What is the best iOS app for Lemmy?

FujiTive@lemmy.fmhy.ml to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 142 points –

As per title, what app are you currently using? Why do you think it's the best one? I've seen a lot of app being developed (just to mention a few: Mlem, Memmy and Thunder) and I can't decide what to use

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I like Mlem because it's a native iOS app developed in Swift and SwiftUI for everyone to be performant, beautiful, and accessible!

But I'm on the Mlem Team, so maybe I'm a bit biased :P

Follow updates here: Mlem App for Lemmy

Your name is purple for me on Mlem

in Mlem, certain types of users have a modified username style. see if you can spot them all!

I love Mlem and use it almost all the time. I’m missing if I have a notification (but that for sure is in the pipeline) but I miss one more thing: saving pictures on my phone. For these things I switch to the safari version.

both messages (and notifications) and improved image handling are upcoming features (per the release notes/post). stay tuned!

its a very good looking app, unfortunately the scrolling is very stuttery for me on my iphone13 pro compared to memmy

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I use Memmy and I love it, although it is still in Beta release and may not be able to join the beta. The dev is super good at improving it and fixing bugs

I'm currently trying both Mlem and Memmy, they are both great! I feel like Memmy have more features but the interface of Mlem feels more like Apollo (♥️).

Same boat. I think I’ll prefer Mlem in the long run but the Memmy dev is just cranking out updates like nobody’s business so it’s a lot more functional right now.

Afaik the mlem dev is stopping development

They are just moving to a new TestFlight account. Main dev is stepping back but there are still contributors.

The initial creator left the project this week; but there are 8-ish people on the project. They released a new version after he left, with a bunch of new features, so stuff is still going on.

Memmy is my favorite thus far, but Mlem isn’t far behind

Memmy for me too. Their philosophy is to make it operate like Apollo

Memmy all day. I have both Memmy and Mlem and Memmy started later and is already more polished and feature rich. The dev is exceptionally responsive.

There are a bunch of options each with their pros and cons, here’s what I’ve found so far:

Mlem

  • Feels very Apollo like with things like slide to upvote and reply
  • Doesn’t seem to be able to handle inline images and media (so you sometimes miss post information)
  • Switching to new communities is not intuitive (you have to click the community name and type with the “Subscribed” toggle pane open)
  • No guides on how Markdown works
  • No message inbox

Memmy

  • Has an inbox (not something I’ve seen from the others)
  • Has Apollo like slide interactions
  • Easy to find and switch communities
  • Text is a little too small
  • Found a couple of visual bugs (obviously this is all very beta!)

Liftoff

  • Seems to show all the post information you could want (community it was posted too, which community that user is part of, etc)
  • Feels a little bit like the official reddit app
  • No Apollo like slide interactions
  • Some interesting choices when trying to find communities (showing the full sidebar)
  • Colours are a little constrasty
  • A couple of UI bugs
  • I don’t love the rounded corners on everything out of the box

Thunder

  • Pretty polished
  • Slide interactions are great
  • Nice Markdown editor
  • Not found any graphical bugs
  • Some UI elements (subbing / unsubbing from a community) aren’t always clear
  • Written in flutter so may not give a true “native” experience

Personally I think I’m gonna stick with Thunder for a bit, but I’m swapping daily at this point.

Given that any development on these really only kicked into gear in the last few weeks everything these devs are doing is incredible, they’ve all come a long way in such a short time!

I can’t find a single one of those in the app store, all they all in beta or some developer mode?

On iOS you'll find them in TestFlight, for android on their githubs

They’re all in test flight, an online search will usually throw up their GitHub page with either a link to their lemmy communities and the TestFlight sign up page.

Just want to add my two cents here - https://wefwef.app is absolutely fantastic on both Android and iPhone and it's a PWA. It's better than any other client I have used (I have used most if not all available rn)

Wow, this looks just like Apollo!

Interesting. I'm still waiting for Sync for Lemmy since I'm used to that on mobile, but I always used Apollo on my iPad. (Well, I used it since Reddit acquired Alien Blue..)

Glad to see this mentioned here. Wefwef is fantastic and not enough people know about it. It's the client that made me really dive into lemmy.

Just added it to my homepage. I’m surprised how good it is.

I’ll have to try it a bit more, but it might become my default until Mlem is more fully developed.

I just added it to the home screen, and so far, it's my favorite between Mlem and using the default web interface. Thanks for mentioning it!

Overall it's pretty good, but it doesn't support the android back button which is really annoying. If you hit back it just closes the app.

