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1y ago

Voyager released to Google Play!

Hi there!

Voyager has been released to Google Play! You can check it out here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.vger.voyager

Please try it out and let me know what you think below! Because it's brand new, let me know if you have any problems relative to the web app and I'll try to fix them ASAP. And if you have time, leave a review, that helps Voyager gain exposure.

Why use the native Android version? Well, there's a couple main benefits:

The back button works much better!
Your browser history shouldn't be inundated with Voyager entries.

Please note, it's currently a slightly outdated version of Voyager. Hopefully it should update soon!

As for Apple peeps, that's still in progress. If you're on TestFlight and have an Apple Watch, check out the brand new Apple Watch app (coming very shortly in an update). It's quite simple at the moment, but kind of neat and useful!

117 comments

Did we just get like 3 new apps drop in about 2 days?
Sync, Infinity and Voyager. Omg.

Apple Watch app
Woah! Is this a first? Actually sounds kinda cool.
- It's very very basic but still kind of cool! I hope it will be expanded in the future, but my Swift skills need to improve (or someone more talented needs to help, lol)

This may very well become my favorite mobile app for Lemmy. I used infinity for Reddit and I quite like the Lemmy fork (though its still VERY early In development so we shall see)
But I love a lot of them currently. This ones just clean, simple while still having great features
- Wait, infinity has a Lemmy fork? What's it called?
  
  Infinity for Lemmy. Still has a lot of Reddit terms and things at the moment. But its quick and functional. You'll have to grab it here and I'd recommend using obtanium to update it if you have it https://codeberg.org/Bazsalanszky/Infinity-For-Lemmy/releases

Is there a possibility of it being released on F-Droid?
Or just an apk download?
- Seconded but seems no comments about it from the developer.

Installing my 7th Lemmy client then...:)
It's fun to try them all.
Edit: It's not available on Play Store for me at least.
- It's 12th for me

Thank you for bringing Voyager to the app store. I have installed and tried it, it's just as good as its web counterpart. Nothing abnormal or malfunction, great work. The loading speed is much faster than the webapp. Though, I do miss the ability to update to the new version using the web.
Thank you 👍

Two apps in as many days. Excited to try it out!

Quite good. If you allow criticism, one particular feature that needs improvment is the smoothness of image loading. Images (in particular) and posts took quite awhile to load. Even for some images, when they have already been loaded and displayed, if I go back and then forward, the app will try to reload the images that have already been displayed before. By right, the images should've already been cached and will load straight away.
This is what I find strangely interesting with Sync, which you can take as a benchmark. The image load very fast, even at the first loading. None of the apps that I tried, e. g. liffoff and infinity can even load (half?) that fast. If you can find a good algorithm to load ~~the~~ images, it will help increase user experience tremendously.
- Thanks! That’s very strange, image loading and caching is handled by the browser and should be quite fast.
  The only thing I can think of is sync has a max height for images in feed and can set thumbnail option for their requests?
  
  Just check. it has default options to preload images. Maybe that's why.
  
  in addition to preloading, it has option for data saving mode.
  
  Hi dev, got an update. As you said that's very strange as it is handled by browser, this make me think that it is a browser specific issue. I just found out that my default browser, Firefox, has a tendency to auto reload tab, - that explains it. I've installed addon to mitigate the issue - it seems to work.
  As for implementing auto-cached as sync did, I can sense now that might be beyond your control as voyager relies on external browser to work.

That's quite interesting. I was very impressed with Voyager being a PWA and a bit sad that a native version was needed.
Isn't the overhead of maintaining three completely different code bases very demanding?
Or, as the benefits it seems to have are quite limited, was it a quick conversion into a native app?
- It's reusable codebase thanks to https://ionicframework.com and https://capacitorjs.com :)
- I think there are certain frameworks out there that basically let you write a website and it bundles it as an app for you. Also this could just be a web view locked into their site. Either way I don't think there's a ton of overhead here.

Thank you for somehow making the best and most featured app for all of lemmy.

I noticed that the vibration feels mushier on slide gestures compared to the web app/back button swipe. For reference I'm on the Pixel 6a and use Edge as my PWA client.
- Interesting! The code is the same, so it may be a Capacitor Haptics bug (translating wrong haptic)? It's technically using a different API for haptics under the hood.
  There will be an update to disable haptics shortly if it's annoying :)
  
  It's not annoying, just... how do I put it... Unsatisfying? Feels less clicky than the system default is all.
  Thanks for the hard work anyways! :)
  
  Oh man, too much vibration on gestures. Can we get a option to disable?

Just grabbed it and it's working great so far. I'm not really clear on the pros/cons of using a native app vs a web app, but so far the experience is pretty much identical.
Edit: I'll also add that if there's ever a "premium" version that's just the same app only paid so people can support it with their dollars, I will be happy to use my Google Play points on that.
- For me, it's that the app was sluggish on Firefox but not on chrome. But it turns out, with unlock, the internet is a terrible place! So links were unreadable
  The dedicated app is the best of both worlds. Fast and responsive, but can use my default browser (Firefox) for links

I see developers putting in some hard work to make the best lemmy app. imo voyager and sync are the best I tried so far in terms of responsiveness and features!! definitely leaving a review

Thank you very much!
Right off the bat, it feels much more smoother. I haven't noticed anything broken, I'll keep an eye out.

Thanks! It's my favourite app for lemmy. Even the pwa was better than many other native apps. I've some minor suggestions if you're open to them.
The back button on the Android app doesn't exit the app no matter pressed how many times.
The vibration feels a bit off while upvoting even on the app. I mean it doesn't have the same "punch" to it like it should.
Material you icon theming would be nice.
Kudos to you and the team for making this app happen. It is one of the greatest lemmy apps.

