For those who lurk on Reddit - my read-only, ad-free, open source Reddit viewer RDX is better than ever now

overdevs@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 684 points –
rdx.overdevs.com

I am posting the updates here because most of the users of RDX came from this community only.

Multiple updates have been made to https://rdx.overdevs.com since I last posted here including:

  1. Importing subscriptions from Reddit
  2. Saving posts for later
  3. Share button
  4. hls/dash videos
  5. better search

Previous posts:

My reddit web viewer still works! Story: When reddit killed 3rd party apps, I uploaded a web viewer I have been using for myself to Github pages for everyone to use...

If you want to lurk on Reddit, you can use this web reader I built for myself when I got inspired by the Apollo app years ago

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So, are spez and his goons gonna come after you now?

If it's popular enough maybe. For now it's averaging 17-18k visits monthly so not even a drop in the ocean. But yeah i can't post the direct link to rdx on Reddit. I have to post Github link.

This is about the best thing I could have hoped for, so I really hope it doesn't get taken down! (but then again, the for-profit Fandom wiki farm hasn't taken down Breezewiki or other mirror sites yet, so maybe corporations figure this sort of thing isn't worth the effort to take down.🤞

Added themes to RDX so you can style it your way.

I am getting a blank page.

In the console:

Access to XMLHttpRequest at 'https://www.reddit.com/r/all/.json?limit=20' from origin 'https://rdx.overdevs.com' has been blocked by CORS policy: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource.

Tested with both ungoogled-chromium and firefox without cookies

There's an addon for Firefox to disable CORS for certain sites. Need to use that.

Same issue in safari iOS. I don’t want to use an extension for that.

is ok to have workarounds, but i am pretty sure this can be implemented on the app side too. Thanks for the hint tho, at least if i need it i can use it

I've also made an application for something like this. The only way to change this on the app side is to route all Reddit calls through the app server itself instead of doing it on the browser, essentially making the app a complete proxy. The only thing it does is increase traffic requirements and require everyone to host their own instance.

An addon to disable CORS just for this site is really easy and imo the most sensible approach.

Same for me. Won't use with a workaround, this should be fixed

I would love to fix this, most people who have this issue are using enhanced privacy/tracking protection settings that block the reddit url or have VPN/proxies turned on. Unfortunately reddit blocks that traffic in the guise of preventing spam/scrapping.

Now I can put up a server and bypass the traffic through my VPS and make the reddit content available to rdx(which libreddit used to do before reddit tightened their API). But soon enough they will ban my server, I will have to buy another and this keeps going on and on. That will be too much effort for too little gain.

However if there are already some servers that make the reddit JSON available through some proxy, I am all for adding it to the app. However I couldn't find anything that will even last a week.

Hey thank you for the response!

Ahh that makes perfect sense, completely understand. Maybe making and linking a short guide at the bottom of the page would be helpful? Something to say "Not Seeing Anything?" And then it links to like a paragraph or two explaining why.

Just a thought for not so bright users like myself :s

Something to say “Not Seeing Anything?” And then it links to like a paragraph or two explaining why.

Done!

It doesn't seem to work for me. When I put a sub in there I get a blank page.

Check the console of your browser. Browser's aggressive privacy controls may be automatically blocking the json call to reddit's api. (right click, inspect element)

Does not work on android with Firefox at all

it does if you disable tracking protection for the website (the setting's available when you tap the padlock icon next to the URL).

I just opened a link in Firefox, it worked. Even works with install function

Doesn’t work for me on mobile (IOS) too, unfortunately. I have adguard, firefox focus extensions on safari, and use Mullvad’s DNS blocking. I’ll have to go check which of them is breaking it, but I hope I won’t need to turn off anything huge for it to work. Either way, thanks for this, I’ve been using SinkIT for reddit to get a better mobile viewing experience, and this may be a better alternative.

I hit “disable content blockers” in iOS Safari and I could then view it perfectly. I left tracking protection on, I don’t think it bothers it

It isn’t the browser being aggressive. It’s a protection called CORS (Cross Origin Resource Sharing) and you should configure your API to allow it.

There are likely loads of guides whatever language / framework you are using. Users shouldn’t need to disable CORS protections to use your site

The „buy me a coffee“ link seems to work, though…

The link appears below all the content that is loaded. Since there is some setting in your browser blocking the loading of one XHR request to Reddit the content doesn't load at all and the BMAC links appears at top. Donating is completely optional and I don't expect people who can't see the content will donate anyway. However once in a while when someone donates I get some satisfaction that people are using what I built and are happy with it.

Though I agree the link is too big and feels like an AD I will make it smaller, or you can just fork the repo and remove the link entirely.

This is really cool but i'm not going back.

The only time I'll accept going to Reddit is when the information I'm searching for links there.

That's where I've been at as well, and even then I try other sources first since now many times comments are deleted. Mine included, lol

This is perfect! I lurk on mobile, and their mobile site is horrendous. I’ll be using this from now on!

