2y ago

The official app is hot garbage

On a whim I decided to give the official app a try because a lot of people will be forced to use it, if they decide to stay on Reddit.

Holy hell, it's just slow. Can't scroll through a subreddit without annoying hitches and stutters. Comments aren't any better also.

On the other hand, Sync is just fucking gorgeous and runs immensely better than the encumbered official app.

How can apps made by small teams or even a single person be better optimized than one supposedly made by a larger team with a larger development budget?

73 comments

Give it a one star on the way out!
- They'll just pay Google to up it again.
  
  make them pay
  
  At least it will cost reddit money
- Thanks for the reminder

Reddit app has to cram in those ads, and they don't want you to scroll too fast past those gorgeous ads.
Or reddit is refusing to pay their developers well, while small app projects are made out of passion.
- Not just ads, but trackers and whatever else they can use to wrangle data from your phone.
  
  Yep. It's like adobe acrobat reader.
  You can use the official app. Slow and bloated.
  You can use something like sumatra or foxit, they're faster and takes up almost no diskspace.
  IRC acrobat has trackers and telemetry included, allowing it to send data to adobe about where your mouse hovered, etc. etc.
  Same for reddit. Reddit.com doesn't consider users customers. We're product. There to be mined for (personal) data.
- Ads... Ads everywhere...
  It's reaching Facebook levels. I just can't.
  
  The API pricing is shit, but I care more about how I’m forced into an app with ads. That’s really the straw that made me seek alternatives in earnest.

I've used it a little bit on my phone in the past. Its pretty bad, especially for a major company product
- It’s genuinely infuriating that with 2000 employees Reddit couldn’t be bothered to put together a halfway decent app. Apollo was created by a single developer.
  
  What makes it worse is they killed off a perfectly good TPA (alien blue) for the dev to help create their app. Which is one of the worst apps I've seen, using Reddit as a web wrap is better than the app.
  
  What’s even worse is Reddit bought a third party app (Alien Blue) to use as the base for their first party app. They couldn’t even be bothered to create something original and instead just ruined the most popular app out there.
  It actually wasn’t terrible right after their acquisition, it really got bad once they made the video player changes to make it more like TikTok/Instagram/Facebook in an effort to grow “engagement” so they could sell more ads. I stopped using it at about that time and moved to Apollo and never looked back. Trying it again a month or two ago (to access my chat messages since that isn’t an endpoint exposed in the API) and it was just so much worse. With Pi-hole it’s maybe usable but it isn’t fun or pleasant compared to Apollo.
  I figure most people don’t know that there are apps that have minor but key usability enhancements and so don’t really care. Those same people though are fine with the ads and taking on Facebook and Instagram and so are pretty much a lost cause anyways.
  
  Thing is, they don't have to do that. They can just wall the garden instead, and then anyone that wants to use Reddit will be forced to either use their garbage or just stay off reddit.
  It doesn't seem to be working out so well for them, but that was in fact one of several potential solutions to this problem. Why do any work, when you can just bully the alternatives into submission?

A single competent, seasoned app developer can not only replace hundreds of engineers, but vastly outperform them. But. Only when the vision is clear. Apollo, Sync, etc.? Extremely clear vision, it is a Reddit client, everyone knows what a good Reddit client should be, so a competent developer can make it happen, it’s just a function of time and money.
Businesses work differently, especially VC backed businesses. The actual app to such a business doesn’t matter, what matters is:
Is it making us money?
Next year, will it make us twice as much money?
In two years, will it make us five times as much money?
Ad infinitum (pun intended)
The shit that ruins the official app is shit attempts at the above. Because again, the app does not matter.

Their web app is trash too, old.reddit was the only way to use it on browser IMHO
- The worst part of the redesign is how slow it feels. I also noticed how cluttered everything looks on the redesign. The buttons below the titles are unnecessarily big. The multicolored flairs are very distracting. Some flairs are basically an entire sentence long, others have emojis. It makes reading the post titles extremely difficult.

So I found the official app awful and insanely slow, I always assumed it was my phones fault though. Literally gave up on things loading several times.
Happy to be on kbin instead!

Reddit stuffed their app to the brim with tracking. This tracking is probably what slows the app down and also is the only reason they're killing 3rd party apps.

Don't download it just to try! It has trackers be careful. Is better not to ever download it really.

Sync is so good, it's what I use(d) Reddit with. Good news is that Sync isn't dead, it's being reborn with support for Lemmy.
https://teddit.net/r/SyncforLemmy/comments/14ee1ul
Edit: Redirect link to old Reddit for sanity.
Edit2: Redirect link again to avoid Reddit altogether thanks to aidenxy's better solution.

The people that stay never knew they could have something better. It's like people that don't mind the ads, on Reddit or otherwise. If they never got exposed to the pre-ads Internet or to a good ad blocker, they don't even know they could complain about this experience.
- It's crazy to me that people still don't know of adblockers in 2023 but there's an absolute shit-ton of those people.
  
