What's your favorite Lemmy frontend/UI?

HiramFromTheChi@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 87 points –

I'm finding that I like bits and pieces from the various available frontends, but I haven't heavily gravitated towards one in particular.

If you have gravitated towards a specific UI, which one and why?

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On mobile it's Voyager. On desktop it's the default Lemmy UI with the darkly-compact theme. The latter definitely feels like a modern old.reddit.

I'm also using these CSS overrides (using the Stylus extension on Firefox) as darkly-compact's line-height is too small and videos/GIFs stretched too much:

.post-listing {
    line-height: 1.5 !important;
}

video {
    width: 25vw !important;
}

I just got back into Lemmy and Alexandrite is nice. Boost just launched in beta on Android and seems solid and pretty to boot.

I'm very happy Boost is out now. I've been worried the Lemmy version wouldn't be released before the mod workaround for reddit stopped working.

Now I can abandon reddit.

Mod workaround?

If you're the mod of any subreddit, including one you create and set to private from the web interface of reddit, your account is allowed full use of the API even with 3rd party apps.

Everything mostly works as normal besides a couple bugs from an antiquated app/reddit trying to break things. Single images can't be posted but multiple at the same time can, something to do with the integration with the image hosts. NSFW and the bulk of the app work like before though.

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What's the mod workaround?

If you're the mod of any subreddit, including one you create and set to private from the web interface of reddit, your account is allowed full use of the API even with 3rd party apps.

Everything mostly works as normal besides a couple bugs from an antiquated app/reddit trying to break things. Single images can't be posted but multiple at the same time can, something to do with the integration with the image hosts. NSFW and the bulk of the app work like before though.

So if I create a sub and set it private can I use Relay without paying for a subscription?

I've never used Relay so I couldn't say for certain but I believe it wouldn't work in that case. IIRC the Relay app was updated to the subscription model of access like reddit was trying to force on everyone. If that's the case being a mod won't change the hardcoded behavior of the updated app.

This workaround works with Boost without any kind of updating or patching, so if there's a third party app that did what Boost did (stopped updating but left the app otherwise intact) there's probably a fair chance the same process will work. Any of the apps that continued to update or deleted API keys would have a much harder time I'd imagine.

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I’ve settled on Memmy (which I think is iOS only). I like that it’s pretty true — maybe 100% true — to the Lemmy web app’s features but with more of a designer’s eye, I guess. Just a lil’ polish. Not trying to be something the backend isn’t ready for.

Memmy is very buggy and crashes a lot. It was a strong contender 2 months ago. But the developer, by his own admission, can’t be arsed to update it in a timely fashion. In the intervening weeks strong contenders for iOS have arisen. I think Lemma is the most promising, although it’s available via TestFlight at the moment.

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I really like photon. It is very multi-alt friendly, and I can run my own instance of it locally.

Photon's so clean. From a pure design perspective, it might be my favorite.

But after trying Alexandrite, I started missing the paneling. It seems really easy to lose your location on Photon since you gotta click into everything.

Haven't decided between Photon's nicer UI vs. Alexandrite's more convenient UX.

Alexandrite on desktop. Thunder and Liftoff for mobile because they do not look like a clone of Apollo that all the other apps seem to try to emulate.

Haven't tried Liftoff, but Thunder's really clean. Just needs more features. In due time.

yeah are we the only ones that think apollo is clunky and gross and everyone emulating it is the same?

I'm still rocking Jerboa on Android. It has been totally inoffensive, and I'll probably just stick with it until it offends me somehow.

Lmao same. A couple months ago it would crash sometimes (which might have been an issue with me or my device), but not anymore. I haven't tried anything else, but jeroba has served me well so far 乁⁠(⁠ ⁠•⁠_⁠•⁠ ⁠)⁠ㄏ

Voyager and lemm.ee for me.

I like Voyager. But the last week or so, it’s been saying update available. I go to the settings and tell it to update. The app kinda flashes and restarts, and then within a minute it says update available again.

Has anyone else has this happen?

I’m enjoying Mlem for iOS. Quite a few display options and customizations, and runs smoothly. I haven’t totally decided on it yet though, as I am still testing quite a few.

Edit: This post got me to try out some of the apps again, and I think I may actually use Avelon on iOS for now. Seems to be closer to Apollo, which I enjoy.

Check out Voyager too. I’ve been using it for months and it’s almost 1 to 1 Apollo.

If you used Infinity for Reddit, then Eternity for Lemmy is right for you. That's what I use.

Thunder

Seconding Thunder as it is the only Android app I've found that I like the design of and doesn't lag whenever scrolling through loads of image posts.

If you aren't dead set on running FOSS only Boost is a slick running app on Android. Good filtering features and blocking. Everything loads clean and fast. The unpaid version has ads but they are unobtrusive. I barely notice them.

I like that Boost has the option to block instances.

Blocking instances from showing posts in your feed is coming to lemmy officially next update.

Alexandrite on desktop.

Switches up the doom scrolling feel of mobile and makes it feel more like a tool you can use to consume and interact with people and posts. Big part of that is desktop. But alexandrite is rather nice too!

As an avid Boost user for years, I've been using Connect because it was billed as the closest thing to Boost. However, now that Boost is out I've found myself sticking with Connect. I've just grown to love the look and feel of it.

I'm the reverse. I never used Boost for Reddit (relay was my drug of choice) and started with Connect as it was billed as most similar to a lot of the 3rd party Reddit apps. Now that Boost is out I find myself looking it more. I do miss gesture voting though.

Jerboa. It was billed to me as "RIF for lemmy" and that's right on the money. It lacks community browsing right now, though, I go to the web UI for that.

Is community browsing different than community searching? Because Jerboa has Searching.

I am on iOS and I use Liftoff. I actually don’t particularly like the looks of it but it is the ONLY app that can do swipe right anywhere to go back.

It is also the only app which allows for a very large text size span. Most apps just have ultra tiny text on the largest settings and that is just unusable on a mini phone.

There are lots and lots of apps but almost all of them fail on the basics.

I tried many but since Boost came out it has been a game changer.

I'm accessing via kbin through Firefox, with a shortcut 'installed' through the Firefox feature on Android. Started on Kbin, the UI wasn't terrible and didn't change

I bounce between Eternity and Jerboa. Both are really great and I'm happy to see progress being made on them. It's nice to have options!

I really like Photon so far, but I had to tweak the Dark Reader settings a little, as the default look was way to high contrast for me.