You can add it to your homescreen and then the navigation bar stays fixed so it's easier to navigate that way. Also it uses localstorage to save your settings/subs etc and ios clears the localstorage after 7 days of the last visit to any website. Adding to homescreen prevents that too, on Android localstorage is saved permanently.

Added themes to RDX so you can style it your way.

Very nice! Thanks for creating this. I miss some of the subreddits I used to subscribe to.

How do I import subscriptions from Reddit on RDX?

All is explained here - https://rdx.overdevs.com/settings.html if you need any help even then you can reply to this comment.

Thanks for the reply :) Do you know if it is possible to access the settings page after adding the site to the home screen on iOS? Importing the subscriptions in the browser and then adding the page to the home screen does not seem to transfer the subscriptions unfortunately.

Just scroll to the end of the first page? The link is there just below the Buy Me A Coffee banner.

Ah there it is! Sorry, I must have gotten so used to apps having “infinite scroll” that I didn’t even consider to look at the bottom of the page. Thanks a bunch!

Just added themes to RDX so you can style it your way (colors and fonts).

I'm having trouble with the bookmarklet. Is there any other way to get an export of my subs or get the expected format for ingestion?

Added themes to RDX so you can style it your way (colors and fonts).

People are still interested in Reddit here?

If Reddit had a good UI I would return in a heartbeat. I'm sick of small, practically inactive communities for hobbies and these shallow, poorly developed calls for the end of capitalism being shoved down my throat.

Well cheers to reddit for having a bad UI then, we love having you here.

I really hope Lemmy grows out to also fill in the small inactive communities, a social media without corporate incentives to milk out the users has so much potential.

Well it's a choice between freedom or corporate control. Freedom is never flashy at first, it only thrives when people embrace it.

Reddit has way more shallow poorly developed calls for the end of Capitalism.

Reddit also has enough large communities that I don't need to participate in the communities I don't like. With lemmy, it's either small communities or the constant braindead takes.

Is this a popular opinion? I'm sort of shocked at the amount of upvotes this got tbh. Lemmy fulfills my reddit cravings, and honestly feels like a more mature community to me

3 more...

Unfortunately some studios, companies, etc. use it as an official or semi-official forum. I still lurk on AMD's subreddit, for example.

Which is funny when you compare it to the early days of Reddit, where people associated with a product were specifically prohibited from being in charge of their subreddit. It was to prevent the people who make a product from silencing criticism. Like if there’s a TV show, the show runners and studio weren’t allowed to moderate the community. If the show is hot garbage, the studio couldn’t use mods to silence the criticism via post/comment deletion, bans, etc… The entire point was for the subs to be run by the people who consume said product.

But that has been entirely flipped, where there are official subs run by corporate PR firms.

Yeah. Lemmy is tiny and doesn't have the community to be good yet.

I'm happy to be in both places for now, Reddit for more in-depth and interesting conversations. Lemmy is getting there but there's many times when posts in my hobbies have no replies or 1 or 2. The community just isn't there unless I want a glorified news rss feed.

3 more...

Curious, why the cloudflare analytics?

I wanted to see how many people are using this, the analytics are anonymous. I will switch it to a better privacy friendly analytics service soon.

This brings me to a conversation that I wish more people talked about: I'm totally fine with (and even like the concept of) anonymous analytics. It gives the website owner insight onto what the aggregate is doing, helping the website respond to demands.

But the problem is when the analytics providers themselves abuse that data and sell it in some way.

I know you're not the owner of the project, but for your knowledge this is a static page hosted on Github Pages. There's no "responding to demands" like a traditional web app!

What I meant for "responding to demands" is if a lot of people click on a certain feature, then you can expand that feature.

Any reason I should use this over something like Stealth? Have to be honest with you, I've been using it for a good while and I can tell right away that it appears a better experience than this.

Also sorry if that is offensive, it's not my intention, I'm just bad at being polite sometimes...

Any reason I should use this over something like Stealth?

From my quick google search I can see that Stealth is an Android App ( i can't seem to find an iOS version) while rdx is a website you can fire up in any browser. if apps are your thing Stealth is certainly better. Anyway, Stealth and RDX both are open source and free. You can use whatever you like.

Awesome.

Works on Brave but not LibreWolf for me, and does not work on either when using a VPN.

It literally just makes one API call to fetch the data from reddit, that could have been blocked by privacy settings of your browser. You can look at the browser console for more information.

Reddit these days tries to detect hosting services and VPNs and blocks certain API calls from them.

I've been selfhosting this for months, it works great. Only thing is that most of the time I scroll through the same post like 20 times a day, i don't know why.

One reason could be you being subscribed to a dead subreddit. See what it does when you subscribe to subreddits is create a Multireddit of all the subs. Now if a dead sub's last post was some months ago t will keep showing in the feed until you unsubscribe.

I isually browse Popular or All, and it mostly happen when I click on Next Page. I'll try unsuscribing from all the subs.

