FYI, Lemmy and Kbin are Progressive Web Apps, meaning you can install them as regular apps to your phone's home screen
On iOS: tap the share button in browser => add to home screen
On Android: tap the 3 dot menu button in browser => tap "install" or "add to home screen"
The WPA's layout is not crazy good on mobile, but at least I got some real estate.
Now, how can I contribute? I'm a frontend web developer.
Join the Lemmy development room on Matrix https://matrix.to/#/#lemmydev:matrix.org
Until the websocket issue is fixed, I'm gonna stick with Jebora
As an alternative, there's also Native Alpha and Hermit (my personal favorite) on Android. Play with the settings to make it full screen and frameless (no address bar at the top). It also has pull down to refresh.
On kbin, you can then go to your settings and sticky the navbar as well so that it's always at the top as you browse. Personal preference and all that.
Cool! Good to know
thank you so much for that. worked like a champ and i don't have that black hole staring at me anymore :)
Jerboa is a good alternative for Android, too. I've been using it for a bit now and it seems to work great.
I just tried installing kbin as described in the post and downloading Hermit and I'm not really seeing a difference between the two options. Am I just missing something?
Personal preferences. I like to keep my stuff self-contained. This keeps browsing in the Hermit environment for that PWA rather than in your browser. You aren't really missing anything though. It might just not suit your needs and be redundant.
Really nice, thanks for the tips!
I tried Hermit before, assumed these features will be locked in premium and didn't try it more, thank you!
Any idea why it changed my top bar color to gray while the icons (wifi, etc) are black? It's not a dealbreaker but it would be nice if there's a solution I'm missing.
Surprisingly, those particular features aren't locked behind premium. As for the top bar color, you might be able to change the theme in Lemmy/kbin itself in your profile settings to one that suits what you're looking for. Unless you mean in Hermit itself. In that case, I'm not sure - I use it frameless.
Wait, where's the option to sticky the top bar? I am not seeing it in my settings but maybe I'm just blind.
This is on kbin. Username in the upper right, Settings, scroll down through the stuff there and stop when you see the Delete Account button. Look for the small cog and click it. Turn on the option to sticky navbar - you may want to toggle infinite scrolling and maybe the show icons options while there as well.
If you click on compact view you get the settings page for that
Sick! Thanks!!
I tried Hermit and noticed that Voyager doesn't automatically switch between Dark and Light theme (in the night / morning). Workaround is to kill (force close) the app and open it again.
Do you also face this issue? I can't remember if with Chrome I was facing it..
Progressive? Conservatives disliked that
Hey I wanted to tell that joke
Still a better user experience than the official Reddit app.
I love that this is possible and I gave it a go but for some reason scrolling in the browser is really hard to do, it keeps adding new posts while I'm scrolling and moves everything around making it near impossible to actually read, I thought it might be just loading still but it doesn't ever come to a stop, not sure if this is just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This happens to me on desktop Firefox also. Even if I've sorted by Top, new posts with 1 upvote will get inserted at the top of the feed repeatedly.
Same
as far as I know this is a bug that has been identified, although I don't know if there's a fix for it yet
I am on the IOS web app and it still happens to me. I’ve had better experience on my browser.
I use jerboa for lemmy. Not sure how different it is though. Never used that webapp
I find that jerboa has some missing features that are there in the web app. Things like being able to go from a comment in your inbox to that same comment in context in it's thread.
Mybe I will try to add that feature to the app tomorrow if no other contributer hasn't already. Development of the app seems to move quite fast and a bunch of people are adding stuff. But I agree, there are still a lot of smaller and bigger things missing or wonky.
So it's not just me? Thank God, it's so annoying.
It does have that feature already, you need to press the link button in the inbox below the comment.
Just encountered that for the first time with this comment lmao
I'm primarily using the pwa for now. Jerboa has a nicer UI in most cases, but pwa is a lot smoother, less buggy, and external links open up a lot faster. Also, jerboa has a bunch of minor annyonaces, like trying to select text and it keeps minimizing the comment instead, or how it opens Lemmy links in an external browser.