  Remember that a lot of people are on mobile. Android's standard browser doesn't allow you to install adblockers anymore, last I checked. Doubt safari does either.

Agreed. Tried it in place of Apollo and I can’t stand it. Some Lemmy apps are already better than the official Reddit app.

I tried it over a year after its initial release, thinking they’d have time to sort out the biggest problems. I thought other redditors were possibly exaggerating, or recalling their experiences with an earlier version. It couldn’t be that bad, right?
Yeah, it could. Wow. They’re trying to encourage people to use an app that’s utter shit. It’s an… interesting strategy.

I just took a look at the app page on the iOS app store and... the average review is 4.8/5? How is that possible? It's awful!
- @alpsacka
  @Thalyssa
  Because when they write a review, normies are reviewing Reddit, not the app. They don’t even know third party apps exist.
- A lot of content on reddit is posted by bots. Votes are often bots generated. Comments are increasingly bot generated. Especially in the larger subs, and when it comes to (international) politics.
  When reddit was new, reddit they used bots and fake accounts to make it seem less empty. Huffman has admitted this publicly and in interviews.
  With this whole API debacle, I've seen numerous identical comments about not using third party apps, so reddit.com is almost certainly using bots to swing the narrative on the API too.
  Have a guess why the average review of the app is high? Even ignoring the people who aren't rating the app but reddit itself, it's almost certain that that rating is rigged.
- Spez editing? lol

Sync is amazing

Reddit's priorities aren't the same as someone developing an app for ease of use, readability, accessibility, etc. Reddit only cares about the backend tech that helps them control and serve ad space. And if you want to believe the bts tea that recently spilled, Reddit doesn't even structurally prioritize coding and development in the first place.
I was an rif die-hard. Such an elegant, useful app. It's nothing like its source site.

The fact that they bought AlienBlue, worked on it for 10 years, and made it so much worse is crazy.
- Odds are they didn't work on AlienBlue...only shelve it for their own UI.

Yup, that's why I switch to Infinity like a year or 2 ago
Seriously hoping for Infinity for Lemmy 🙏
- Infinity is so nice. So much customisation and fluidity. It would be really nice to get it for lemmy
- Same Infinity has been one of my first install apps for years
- Hopefully there will also be apps for kbin. Right now i mostly hear about lemmy.
  
  Artemis will focus on kbin first!
  Sync for Lemmy's dev just announced today that he'll work on kbin support later

I use Relay Pro for Reddit (which is fantastic) but obviously that won't be viable in a week. I go on maybe once a day for 5 minutes just to see the state of the protests but I get annoyed about how many subs just appear to be 'back to normal'. Of course, after next week I expect that to change.

Shitty site, shitty app. It builds the brand, Leels!

I used Narwhal most of the years I used reddit, it also had ads like the official app, but the difference is it ran so much smoother for many years! Main reason why I switched off it was slow development was causing it to become a bit buggy, not the ads.
- Same with the ad supported version of RIF. The ads were so unobtrusive that the only reason I ever bought the paid version was to support the dev.
  
  RIF was always my favourite reddit app.

The apps made by small teams and solo devs can be better because large teams at companies can get bogged down by politics & greed.

Never used a 3rd party app. Was very happy with the official reddit app as recently as a few months ago.
Now that I'm reading this, I have to ask, did reddit push through some updates to make it extra crudy or something? Worse, did they just do it a week before 3rd party apps have to shut down?
- I have to say I am also surprised at the number of people that claim the official Reddit app is garbage. I switch between the official and 3rd party apps. I’ve never loved the official app by any means, but it’s functional. Just as any social media app is nowadays.
  The perspective I understand is people who use 3rd party apps for greater accessibility options. The official app is severely lacking in its accommodations for people with disabilities. That’s why I have stopped using Reddit.
  
  For sure. Can see a lot of skepticism that the upcoming accessibility and moderation updates will be enough - or even be the right ones, see for example https://teddit.adminforge.de/r/modnews/comments/14he7nz/accessibilityupdatestomodtoolspart1/
  
  I tried using it for a few months. I was using Sync and got a new phone, decided to give the official app a shot and I had a miserable experience. Ended up using RiF the last few years and have zero desire for the kind of user experience the official app provides.

How can apps made by small teams or even a single person be better optimized than one supposedly made by a larger team with a larger development budget?
Bloat!

The thing that killed the official Reddit app for me was the battery drain. It felt like three hours of browsing would be enough to drain my phone's battery. Also the video player was trash. So I jumped on a third party app. I later deleted it, as I felt I was spending too much time on Reddit, and stuck to accessing it on web browser more sparingly. Then I hear that Reddit is experimenting with preventing people from using a mobile browser to access it... Yeah, I'll break from them before I bend for their IPO.

I'm using an early Mlem beta and it already seems better than the official Reddit app.

The real question is... how many ads did you see?
- At least one promoted post everywhere.
  Plus most of them are garbage crypto pump and dump schemes.

73 comments