Boost for Lemmy is happening!

Incendiary@lemmy.world to Android@lemmy.world – 1471 points –
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Great news. I'm probably more likely to use Sync, but seeing not one but two well regarded Android Reddit apps migrate to Lemmy is just bloody awesome.

Really missing Relay :(

Relay was the best. There were so many great simple features that a surprising number of Lemmy apps are missing

I hope Relay for Lemmy becomes a thing. My fav for years.

Same, love Relay. I ditched the official long ago because of their tracking pixels. My pihole was having a heart attack.

I'm not missing Relay's trackers in the paid app.

Thunder feels pretty close. Turn on compact mode + thumbnails on the right and it's visually almost identical to how I had Relay set up. It even has the short swipe to upvote, long swipe to downvote actions.

https://github.com/hjiangsu/thunder

Thunder opens articles in Samsung Internet Browser of all things. I can't figure out how to change it to Firefox or Chrome. Otherwise I like it OK, although I wish I could turn off the animations

If one thing the Fediverse have thought me so far is that you can use them all at the same time ;)

Is Sync migrating too?

Yes, it's going to be called Sync for Lemmy and preregistration opened two days ago. It most likely will still be some weeks before it becomes available. Ljdawson stated the target is 6 weeks, so that would be somewhere in the middle of August.

Same. I used Boost for a while until I found Sync. I imagine the same will happen here.

I think most, if not all the major 3rd party app devs are working on something for Lemmy now. Reddit has not only devalued themselves, but made the Fediverse 100% more accessable. I'm a Boost user so this is awesome news. There are so many Lemmy apps in the pipeline. I've tried Connect Jeroba and Thunder. At this point they're all newish, and pretty much the same. Hopefully all this app competition will lead to new innovation. Lemmy users are the winners here. We're witnessing the dawn of the Lemmy app wars.

Yea I love the ui of Boost, I just can't get used to these other clients. It's going to be way more easier to navigate lemmy.

Whilst waiting for the boost app to be available, I tried wefwef and its pretty fucking sweet.

Link for android home install is:

https://wefwef.app/settings/install

It is really neat. And a bit weird to have some Apple looking icons on my android! LOL+

Fuck yes. Boost was my favorite reddit app.

Mine too! I've tried other but always came back to Boost.

Same! I was always Boost on Android, Apollo on the iPad. So excited to hear about Boost for Lemmy!

Boost is so good I explicitly just made this account to use it in case kbin support isn't planned. Can't wait to pay for premium again and feel like nothing changed.

Between Boost and Sync, Lemmy is emerging as a promising option because there's going to be multiple strong 3rd party apps to engage with.

Literally my two favorite (former) Reddit clients by a wide margin. This makes me happy.

It's a good thing too, because the native feed on my mobile browser is a pain to try to deal with.

Reddit user for over 10 years, here for good. I was a long time Sync user and at some point I switched to Boost and I'm not sure why because I also purchased Sync Pro at some point. My two favorite Android apps being developed to work with Lemmy made me create a new account here and I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.

This damn near brought a tear to my eye. I no longer miss reddit at all.

Oh yeah, this is definitely hot! Shoot me up there into the endless fediverse! It's time to discover all those niche galaxies riding a nice vessel!

That is weirdly poetic. Sailing the sea of information to discover the pockets of humanity there have gathered together to scrape out an existence. Bound only by a common idea, they have formed their own home far away for the popular places others have settled.

We are the explorers. Show us your culture, teach us your ways, and we'll take the story back with us to spread word of the strange and new. We map the path as we walk it and light the way for those who follow.

Your place is waiting for you.

As a long term user of Boost for reddit, I'm so hyped by this now!!!!

I'm in! Unless rif goes to lif, in which case cheers all around :)

first Sync, now Boost? Let's funking go!!!

This is Lemmy now, you can swear if its not targeted

I know, but I find it more fun this way

Not targeted? Can't I randomly just tell you to go F yourself and it'd be fine?

I'm registered for this.... incidentally it's the first time I've ever seen pre-reg for an app before lol

Boost wasn't just my favorite Reddit app but my favorite App in general. I love the clean design so much. When the Lemmy App is released I will launch the Rocket to the Moon

WAIT WHAT THE FUCK WHAT!?

