The kbin/lemmy app is coming along. Here´s a little preview of the upcoming beta! Heavy inspiration from Apollo. The app will be available for both iOS and Android.

Lilkev@kbin.social to Reddit Migration@kbin.social – 690 points –
imgur.com

The dev, @hariette, also has a Mastodon profile where she posts updates https://tech.lgbt/@hariette. There is also a link to the apps discord server in her bio.

126

As a longtime Apollo user, I would love to know when this hits Test Flight!

Unlike Apollo, will this be Free Software though?

Apollo did have a free tier and then a few paid tiers.

iirc, (I bought it many years ago), they had a one time Pro purchase that removed any ads and unlocked theming and such, and then the Ultimate which was a subscription to cover server costs of push notifications (although it did eventually end up having more features locked behind it).

While I personally did not go for the Ultimate subscription (didn’t really need the push notifications), I gladly paid for the Pro as it was well worth it IMO.

I think they meant Free as in Open Source

It's not exactly the same. The Free Software movement is about user freedom. Open Source is a term used by corporations to avoid mentioning that users should have rights.

Any chance the Android build will make it to F-Droid?

I also want it in the F-Droid repos.

That looks great! iOS and Android? Can’t wait to try ut!

Yep, iOS and Android! Also, all this work has been done in less than a week. It's crazy.

The more options the better. I'm excited to try the Android version.

This looks super promising! I love the inspiration from Apollo being a user for many, many years. Looking forward to a testflight/release :)

Great job all involved! So happy to see people trying to make usability apps/features! The color indicators for chat are great!

So far all of the dev work has been done by Hariette herself. Full credit to her, I'm just promoting it because it really looks quite great in my opinion.

Awesome! I am looking forward to it, and I love that it's made for both major platforms :-)

Every app that ever gets created for this will be called an Apollo “Clone” or “copy” and twenty years from now people will ask, “what was so special about Apollo”?

You just had to be there I guess.

I'll be speaking this way about Relay on android.

I think I downloaded Relay in 2014 or 2015 when I was needing good mobile mod tools and it was the winner for me. Love that app!

I love Relay, and will very much miss it

RIF user since the beginning. I hope to see them work on something for kbin Lemmy but I'm still excited about an Apollo clone.

The Apollo dev isn't considering making his app compatible with lemmy or kbin?

I think he might just be burnt out and stressed right now. Being accused of making threats, being lied about publicly, and having something you worked really hard on have to shut down because the people lying about you wouldn’t be reasonable has all got to take a toll.

Artemis is a great name for the app by the way.

The sister of Apollo :). Except I hope this one will be Free Software?

Money = good things cost money to make

I hope the developer offers a way to pay to help out (like RiF having "golden platinum")

I'm in the majority, but I don't even care if an app gets made (obviously I support it though). I used Apollo on Reddit, because Reddit's mobile design was complete shit. However, Kbin and Lemmy actually look great in a mobile browser, so I really have no need for a separate app.

I agree the Web browser is very similar, but IMO a dedicated app is going to be a much quicker and smoother experience.

On iOS, the Lemmy web experience is temperamental at best and unnavigable at worst. Although you can put bookmark/icon on an iOS home page, there is no navigation option so that once you've linked into a thread there's no way to get back to where you were. Even in a (safari-underpinned) browser the website seems to be very finnicky with back and forth navigation into and out of content. To be fair, this is an iOS problem, not a Lemmy/kbin problem, but it still increases friction for the mobile user.

Hoping for a RIF style theme, I really appreciated the simple information dense style it has

Needs an option to move the arrows to the right-hand side so I can scroll with my thumb and tap the arrows with the same thumb. Also, needs a light mode, quick account changing, and community muting for when browsing All.

Ive been thinking about customizations like that while working on it. I want localization, so everything already has right to left support. I can use that piping to help w moving arrows.

Also, youll be able to double tap to vote ;)

(Community muting is a must for sure)

@hariette

One thing I hated about Apollo was swiping gestures. I don’t use them and they get in the way so many times. Sometimes, I didn’t even know that I upvoted/downvoted a post unknowingly! I can’t disable it coz I’m a freeloade so I have no complaints.

I just want to suggest that it would be nice if you give users an option to disable the gestures if the app has them.