A bit more devtime and I'll switch to it, especially if they add a feature to group multiple communities in a single entry.
Thats cool, but now it doesn’t have a back button… how do you navigate?
On iOS swiping from the sides works for back/forward.
On the macOS 14 preview, the app gets back/forward menu items with keyboard shortcuts.
Swipe from the edge of the screen on iOS. If anyone knows how to refresh, let me know. Pull down to refresh doesn’t seem to work.
that too
First thing I did. Makes it a little more app like. Still can’t wait to see what clients get released in the next few months.
Makes it very difficult to open posts in a new tab though, I scroll and open like 6 posts to go through afterwards.
Some days, I feel like I'm the only person that used Reddit and never touched any of the applications for it.
I used old.Reddit on my phone and desktop until I switched to iPhone. Then I switched to Apollo because was like using old Reddit but formatted for phones.
It's such a beauty of an app.
Don't forget to check out !kbinStyles@kbin.social for UX improvements (which will work on mobile Firefox)
With all these nice scripts, I'd use kbin if they fixed the bug where voting sometimes sends you to an error page, and added hiding posts on read.
This should be pinned to the top of every instance lol
Using this on Firefox on my s23 works really well.
Both have native apps on Android and iOS that are better imo.
Yes even KBin has an Android app now too.
What's the KBin app called? Last I checked, the iOS Lemmy app is in beta, and the only Android app for Lemmy is Jerboa.
On some websites when you add an icon for the web page on your phone it saves as a 'web app'. It will open directly into the web page without the browser bar on top.
On some websites when you add an icon for the web page on your phone it saves as a 'web app'. It will open directly into the web page without the browser bar on top.
Someone mentioned it elsewhere in this thread. I haven't tried it so I am not sure.
Link to the native iOS kbin app that’s outside of TestFlight? Same for lemmy?
this was the first thing i did upon discovering kbin.. and I use it for a lot of other sites too, namely forums like the Battle.net forums, for example.
I believe this next drop of iOS is going to support push notifications in safari. Are there plans for the pwa to support this? It’s the only reason I really use native apps anymore.
Just FYI you can do this in the new version of MacOS (Sonoma) and add sites to your dock which is quite nice.
You can do the same on windows! I forgot it was a feature tbh its weird not having the top of my browser lol
I had never heard of this and I was really confused how I got a kbin app on my phone. When I got home and tried to "install the app" on my tablet I couldn't figure out how to install it. I searched on the Play Store and couldn't find it. I double checked the app information on my phone's icon and it said "Installed from the Google Play Store", so I was really confused.
Thanks for that. It's actually a lot better than the app I'm currently using, lol. (Though, I'm sure it will improve).
Oh damn, I'm gonna need to make sure I do this later.
This is awesome and better than any ios app!!
But i dont put icons on my home screen only, only use my app drawer 😔
If you use iOS, you can add it to a home screen tab and then hide the tab and it will still appear in the app library.
Thank you for posting, didn't know this.
I'd like to add that for Android users installing Kbin, if you can't find the app anywhere, it's listed as "/kbin" at the bottom of your app drawer because of the backslash. Lemmy users will find it sorted under "L".
That screenshot is hurting my brain.
Mine too, but I didn't upload it like that. It got resized by Kbin when it created the thumbnail. If you click the image you'll see the original: https://media.kbin.social/98/03/98031696c4f263c1c6eef21e7f82f623305a8eae2a34aa63c64d7de5a35c8b7b.png
FYI, for Firefox on android, I had to use Firefox Nightly for this, as the main version doesn't support PWAs (for some reason)
Edit: I take it back, when I tried to do the install on regular Firefox a few days ago, it didn't work. It does work now, so regular Firefox works for this!
It does support them. At least on Android 13 and Firefox version 114.1.1.