Last time I checked dev wasn't too convinced of it!!!!!

Ikr? I was under the impression that Mayayo wasn't interested but he probably saw the potential even more so when other former reddit 3rd party apps are switching, potentially bringing a lot of users.

Dude don't posts screen shots. i kept trying to press back on your image.

https://libranet.de/display/0b6b25a8-2863-8e31-25ae-d40428649419

lmao why did this make me laugh so much

โ€œI personally failed at following my own recommendation several times this week and I feel bad about it.โ€ hahahah

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As a boost user this is weird... So many people were asking in the subreddit and he never answered. I'm glad it's happening

Iirc he said he wasn't going to work on a lemmy client earlier. Glad he changed his mind.

I wouldn't be surprised if RIF springs up too. I think devs are starting to see the magic happening here and it'd be easy'ish to port an existing app.

I thought Rubรฉn said he was going to move onto smaller apps instead of making a Lemmy app?

Regardless, I'm glad this is happening!

I'm sure I read that as well. Hopefully he's had a think and decided that a Lemmy app would be really worthwhile. Excited to see what he creates, as I've used Boost for years and thought it was awesome.

I do get the โ€œdistributedโ€ nature of networks and the underlying philosophy, but only if thereโ€™s a common interface where lemmy/mastodon or other similar network created accounts can be used seamlessly in addition to the current behavior.

I think that's what KBin is trying to address.

Thanks for the link! A content aggregator is not addressing the actual problem statement. Especially not useful for now when they donโ€™t serve up-to-date content: https://postimg.cc/218LVQdF

Just noticed โ€œtoootโ€ on Apple App Storeโ€ฆ Iโ€™ll pass on that.

Edit: Things are shaky with kbin read authorโ€™s announcement: https://apollo.town/post/34644

This will actually make lemmy usable on mobile for me! I've been using boost for years, and I really can't wait.

I paid for Boost premium for Reddit a long time ago and will do it again just to support it here.

Same. And when I saw they would be shutting down, I sent $10. Considering how often I used it, it was money well spent.

Yes this is great! Between this and wefwef which is Apollo lookalike right now for iOS ppl this is great! Just need everyone over to Lemmy now but that'll prob take decades

Saw the post about Apollo going offline and someone added the info for wefwef. Preregistered for Boost but so far wefwef is working great.

Edit: meant to write Boost not Apollo.

Wait, is Apollo coming to Lemmy???

Sorry. I should clarify. I was reading a thread about Apollo going offline and Boost as an alternative so a preregisterd for Boost. I wouldn't turn down an official Apollo app for Lemmy though.

Ah, got it.

I would love to see Christian port to Lemmy, just for the PR. There would be a lot of coverage if it happened, and the exodus would increase.

Iโ€™m dying to see Huffmann eat a fat turd at IPO.

Some said that they had read Christian acknowledging Lemmy and that he said if it maintains this kind of user growth, he might work on Apollo for Lemmy.

I might live to see Apollo for iPad after all!

Never knew pre-registration for apps was a thing. Signed up for this one, looking forward to giving it a go

it's a thing mostly used for games but games and other apps are fundamentally identical

I fucking knew it, in one of the last updates in the menu it went from "find subreddit" to "find community"

I will launch that ๐Ÿš€ as soon as the app is available. Pre-registration is done, let's goooooooo.

Boost was my most used app for several years. Really excited for this and to see the Fediverse grow.

This makes me so happy! I've been maining boost for almost six years now and was so bummed when the dev announced he wasn't going to be working on a Lemmy app. Looks like he changed his mind!

I am thrilled, Boost has been the best Reddit experience for me since I stopped loving Bsconreader. I don't even remember what my problem with it was, I think it was crashing or.... something, haha.

Boost ended up being a UI I preferred significantly, and I never looked back! This is gonna be FANTASTIC, where do I throw my money?!

Nice! Really hoping BaconReader follows suit soon as well ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿป

Baconreader was my #1 for 10 years. I really hope it will find a new home here. (or anywhere decent).

Boost was my #2, so this Lemmy place might just work out after all.

