Call to Lemmy app/UI devs: please improve video support

Link@lemy.lol to Lemmy@lemmy.ml – 52 points –

Everyone knows what they want to improve in their software. However, I am opening this post to raise awareness on this issue. It’s just a humble request.

As you know, large video subreddits contribute greatly to Reddit reaching a large user base. For example, when you open the homepage, you can see many subreddits such as r/interestingasfuck, r/funny, r/yesyesyesyesno, r/unexpected etc.

Lemmy is Reddit's alternative for text posts, but unfortunately not for videos at the moment. To fill this gap, I have opened the !yesyesyesno@lemy.lol community and shared a few posts. But these videos are inconsistent between applications and UI’s.

For example;

  • Voyager can open videos inline without any problems.
  • Mlem showing it as URL and opens the browser instead of playing.
  • Lemmy default UI is worst. It doesn’t even show the link. You have to click it’s title to see the video but it’s visually not a link. (looks like this one only occurs on mobile)
  • Alexandrite shows as a link.

Yes, video hosting is expensive. However, before solutions such as torrents and IPFS, we must ensure that direct videos work smoothly. This is my $0.02 opinion.

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Pull requests welcome.

Absolutely. I’m not someone like who “I’m not doing it but you should do it this way” guy but this particular problem is bigger than a single pull request.

There are tens of apps/web UI’s with different languages/frameworks. I can’t make PR for all of them :/

There are only two official ones though:

  • Lemmy web UI
  • Jerboa Android app

Set the bar in one or both, and others will likely follow.