1y ago

Happy v1... also, Voyager is going to the App Store

Happy v1!

Yes, there are still outstanding bugs. It's not perfect, and we will continue to make things better! But Voyager has come a long way, and all of the core functionality is there to use and enjoy lemmy. 🙂

Happy version 1.0! 🎉

This release only has one major new feature: Unique time-based sort icons! You can now quickly glance to see what sort you're currently on. Thanks @tilden!

Voyager is going to the App Store

I'm also excited to announce that the next major focus will be on releasing Voyager as an iOS app! This will fix various iOS bugs that we've encountered (white status bar, scroll "freezing" etc), and bring some nice functionality like haptics and tapping the status bar to scroll to top, and also improve onboarding for people that aren't familiar with Progressive Webapps. It also opens the possibility for other neat features, like the option to open links in your browser instead of in-app. You can see most of the work done in #410, to be merged shortly!

If you're curious how this is possible, check out Capacitor and AppFlow!

Note, an iOS app is subject to approval from Apple which may significantly delay its public release.

(Don't worry! The PWA isn't going anywhere! It has it's own benefits like being self-hostable, quicker updates and being available on desktop computers.)

Once the iOS app is released, work will begin on releasing to the Play Store.

What's Changed

Add custom icons for time-based sorts by @tilden in https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/pull/524
Forcing high resolution icon for iOS by @fer0n in https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/pull/526
Fix block, message user not presenting login when logged out by @aeharding in https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/pull/528

New Contributors

@tilden made their first contribution in https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/pull/524

Full Changelog: https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/compare/0.28.1...1.0.0

75 comments

Congrats from a long time lurker. It’s been amazing to see voyager come together all the way from WefWef.
It has been such a smooth transition from Apollo to Lemmy that I needed to come out if lurking to show appreciation for the hard work you guys have done on this app.
Thanks again for all the hard work, I really can’t believe how well done this app is as a non-native PWA app.
Really again, thanks for the hard work and congrats on the V1. Amazing job 🎉
- long time lurker
  User names checks out
- Welcome to the club

Awesome! Can’t wait to try the AppStore version!
- The haptics are 🤌
  
  Do you plan on releasing it on testflight first?
  
  Damn you weren't kidding. I always felt the swipe in Voyager to feel a little "off" but could never tell why. It was the haptic feedback! Now it feels just as natural as it used to in Apollo

I’ve been using Memmy over Voyager for a while because I wasn’t the biggest fan of the PWA style. Now that this will be an actual app, I will definitely have to re-evaluate my choice!
Thanks for all the hard work!
- I'd suggest you to use both, because all Lemmy apps are awesome.
  
  I’m currently at 8 Lemmy clients installed. There’s something to like about each, so it’s hard to decide for just 1.
- Voyager as an actual app will instantly make it Apollo Lite for me. I am familiar with the look and its feature sets.
  The "web app" thing and all its bugs and annoyances have been pushing me elsewhere. I'll be happy to get rid of that.

Congrats on this important milestone and thank you for making one of the best Lemmy apps! Turning this into a standalone app is definitely an awesome move.
It's probably not the focus for many and the app is already great as it is, but could we expect some basic mod tooling some day or is that out of scope?
- Yes! This will be a focus post 1.0. I have had experience modding with Apollo in the past and I really enjoyed it, and I'd like to bring that to Voyager.
  The question is how to. Unfortunately, certain parts about Lemmy's API makes this difficult, such as not having reports embedded in the post/comment payload. But we have some ideas for workarounds.
  You can see a modest start here: https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/pull/512 (note the comment nuke, my favorite Apollo mod feature 😉)

this is awesome news!
this is also a big message to Apple that their web app system is apparently broken. The whole "shit stops working" pausing/hitching that has been an open bug for YEARS is a real bad look.
As good as this app is, it is kinda sad that an Apollo "copy" seems to be ready to go before the actual Apollo app (which may never come to Lemmy).
- I doubt Christian will bring Apollo to Lemmy. He said that it was a labor of love and that after being burned by Reddit he’s done with that kind of dev work.
  
  But Apollo for Lemmy could be more $$$ for him!
  Maybe not as much as he got with reddit, but a lot of people would happily pay for it again.
  If I had spent the past decade building something, I wouldn't want to just throw it all away.