Now time for apollo haha Although wefwef is already brilliant

It's the reason I finally decided to create a Lemmy account. Been a Boost user for many years.

This will actually make lemmy usable on mobile for me! I've been using boost for years, and I really can't wait.

I never used Boost for Reddit, but with this many people singing it's praises... ***BOOST FOR LEMMY, LET'S GOOO! *** Sorry, Connect. You're still cool tho

I literally just discovered Connect after trying in vain to get Jerboa to work ahah. I'm so used to Boost, I can't wait for it to be inolimented here.

This is awesome news. Preferred Boost over Sync/Relay/Rif etc.

How does this compare to liftoff?

Been enjoying that quite a bit

Liftoff is awesome!

And doesn't have ads, or want to track your location.

Boost looks nice but the trackers completely turned me off using it for reddit...I'm kind of surprised to see so few people care (especially here!)

This was my fav reddit app. Used it for years. Very excited!

Thank you Ruben!

It seems like the future for Lemmy is pretty bright with all these amazing apps switching over.

It's a shame that Christian decided to not develop Apollo for Lemmy for the time being. I bet that would also convince a fair share of users to abandon ship.

Itโ€˜ll be great to see that icon on my screen again! This is amazing!

I changed the liftoff icon to the boost icon just to get me through.

Haha I did the same. That muscle memory tapping that icon too hard to shift.

Awesome, used to use the reddit version and really liked it, switched from the official app and never looked back. Excited to try it out when it releases (also this is my first comment on lemmy, been lurking for a week or so but I think it's time I start interacting)

No waaaaay! The dev said it's not happening, I'm so glad to see he's actually doing it!

I was so happy when I found this out. I hope Lemmy gets the support.

Android users desperately need a better app for browsing Lemmy than Jerboa. Boost and Sync may just be that app.

It's not as good as my old reddit app, but I'm liking Jerboa

What app did you use? Boost was great on android

Liftoff is the best one so far IMO.

Liftoff has been a bit slow for me today, but I imagine they're getting a massive amount of traffic that wasn't necessarily in the plans. Or maybe that's just Lemmy in general.

I am incredibly happy to see this. Boost has been my absolutely favorite choice for a very long time

Can't wait. Boost is my most used app on Android and this will be great.

Great news! Love seeing the Lemmyverse continue to expand!

I saw that "subreddit" was changed to "communties" in the app recently so I was quite certain that a version for Lemmy is being at least experimented with.

Ah, yes, this is the one.

Just registered for it. While "rifisfun golden platinum" was my favorite reddit app for my phone, Boost is definitely my favorite when using my Android tablet.

Are there any good iOS apps coming?

Iโ€™m using wefwef and Memmy for nowโ€ฆ wefwef is an Apollo clone

Just installed wefwef and it's great! Really off putting name tbh but looks exactly like Apollo

Yeah there is no name thatโ€™s good but there is an entire marketing time behind Redditโ€ฆ those are one men projects where marketing is def not their strength but itโ€™s ok for now

I already see a post from the dev on their community asking how to rename the app so I guess this feedback is coming from a lot of people. Currently "Voyager" is winning and that would be step in the right direction imo.

Wow.. I just uninstalled Boost after midnight. Looks like it will be back soon :)

Great news! I loved boost for reddit.

I still can't believe spez did this. And continues to do this. What a prick

Actually if this causes decentralized social media to get more popular we should be thankful lol

Maybe, But it was nice to have a platform with all kinds of people and all kinds of topics in 1 place. I will miss that aspect of reddit

if lemmy.world gets a large enough userbase, it might become just like that

I love how a day ago he said he wasn't going to make an app and then changed his mind that quick. So damn excited!

Nice! Really hoping BaconReader follows suit soon as well ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿป

I was a RIF user and would like to see something similar over here. RIF feed is over. Rip.

On connect. Once I changed my settings it's very comparable to the RIF setup I had.

This is so exciting! Boost was my app of choice for the old place. I'm glad to see this here.

Anyone use both sync and boost? I had used RIF so trying to get a feel for how each had worked before leaning towards one

Yes I have. There both good it legit comes down to personal preference. I preferred boos between the 2 but Sync is just as good.