This is absolutely amazing, the actual Reddit site is so buggy on mobile. half the time can't even get it to scroll or show more comments. this will circumvent the need for Reddit entirely when looking for specific or niche info. thanks for sharing!

Update: Added themes to RDX so you can style it your way (colors and fonts).

This is wonderful! I occasionally go back out of curiosity (aka to confirm it’s still trash) but refuse to engage. I’d hoped I could find an extension that would prevent accidentally upvoting or commenting. This is much better. I’d give you gold but “we don’t do that here.”

Kudos, Dev!

Thank you so much. Also you can use any browser redirect extension to redirect reddit links to rdx. match https://www.reddit.com/r/(.*)/comments/(.*) redirect to - https://rdx.overdevs.com/comments.html?url=$0

match

https://www.reddit.com/r/(.*)/comments/(.*)

redirect to -

https://rdx.overdevs.com/comments.html?url=$0

Added code blocks for ya

Added themes to RDX so you can style it your way (colours and fonts).

Dude, get out of my head. I’d just been on and stumbled onto themes while looking for a way to better format for desktop. Love the addition.

Was just on my way here to pull you leg and say you’re single-handedly responsible for my consuming large amounts of Reddit content again.

Haha!

looking for a way to better format for desktop What are you looking for? more content on the desktop. The width of the content is fixed to 500 now because that's good enough to read on larger monitors. Thinking of making it 700px. Any other suggestions?

Does rdx only support card style view or is there a way to toggle it to classic?

For now yeah. I will add a compact/classic view toggle in the next update.

Does it require an account on reddit

Nope. It doesn't require an account anywhere.

doesn't require an account

It also doesn’t allow using an account, right?

I’m impressed by the way — nice work!

Awesome!

Is it possible to collapse comments?

Edit: figured it out, double tap to collapse comments.

Just a double tap(mobile) or double click(pc) would do that. I know it's annoying when copying text on desktop, I will add a fix for that.

Added themes to RDX so you can style it your way (colors and fonts).

Awesome!

Quick question, is it possible to open a reddit link in RDX?

For example a reddit link from Google search results.

Thank you so much. Also you can use any browser redirect extension to redirect reddit links to rdx. match https://www.reddit.com/r/(.*)/comments/(.*) redirect to - https://rdx.overdevs.com/comments.html?url=$0

Awesome, thanks!

That makes searching reddit usable again.

P.s. you have your markdown reversed with the links - the text needs to be in the square brackets with the link in the parentheses. [text](https://example.com)

This is really cool, thank you for making it. I opened in Firefox on my Android and used the Install feature FF has, and it's really slick.

So uh any plans for nsfw browsing? i liked browsing random or multiple nsfw subs

NSFW is enabled by default, just go to any nsfw sub you know for and click allow this content.

Hey - thanks for doing this. There’s one sub for a specialty 3d printer I want to keep tabs on but the sub is “unreviewed“ and unavailable on the web as it may contain inappropriate content (it doesn’t, unless you count people bitching about component troubleshooting). It’s available on your gateway. It seems to bypass all content restrictions, convenient for mobile browsing.

Will there be a .onion version?

The biggest feature I missed when they killed libreddit

I will have to figure that one out, may take some time. Or if you already know how to put some html pages on an onion server you can copy the files from Github and upload them yourselves, I will link to it happily.

When I opened in my lemmy client (aka works in safari for iOS) it loaded just fine but posts don’t seem to populate when I open in Firefox/firefox focus

Infinite scroll would be a nice optional too

Firefox has enhanced privacy protection that block loading of the single reddit json file.

Infinite scroll would be a nice optional too

For now, you can go to the settings page and change the number of posts displayed per page.

Ah that’s helpful! Any thoughts on why it doesn’t work on a vpn?

Edit: I see in another comment that it’s Reddit that blocks vpn traffic. I’ve noticed that lately, lame

Any plans to allow for comment collapsing? It's difficult to jump from parent to parent without a ton of scrolling. Love it so far

double tap any comment to collapse

I see that now. Actually just came here to retract my request. Thanks!

I think it’s intuitive yet it took me a little bit to realize it was possible

Just added themes to RDX so you can style it your way (colors and fonts).

How do you go back to the feed after clicking into a post? I don’t see any kind of back button in the interface. (Trying it as a PWA on iOS.)

Just swipe back from the left edge.

Thanks! This is so much more usable than old.reddit on mobile. I’m a +1 for compact mode but this has earned a place on my home screen for sure.

Guten Tag, das Schreiben einer Abschlussarbeit ist eine wichtige Etappe Ihres Bachelor-Studiums und manchmal braucht man zusätzliche Unterstützung. Ich empfehle Ihnen, sich an Bachelorarbeit Ghostwriter zu wenden, wo erfahrene Autorinnen und Autoren Ihre Arbeit schreiben können, damit Sie sich auf andere wichtige Aspekte Ihres Studiums konzentrieren können.