched.
- Ditto. Thunder is amazing. Connect had lots of bugs for me..
- Thunder all the way. I tried Connect, Liftoff and Jerboa and they just didn't work the way i liked. Thunder is filling the void of sync for me.

Using Voyager, the really downside was the iOS inspired theming but, with latest updates android theming is supported. It's still in beta but promising. Better than that native iOS look 😑
- The "native iOS" look looks pretty good even on Android IMO

Connect for now. It isn't perfect but pretty good. Feed isn't as smooth (images load in later kicks your scrolling up) and you can't open links in it automatically.
- Yeah, Connect is how I'm surviving here until Sync is ready.
- My primary issue with Connect at the moment is it desperately needs a reduction in the amount of taps to do anything. It takes 3 to download an image, and 4 to subscribe to communities. Both of these are things I feel should be in the ellipsis menu of any post, but currently you have to click through to the post or community. Meanwhile there are a dozen things in there I rarely use absolut flooding the menu. I also wish it saved comment drafts, but that is relatively minor.
  It just needs some reprioritizing of actions and it would be perfect IMO.

Mostly browser. But when I'm off the computer, I use Liftoff.
- Liftoff as well. While it's definitely missing some features sync had, it's pretty decent for an early app.
- Same here, Liftoff for mobile, and browser when I got a chance to sit in front of my computer.

I use Connect for Lemmy, the UI design is great.

Jerboa on mobile and WebUI on PC

Using Jerboa app on Android...had a rocky start but it has updated a whole lot in the past weeks, getting close to 5/5 probably 3.5/5 right now
Even with reddit I seldomly used the browser on PC, if I'm home and on my PC I generally play games or YouTube/streaming shows rarely browsed reddit on PC
- Jeroba is nice. Closest thing to Baconreader

App - Jerboa, mainly. I tried a few others and kept Liftoff installed, but keep going back to Jerboa.
- But why ? Liftoff is quite good imho
  
  I went from Liftoff to Jerboa as well. Liftoff is great but I just had a few nitpicks. Frame drops from time to time. Upvoting and commenting feels really slow. No button feedback when downloading images, I ended up downloading images multiple times.

I've been using Liftoff on Android. It's way better than mobile browsing but no where near the same level as Sync. Biggest pain points are searching and subscribing to new instances as well as an insane amount of cache builds up and never clears on its own.
Currently I can't load my subscribed instances but I think that's a temporary bug...
I am eagerly and patiently awaiting Sync for Lemmy release.
- I also had the issue with not being able to load subscribed instances. I think someone said it was tied to a forced logout of some sort that happened. I resolved it by removing the accounts from Liftoff, then re-adding them. Afterwards, it worked fine.
  
  That fixed my issue. Thank you very much!

Browser at home and Jerboa on the go.
- Same here.

I use Connect for Lemmy ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kuroneko.lemmy_connect ) on my mobile and Photon on my Desktop ( https://photon.xylight.dev )
- wait what people actually use photon
  
  I haven't yet found a UI that I like. I've been trying Alexandrite for the past couple of days, but Photon has stuck for now.

Jerboa for Lemmy for me. Pretty smooth experience.

I'm using Voyager, it's simple and my design of choice.

Voyager checking in, pretty decent apart from common freezes while scrolling.

I use the browser with the old.reddit look, and Connect on Android until the Sync app comes out.

Wefwef, party app/site?
- I'm genuinely impressed with WefWef. Works great and it's a Progressive Web App
  
  Wefwef is now called Voyager FYI. I'm also using it and its really good, I came here to recommend it.

Browser of course! Sorry, but I'm just a Firefox Supremacist. I don't know why you have a bad experience with browsers, I've been enjoying using browser for everything. What exactly don't you like? Also what OS and browser are you using?

Web interface for now while I wait for Sync.

For now I'm holding myself over with Jerboa

I was switching between Liftoff and Connect, but lately I've just been using Connect. It's gotten a lot better in a short time.

While other apps offer a nice interface I find the jerboa app by far the best app for actually posting and commenting /actually interacting
This is important because I find that interacting with communities is actually a much better way to get meaningful engagement of Lemmy than it was with Reddit (I.e: lurking)

Browser, wefwef. Former Apollo user very happy with this interface.

Liftoff was the first app I tried, still very happy with it and mostly using Lemmy through it.

I'm actually interacting with the servers directly using my psychic powers.
- Link?
  
  Zelda, actually.

I'm using the "Connect" app on Android
- Same here since it's the closest we have to Sync at the moment. It also lets me block entire instances, which is great since Lemmy itself doesn't have this feature yet.

Jerboa app. It is working well

Sync for Lemmy internal build.
It's good, guys. Real good.

I've been hopping around between the different Android apps and PWAs however, I always seem to come back to Voyager (wefwef). My primary app on Reddit was sync and hope to return to it if it functions as it did on the other site. If not, I am enjoying Connect and Jerboa. Thunder, Summit, and Liftoff have small things I would like to see tweaked and/or they have minor bugs that they are still ironing out, but I am not yet sold on a specific app yet until we get further down the road.

PWA with wefwef. But also checking out the new apps here and there.

Browser basically 100% of the time.
- I'm also browser-only. Never even used an app for Lemmy, I don't need someone to see I have a Lemmy app on my homescreen.
  
  I never once used an app for reddit - the few times I did access it from my phone I'd do so through Firefox, with "Use Desktop Site" enabled.
  I did bookmark wefwef / now Voyager for Lemmy, and I use it when I use Lemmy on my phone (I like that it doesn't need to be installed) - but I do that so infrequently it's basically a rounding error.

Using Voyager, formally WefWef.
It's constantly getting updated and they welcome feedback so I would definitely recommend lol

Waiting for Boost

web browser on desktop, but if synclemmy is going to be as hot as reddit syncreddit, then mobile usage will jump.

Liftoff on mobile. Don't get to sit at a PC for web browsing much. If sync feels like it did on reddit. I will switch to that and customize it exactly how I want it again.
- Same here. Liftoff does what I need it to do for the time-being, but will be switching to sync whenever it is ready to go

App, funny enough never been here on the pc.

Voyager

Thunder

Currently using CONNECT on the phone and browser on PC. More or less exactly the way I used to browse reddit really

I have jerboa installed but it was buggy so I mostly use a browser (Vivaldi)

Im using Alexandrite on desktop und Liftoff on mobile. Liftoff is great, I don't really miss much from the famous reddit apps.

browser.

I'm suffering through Jerboa, heavily anticipating Sync since it'll change everything for me

I was using Jerboa because i was used to Sync for reddit. But, I got a bit tired of how rough around the edges it is, so I switched to just installing my Lemmy instance front page as Firefox "app" on my phone and realized it's not that bad as a UI, so sticking with it for now.
I'll probably try apps again in the future but I feel more open to "installing" good web apps now. Incidentally I tried the same trick with Reddit's mobile interface after Sync stopped working and realized it's also not so awful as I remembered. I did prefer Sync but I'll see how it goes with this method. So it's mobile web interfaces on Android for me for now.
Having said that, in both cases I think I'd prefer a more "simple HTML" type experience like old reddit over these dynamic SPA things they both have going.
- I'm also using the Firefox "app" and every time I switch to another app or minimize the FF app it crashes FF. Does this happen for you too? Decided to just suffer through it cause I couldn't find any fix for it.

Browser. Waiting for Sync!

Liftoff

185 comments