I really wish I could disable the post collapse on click. Long click wouid be ok, but like this as I'm scrolling I'm constantly accidentally collapsing comment threads, it's really annoying.
- Hey, this is on the list for settings to add. Apollo had it and it's definitely something Voyager will add.

I love the subreddit migration tool.

I really like this project, so kudos! Both as PWA on the browser and in the wrapped WebView version it is GREAT! I have a feature request if it's not too complicated: would it be possible to disable the long tap gesture on images which I sometimes accidentally trigger while scrolling? In the browser it opened the share modal, here it does nothing except giving haptic feedback.

Am using it already. Smooth as butter.

I’m chomping at the bit of the thought of this coming to iOS especially as a former Apollo user.

As a developer of PWAs, can I ask how you ported it to Android? Did you use something like React Native?
(Regardless, I love me my Voyager PWA app. thank you!)
- Check these out: https://ionicframework.com and https://capacitorjs.com :)
  
  NICE. Yeah, a buddy of mine is constantly talking up Ionic.
  Thanks again! Great work on the app, my man!
  
  Seems like Capacitor has some performance issues with Webview (https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1289741). Things got a tiny bit better for me after I updated WebView to the Canary build. Both webviews have still better performance than the PWA with Firefox, but they are slightly less smooth than the PWA with Chrome.

Thanks for the app, everything is working fine!

One of the killer features of the PWA is long tapping an image anywhere and sharing it through other apps. Not a link to the post, not a link to the image but the actual image. Long tapping an image in the native app only vibrates it and does nothing. Would it be possible to port that behavior?
- Yeah the menu doesn't pop up when long pressing an image or video link. On the voyager PWA I would long press YouTube links and share them to Newpipe to avoid ads.

Congrats on the launch, exciting times to be sure!

Native app oh my godsh ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Awesome, posting this from the app! My browser history thanks you!

When I try to comment I get blank text box, no qoute, image attachemt, hyperling etc. Do I have to use ![]() for img or im missing something?
- There's no tools for formatting right now, but it's on the list!
  
  Aha ok thx. At least im not blind this time

Just saw this post a few minutes back and downloaded it.
Not sure if its my phone (samsung s22+) or something, but comments keep dropping and I need to reopen the post for the comments to show up.

Thanks for creating Voyager (Wefwef), been using it as my goto - works great 👍

Congrats! Looks good

The back action doesn't seem to work when in the home page. I was expecting app to get closed.
- Same here. It doesn't seem to do anything.

I don't know how but I feel the haptics work better here than in any other app in my phone!

Yooooo

I use Chromes password manager, but the app doesn't allow to auto fill the contents. Maybe that could be a possible improvement! Great job!!

Unfortunately I get the "this app is incompatible with your device" from the playstore. Sony Xperia 1 IV (Android 13)
- Weird, thanks for the report, I'll look into it :)
  edit: If anyone else has this problem, please reply below with device version and make/model
  
  Its happening to me with a few other lemmy apps from the store like Lemmotif, Summit and Beyond for Lemmy. All are early access too which might be the reason, although other EA apps like Arctius (fennec) installed fine. Just to note, i did install the apks of the above incompatible apps via their github pages fine. So its not that my device is incompatible, its just google store blocking something internally perhaps.
- lol and meanwhile I bet you have no issues with the PWA.

yes!!! finally!!!!

What's the benefits of using this version compared to the PWA version?
Edit: I'm blind, it's mentioned right in the post

So I just checked my wishlist and this app popped up and is now a available and compatible and I just installed it. So thanks for the fix.

I’m jailbroken on iOS 15 and I don’t see the watch app aa installable. Is this iOS 16 required ?
- WatchOS 9.1 is required I believe
  
  Stuck on 8.3. WHELP
  Thanks for letting me know

Can anyone comment and how's the battery performance of the native app compared to the PWA?
- Should be similar.
  
  Awesome, thanks!

Woah! That was quick!
I have a problem. It's not really to native app though. It's related to themes. Themes look good in Apple mode, but in Android mode switches look half blue half red. It looks weird.
- I'll have to double check the android mode :)
  
  Here is a screenshot.

Thank you so much!

When using 3 button navigation on my Pixel Fold running the latest Android 14 Beta, on light mode, the buttons are white, blending in with the background of the app... If that makes sense. Almost as if they are transparent.

Amazing! Just some limited use so far but the experience seems every bit as good as the PWA. Thanks!

Thank you! It works great and I love it.
This is my go-to app for Lemmy now!

Does it use my blocked communities list from the web app, or do I need to start again?
- Blocked communities is tied to your Lemmy account.
  
  Awesome 🙂
  As soon as I can remember where I saved my password, I'm switching over 😁

The Android app I've been waiting for! Just dl'd it but will give it a spin overthe next few days.

First annoying bug I guess: when you try to swipe down to scroll up in a profile view it tries to refresh the page. I don't have this issue with the PWA.
- That's odd - I'm not able to reproduce but I'll definitely keep an eye out. Let me know in Github if you can find a consistent reproduction
  
  I can reproduce it as well. Only on the page that comes up on the center tab, slowly scrolling up and down cause the refresh effect to start erratically.
  
  here's a video showing what I just described (off-topic: the Lemmy web UI keeps stretching the videos to full page width smh):

Again and again this app is fantastic

The app looks and works great, nice work! Are custom keyword filters on the roadmap?

There seems to be no way to save images when using the native app. Anybody else facing this issue¿?

117 comments