Noted, adding to my list of customizations I want to make 👍

I never used Apollo since I've always been an Android user, so I don't know what features will be inspired from it, so I wanted to ask whether there would be in-app browser support for links so it doesn't open other apps? And will there be plans for gesture navigation support like the Relay and Joey apps?

I used Relay for a couple years way back. You betcha I’m gonna get as much as I can in smooth gesture interactions 👌

And yea, it uses an in-app browser. Will expose config for those who want that off, also.

Also, I heard a lot of great things bout Joey, so I gotta get my hands on it 👀

Alright, now I'm even more excited! Thanks a bunch for putting time into this.

Got a link to your alpha/beta sign up? I'd definitely be interested and trying it out.

Joey was the best app, in my opinion. The big image previews (and full size by long press and holding for images and gifs) and marking read by scrolling past are two of the standout features

Now, let's wait for the Android one.......

Developing as x-plat codebase. And we have an equal split of beta testers across platform. So wanna prioritize em equally!

in the coming weeks there will be some waves of rollouts to testers. Hopefully we’ll go public not far from there :)

Definitely get it into beta as soon as you can. Many of us are happy to beta test.

I wonder what api are they using for kbin

Hopefully the API is free, unlike what Spez is doing to Reddit's API.

Well since no one is monetizing kbin yet, of course it's free. As to long term hosting costs, I'm hoping we go Wikipedia style and use donations.

why is the number of upvotes displayed separately from the upvote/downvote buttons? Same also for the comment count/button

Please also take inspiration from Reddit Sync Pro!!! I would love an app that is taking the best features from both apps!

You love to see it - keep up the great work and would love to use it once it’s available!

Looks great! Looking forward to being able to minimize already-read comment threads again!

So if this is the app what is the one that I downloaded already when browsing kbin from mobile web?

Sounds like you have a web app that opens in a browser, but tough to know without context of linking what you downloaded.

Isn't that just a link to kbin?

Is there a way to integrate the lemmy community browser into this to be able to Searcy communities across different instances?

That looks amazing. I never had the chance to use Apollo cause I'm an android user, in looking forward to it.

I think it looks great! I’ve been keeping up with them, but the name is great, too.

I’m happy to have an Apollo clone. Apollo was such a masterfully done app.

Oh my god this is gorgeous, I need to know as soon as its available!

Jerboa is definitely a little rough at present with how early the work is on it... it'll be great to have different options!

Never used Apollo, but great news to have multiple ways to interact.

About the app being proprietary or open source it shouldn't matter. The foundation is federated community, the ways to interact can be federated too. Mix of open source and proprietary.

Looking awesome! Apollo user here, so you know my excitement is through the roof!

This is great, be able to access both Kbin and Lemmy from one app would be so much easier.

I know it's early days yet to asking about features but just wondered if you plan to have a built-in image/video/gif player so thay you don't have to external sites to view content?

Never used the og app dye to being an android user but I'll definitely give this one a shot.

What makes this different from/better than Jerboa? I'm a (soon to be former) Reddit Sync user and Jerboa's a little feature bare but it does everything I did on Sync.

Jerboa is Lemmy only, is it not? There currently is no app for Kbin.

I'm viewing this kbin magazine(?) through an identity hosted on lemmy.world (and just double checked that I can post on these kbin-hosted communities through Jerboa), i'm new to this whole federated thing but isn't that supposed to be the point? I thought the protocol that kbin and other instances use was a standard with certain compliance and the whole "cross-federation" thing meant that as long as your "home" and the place you're browsing are buddy-buddy, you can sign in to whatever to look at whatever (and if you wanted your "home" to literally be a raspberry pi in your closet, it can be).

So you're currently signed in to the lemmy.world instance. I am signed in to the kbin.social instance. I don't want to recreate my account over on a Lemmy instance just so I can use the Jerboa app or any of the other alternatives.

You are able to post and see posts from kbin due to federation, but you would not be able to log in to a kbin instance on the Jerboa app.

The Artemis App (the app in the OP) will allow users to sign in with EITHER a Lemmy instance or a kbin instance

I hope it has the interactions I've come to love from Sync like "swipe a post away to return to the main feed" .