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This is good news. Boost was my favorite until I switched to infinity.

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Nice, Boost was my reddit app of choice

I've been kind of expecting this move from a community person like Mr. Mayayo. I'm going to launch the rocket in a heart beat !

Sync for Lemmy is coming too and that's how I heard of Lemmy! Excited to be on a fresh internet community, feels nostalgic in a way even though it's brand new

Best friggin news all day.

I've tried just about every android app for reddit and have firmly been a boost user since I tried it years ago. I was metlntally prepping myself for sync but now I may not have to!

This is great. Lemmy needs more 3P apps, as most people don't like using websites directly.

Hell yeah, another great app joining the migration. Can't wait to get my hands on it. Keep up the great work.

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Boost is my #1 app for Reddit. Such a beautiful and loved all the features in it.

I really like Lemmy so far even though it isnโ€™t perfect yet. Adding a 3rd party app will make using this even easier.

I'm using Connect for Lemmy currently and it seems to be working okay. Just takes some getting used to, of course.

As of the last update. It has surpassed Jerboa for me. So my ranking for best app at present is connect, jerboa and liftoff.

Jerboa is butter smooth if you are using an instance that is updated to 18. But unusable if you are in an instance that is still in version 17 (beehaw)

I've still yet to try jerboa for the reasons you mentioned, but otherwise agree with your ranking.

I'm not too invested in any of them since I expect to switch to boost once it gets here.

Yeah, im on boost on reddit. And curiously it's july 2 and it's still working. Did mayayo ever sya that he will pay pay for the api costs?

Another former booster using Connect. Not bad for being such an early stage product.

Same here. I actually really like the swipe gestures, I think it's one of the only things that Boost is missing.

I was using it for last few years, and it's one of the best 3rd part app for reddit.

I'm a total noob so using lemmy was a real challenge to get started, but I downloaded wefwef today and it's basically just like Reddit, very easy to use and feels very comfortable.

Connect for lemmy is also the same experience as reddit. It's little unstable like any other lemmy app but I don't miss reddit while using it feels like i am just using a different app for reddit ๐Ÿ˜๐Ÿ˜

Isn't wefwef in alpha with some missing functionality? Eg: editing posts hasn't been added etc.

Each time I open that thing, there is a new major version update pushed, so I believe it won't take long for them to fill in the gaps with this pace.

Fair enough, I'm replying via wefwef, thought I'd give it a go...

I just moved here from Reddit and I'm missing Boost already. Really looking forward to this!

Is this real??? He said he wasn't going to do this ๐Ÿค”

He said he would not be doing Boost for Lemmy, and that he would focus on smaller apps:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BoostForReddit/comments/14ehiqs/comment/jow1le5

And he only registered the Lemmy community to prevent impersonation:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BoostForReddit/comments/14ehiqs/comment/jouvuok

I wonder if he put this on the store as a placeholder to also prevent impersonation?


EDIT: Damn, just saw the screenshots. Either this is a very elaborate placeholder, or it's really happening!

That's great, was using boost for a long time for reddit, hopefully it'll help me navigate lemmy a little easier.

awesome! boost was my favorite reddit app, im glad the developer sees a future in the fediverse!

Contains ads โ€ข In-app purchases

Boost for Reddit was a one off payment to remove all ads and from memory was only a small amount

I'll be more than happy to pay a small fee for the developers work

I actually paid for all Reddit third-party apps with Google Opinion Rewards at some point because I wanted to find the "best" one. Turns out they all looked terrible or didn't have moderation features, so I had to settle with Slide.

I'd also be happy to pay for it if it was open source. Having a free version on F-Droid and a paid one on the Play Store for convenience would be awesome.

Yeah.. fuck that lol. Why would you ruin pefectly good FOSS by knowingly slapping proprietary adware crap on top of it.

I used Boost to browse reddit. I'm definitely getting this when it's out.

"Contains ads" no thank you

It's probably a low one time purchase. Remember it's a top tier third-party app!

If it's anything like Boost for Reddit was, it's unnoticeable. Every 20 or so posts you'll see an ad and just scroll past, no animations or sound. I think I recall seeing a bottom banner? Any other Boost users confirm? I really just ignored it so I can't recall.