On the same version as you and I've installed this on Firefox but it behaves like a regular website (has an address bar, tabs, etc.). Some other sites installed like this don't have those.
Edit: I tried installing it again and now it works as intended. Maybe some backend update between when I first installed and now?
Thanks for the correction, not sure why the PWA install didn't work for me on regular Firefox a few days ago, but it does work now.
Thank you just did this with Chrome on Android! Easier than having to open a new chrome tab every time for sure
I'm signed up on both, now. So let it be known; I am Geronimo
Thanks for the heads up! Scrolling is smoother now while waiting for jerboa to fix their app.
Yeah! Kbin PWA is great. (Though there's a very small amount of sidescroll that makes my frontend web dev heart cry a bit... maybe I should open a pull request for it :))
Though it seems to override my screen orientation settings, making it hard to read while lying in bed XD
Same here, specifically it does not seem respect the auto-rotate off setting.
Yeah the auto autorotate is really annoying!
Please 🙂
Please :)
I also wish enlarged images were wrapped in the same box as the post title. Currently it feels like a separate post.
Thank you!! I literally had no idea about this. You rock!
Welcome home, friend
What the hell, I was just recently talking about it. I'm happy to hear it's already a thing. Thanks!
If only the launcher I use on android supported homescreen icons :( (AIO)
Any updates on Mlem? I tried installing TestFlight but it says the beta is full.
I’m testing it, but it is pretty rough still. A lot of features or settings not working or not sticking.
Former Apollo user on Reddit so I’m a bit spoiled.
Yeah, guess we’ll be patiently waiting for things to get ironed out. All I really want is swipe to collapse.
Memmy is another one they’re testing and it’s way more stable than Mlem
Thanks for the 🔌 let me know if you run into any issues
This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
Did that with lemmy, but at least in my case it just happens too often that I get an infinite loading circle when switching threads and then I have to reload the entire page, which isn't possible when not in the real browser. Even closing the web app and reopening them doesn't help but once I open the page in Safari it works just fine.
Mlem for iOS just got an update which gives us the compact thread style I much prefer over the current web app look but it seems like I can't edit comments there and I also don't see any notifications so there's still a lot of work to be done before it becomes an option.
And kbin I just don't use on the phone at all as long as we can't collapse comment chains.
Oh wauw thank you!
This is amazing! Thanks for the info
Does anyone know of any apps for Lemmy on iOS? I’m using Mlem and Memmy through Test Flight, as well as the Lemmy web app as explained in the post, but I’d like to know if there’s any more I could test out as well
On Firefox mobile, the back button does not work for me when using the installed app. Anyone else seeing this?
Yeah. I had to hit back multiple times for it to work.
Is there a way to make the PWA not open a new tab each time in Firefox though?
That's not the PWA that's a bookmarked url. Try reinstalling it, the Android PWA just released recently.
Yup. Pre-PWA the icon was a blurry mess and now after reinstalling it's nice and shiny!
PWAs only work on Chromium web browsers, though there are some that install on Firefox on Mobile. Yes, I can jsut use Brave, but it's syncing is awful and I bet there are old accounts of mine floating with an expired passphrase. Granted, I now save my bookmarks, passwords etc. in various other places where I can access them from any device anywere.
firefox pwa is actually still a thing on desktops, it is not official but works suprisingly well
It's supported but it's a horrible experience. At least for me. It's really slow and unresponsive. Is there way to improve that?
Been trying the place and just have jerboa a shot in comparison. The actual app is better by miles. So much faster than the browser.
Clean anima, simple tap to collapse threads
App > browser for now
Agreed. I'm liking Jerboa quite a bit so far. Feels similar to Boost a long while back.
I haven't been able to collapse threads on Jerboa, how do you do that? Am I missing something?
Using Mlem myself and with the recent update it’s much more stable and definitely more responsive than the web app. Really scratches that Apollo-shaped itch.
I just wish it used screen real-estate better. I'm using it right now. I wish it could replace RIF.
Jerboa is pretty much close enough to rif for me.
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