I'd just like to say, Android users would love to see a native app and you don't need to publish to the Play Store straight away. We don't need to go through all the TestFlight shenanigans that Apple users do, you can just upload an apk to GitHub releases and we can beta test it for you
- iOS apps don’t need to go through test flight either, it’s just a good way to get controlled feedback from testing an app.
  
  I just expected Voyager to go through the same process as Memmy did, beta-testing through TestFlight and then finally publishing to AppStore once it's "ready". Meanwhile, on Android you don't even need to publish on Play Store. A lot of FOSS apps choose not to simply because it takes so much longer when an apk file would do just fine

Exciting stuff! Can’t wait to try the native iOS app!

I was about to getting sad because I thought no Android version then I finish reading.... Heck yeah dude way to go and congrats for V1!!

Thank you for keeping the PWA!

Congratulations! And thank you for all the hard work!

Did you guys do something good and clever with the swipe back gesture, or am I just getting the hang of it? It seems to be working much better, way fewer accidental upvotes.
Thanks for all the hard work and congrats on the milestone!

Only one downvote. Probably u/spez.
Can’t wait to tey the app!

You can also publish to Android without Playstore and it gives some advantages like pulling the APK from Obtainium or standalone download from GitHub.

That's awesome! You guys have done an amazing job

big up dude best client out there

Congrats! Best Lemmy app I've found on Android yet!
Can't wait for it to eventually come to the Playstore!

This is amazing. Thanks for all your hard work :)

Out of curiosity will haptics be available on android via the pwa using the vibration api?
https://whatpwacando.today/vibration

Congrats! And thanks for your effort. :)

Actually I only miss notifications now. Is this not possible with the web app or what is the reason?
- It's possible, but to do it right without polling it depends on https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3552

This is legit very cool! Awesome work!

I was really curious about how you would go about making an AppStore app from the web app. Is it going to be simply a webview pointing to vger.app or is there going to be more to it?
- theres typical a 'wrapper' native app that is a container for the web app, which provides things like access to local hardware like camera and bluetooth and better local storage. one wrapper tool that was common for ages is 'phonegap'. it can be as simple as just the webview or it could open more capabilities.

Glad to see you're planning to launch it on Play Store as well.

I’m not a developer so not sure if this question is even based on how things actually work or just how I imagine they work, but will the iOS app be a wrapper around the PWA, getting updates at the same time, or will it require separate updates and/or codebases?
(Also, a tip jar in the iOS would be great!)
- Wrapper. It may lag. Depends on how affordable Ionic AppFlow Live Updates are ;)
  
  If it means having these nice native features I’ll gladly wait!

Are you planning a TestFlight release first or will it go straight to the App Store?

Looking forward to TestFlight Voyager!

Hooray 🎉🎉

WOOO!!!
🎉 🎉🎉

Amazing—just discovered it and I love the feel!

Oh my god super excited to hear it will be coming to the play store. Once that happens it will probably be the perfect Lemmy app.

Yahoo. Is F-droid release possibility too down the line?
- I don't see why we couldn't

Looking forward to this. I haven’t been using Lemmy that much because I dont like any of the apps out there. I check lemmy out once in a while in Voyager. A dedicated app with this UI is definitely something I am looking forward to.

Very nice! Thanks to everyone who has put their hard work and effort into this project so far. It is much appreciated 😊

Wohoo this is so exciting! I can’t wait for the app to be available in the AppStore

Thank you for this! Many have doubted me when I said this would happen, it’s always nice to have options!

Which will be the lowest supported iOS version?
Edit: Please correct me if I'm wrong here's a trend in iOS app development where all new apps have arbitrarily high iOS requirements when they could run on older iOS versions just fine. I would love to use Voyager but if it goes down the same route, I won't be able to :(
I know about the PWA but it can stop working for me over time when the old release of WebKit on my phone eventually becomes incompatible with it
- Not sure on lowest iOS support yet.
  If the PWA doesn't work because of outdated Safari stuff, the app also won't work because of outdated Safari stuff.
  
  Understandable.
  Still, I just hope iOS 15 will be supported—I like to get the most mileage out of my older devices.

Great news!

This is so exciting! Finally!

Is this going to allow spell checker/auto correct to work on post titles?

Been using Voyager since the death of Apollo and it’s become my preferred way to access Lemmy. Looking forward to an App Store release.

Hey, congratulations! I like Memmy as well, but I'm starting to prefer Voyager lately!

75 comments