My point is, ads were non-obstructive

I've been waiting for it to come out and it just got pushed to my phone today. This is my first comment on Lemmy! Woo! So far it's feeling pretty seamless.

Same. I imagine there hasn't been anything official from Reddit as they are trying to cut off 3rd party apps on phases to avoid a massive drop in traffic.

Think of it as smoothing the transition to increase their odds that people will cave to "peer pressure" and just download the official app.

Wait what, I thought he wasn't doing it, saying he was going to do smaller apps. I guess this is what he meant by "smaller apps"? xD

Yeah, he straight up said he wasn't going to do a Lemmy app, I'm confused.

Why does it have to be so hard to find communities? Trying to add this, but it doesn't show up: https://lemmy.world/c/boostforlemmy

Should I just leave lemm.ee since it has trouble finding every single community?

When browsing communities from other instances you need to modify the link as follows:

https://lemm.ee/c/boostforlemmy@lemmy.world

Such a mess of a URL. I sincerely hope something else comes up to surpass Lemmy/kbin, or that the apps in development hide those kinds of messy bits.

I think the main issue right now is just your unfamiliarity. Once you get used to the the format it makes a lot of sense.

[instance-you-are-on]/c/[community-name]@[instance-it-is-on]

This standardisation has already proven itself for multiple years now, with millions of people using it over on Mastodon. People will get used to it. The "this is unfamiliar and scary to me" reaction goes away as the familiarity develops over time.

Yeah that does make sense now that you've laid it out, but at the same time I couldn't care less about seeing the instance info once I'm subbed to something. Even showing my profile as being @lemmy.world is just cumbersome, lame looking, and ultimately unnecssary for so many users. Could be a useful sorting tool for sure, but it would be cleaner to have the option to hide them altogether, y'know? I'm excited to see what all of the devs do with this new platform!

I think at the current point in time it's useful for teaching early adopters and enthusiasts. A simplified format might develop at later stages when aiming to cross the gap into mainstream household adoption.

One of the things we need to achieve on the fediverse is not just getting people to move to fediverse sites and use them, but to understand why they're using fediverse sites and why cutting out corporations is a good thing. The average person isn't going to come over without bigger reasons to, they want their slop and will go to wherever has the most slop. Create a new culture with a reason for people to support it, use that to reach a critical mass to pump out a competitive amount of slop, then at that point you'll drag in the mainstream.

If the app contain adds how good can be?? ๐Ÿ˜

Boost for reddit is open source, I assume the lemmy version will also be open source. Also I think it's like $2 to get rid of ads forever.

IMHO open source developers should be paid for their work, if it must be ads then so be it.

Well if its opensource anyone can easly get ride of the adds. I agree with you that developers schould be paid but there is many ways to be paid we all fight for privacy and against adds on the internet using adblocks for example i personaly always pay for developers fairemail and typewise to rename few but i dont like to be forced to pay and in between my phone are establishing connections to the adds servers exposing ip addresse connection times and so on adds are not only adds there is a lot of metadata that can be extracted from adds. And finally the purpose of developing opensourse apps is to serve the community with more friendly apps than the big companies offers to us. But... its just me saying that....

It will be good feature wise, but privacy?

That's probably due to the ad provider for the free version.

You should be able to disable any tracker so...

Thanks for turning attention to those. I got curious and looked at the ones for Boost for reddit and they seem about the same. A bit funny to see that the settings for the app only show Notifications as a granted permission (and no other possible ones). Can anyone familiar with Android app development chime in with some details?

I'd appreciate if the dev could explain the need for these perms. I'm sure it's something innocuous, but it'd be relieving to hear why they're there.

That's great. I've been using boost for years, can't wait to have them for lemmy!

Well up for this. The polish of Boost on top of the federated structure of Lemmy could be perfect.

i'll never understand why people used boost. it was so ugly

I used it because the feature of marking posts as read after scroll across them and hide them on demand.

In my opinion it has the best design out of all the third party apps.

I didn't like how it liked out of the box. But I customised it until I liked it. I did switch to Sync later, but I would go back to boost any time, it was good.