The latest deploy respects android's back button! Might have to force close the app/site a couple times to see the newest version. Sorry about that. Haven't tested Android until today 😅

Not really good on Android, the ui doesn't match.

Author here, check back soon! I'm prioritizing core functionality and bugfixes for the next few days/week, but wefwef uses Ionic so once things settle down a bit it's not that hard to get Android styles supported.

Hey, thanks for the app! Wefwef is unreal, it feels like a native app because everything is so smooth. It's my favorite one, and I never thought I would like a PWA over a native one.

Enjoying it so far! Current wish list is:

  • Creating posts
  • Following users
  • System notifications

Creating posts is the next priority! Also, following users? You can do that?!

System notification will be harder, because it depends on Lemmy adding support for the Web Push API. There'll be foreground notifications - but background ones is the part that depends on Lemmy.

Haha thanks I need to RTFM. Thanks so much for your work on this!!

Hi I would love to be able to edit my comments from the same drag menu which has the reply functionality if possible!

Am I blind or there is no dark theme or customization available?

It respects my system dark mode setting on iOS/iPadOS 17, fwiw

Post loading when add to Home Screen gets a black screen

This doesn't happen for me, maybe try making it again?

Same thing sadly

Even turned off Hyperweb and content blocking

Hey, wefwef author here, sorry about that issue. I haven't seen that. If you can provide a reproduction I'd be more than happy to look into it. https://github.com/aeharding/wefwef

I added it again and did the same thing. How can I provide my info?

Oh, just device info. I assume Android? What version? And then what name and version of the browser you're using?

Should be able to find that in settings.

Currently using Mlem and Memmy, but been finding myself using Memmy more often. I prefer the brown theme over the completely black/dark theme. Still some quirks to fix but the UI reminds me of Apollo so far.

Excited to try out Artemis since I also have a kbin.social account.

I am also looking forward to Artemis for kbin!

I’m using Memmy and Mlem. So far I’m liking Memmy a bit better because I think it has more features (though part of that is likely just me being an idiot and missing things in plain sight). I feel like Memmy is easier to navigate, and it displays useful post/comment information better. That said, there are definitely a few things that make more sense on Mlem. I also really like how close Mlem is to Apollo. Right now, they’re both fairly buggy in their own ways (Mlem more than Memmy), so I just use whichever one has the feature I need at the time.

Liftoff is really good http://lemmy.world/c/liftoff

I really like the look of Liftoff but I can’t seem to interact as well with other instances it keeps saying I need accounts on other instances which seems to defeat the point of federation. Anyone else had this issue?

Same for me, even searching only allows you to chose from a dropdown with your instances only. So no good for me but a shame because it's a very good one !

I am currently using a PWA of discuss.tchncs.de because they have a sort by top of the hour, six hours, and 12 hours, which is awesome

I am alternating between Mlem[0] and wefwef[1] as I want to fill the void that Apollo has left.

I use Mlem for the fluidity (though it still has a lot of stuttering, but really good for a pre-release) and interactions (e.g., swipe to previous screen, vibrations).

I use wefwef for its support for messages and closer UI parity to Apollo.

Having said that, I am open to using a better/alternative UX and will start experimenting when these apps have their releases on the App Store.

[0] https://github.com/mormaer/Mlem

[1] https://github.com/aeharding/wefwef

Liftoff is the only one I’ve found that lets you hide read posts like the website does, which is the most important feature for me.

I’m using Memmy more than Mlem as I like the look and gestures better plus the “me” and “OP” tags are an improvement over Apollo’s (which is saying something). I’ve been contributing to the github on missing features. Also added the wefwef PWA as it’s messaging is good (Memmy’s isn’t complete yet). Although, Liftoff’s is feature complete from what I can tell.

The speed at which Lemmy clients have been developed is insane. Very impressed with the communities at work.

So far, I’ve tried Mlem, Memmy and Limbo.

I am liking Memmy the best!

I just use the standard browser version as a PWA. It works pretty well. Hanging out for Slide as that’s what I used for the other place.

I've tried a few on the Android side and Thunder is best so far so that's the one I would give a go first if I were you!

Have you also tried liftoff?

I did ! Very solid as well and probable a close second place, but :

  • The UI and themes are not there yet for me
  • Even though I'm connected it keeps asking me to log in to interract with stuff so not usable for me at the moment.
  • Search is only on added instances ?

Anyway I'm keeping all the apps installed and will follow their developments, try to give feedback. We are very close to having good app options. API will switch off soon and we have to be ready if we want to get "normal" folks.

Thunder seems nice but for me it's a little too minimal. But it's just personal taste this