wefwef is so good it should be an app and not a web app

as a web app, it can be installed on any device that has a browser. Dev doesn't also need to publish his work in app/play stores which may require extra payment

And since it doesn’t have to be published in any app stores, it can be updated much more quickly and frequently.
- Why does it take so long to push updates on AppStores?
The portability is awesome. I switched to wefwef and had it going on all my devices in minutes. Web apps don’t have to suck. Apps also have more privacy implications than a PWA.
I think from the point of view of speed/ease of development, the webapp makes more sense for now. Once it's more stable, perhaps a native app is worth trying for performance reasons.
The portability is awesome. I switched to wefwef and had it going on all my devices in minutes. Web apps don’t have to suck. Apps also have more privacy implications than a PWA.

This is the first web app that I have used which installs, updates, and works like it does. I literally had no idea that something so streamlined and efficient could be done in such a way. Hats off to the developer, I’ll gladly buy wefwef if he ever makes it available on the App/Playstore.

This, Justchill, and Seez are so good, they have me considering learning how to make PWA. I went down a ionic, react native, and flutter rabbit hole yesterday. Lol
Nooo, keep it off the app store and I'll just Venmo that shit.

“It’s so good it should be something else” - can’t argue with that thought process

It’s so good it makes a lot of apps really disappointing.
- I see a lot of duplicate comments. Is it a bug with wefwef?
It’s so good it makes a lot of apps really disappointing.

I actually disagree. I love that it’s a lightweight web app.

I’ve never really used a mobile web app before but I’m very curious to see what the dev can do with it and what the limits might be. So far it’s been great! Not being on the App Store means faster updates. If something breaks the dev can fix it much quicker. It’s also fully cross platform. You can also install it on any device regardless of Android/iPhone and have the same experience.

In some desktop browsers you can install it to the start menu as well.

There are definitely advantages to native apps and I basically always prefer them, but wefwef is doing an absolutely amazing job and there are upsides to web apps as well (cross platform, updates, …).

I‘d probably also prefer having this app as a native app, but that means either wrapping it, which doesn’t give you many advantages, or rebuilding it entirely at which point you‘re using a different technology stack than the one people building this are so good at.

There are other people doing that and many of them have the same Apollo in mind while doing so. Let’s just wait and see what each one of them can do, I’m definitely excited :)

I think you mean: "It's so good it COULD be a native app"

Came here to say this.
Without the restrictions of being on App Stores and going through reviews, devs can move so much faster. I feel like two or three times a day it tells me a new version can be grabbed, and it's caught up to and bypassed the alpha/beta apps from Testflight which get updated once a week (if lucky).

It would be nice if wefwef supported Push notifications but I don’t think PWAs support that in iOS. But that’s the only reason that I can think of that would be an advantage (besides ease of install and marketing)

But making wefwef dependent on a centralized App Store is kind of antithetical to the fediverse.

Most PWAs I would rather use the native app but wefwef is probably the second best PWA I have ever used

Apple just recently added support!
https://qvik.com/news/web-push-notifications-on-iphone-and-ipad-are-finally-here-but-you-still-need-a-pwa-to-use-them/#:~:text=Apple%20has%20just%20enabled%20web,testing%20the%20feature%20right%20now.&text=Web%20push%20notifications%20were%20one,without%20an%20app%20on%20iOS.
- That’s awesome news. Nothing is really holding wefwef from being able to have feature parity with Apollo then

Yes and no, there are a great deal of good reasons that some OS features are only available to binary deployments, one such being that the code is sent through manual and automated testing by the platform holders. Ultimately some things can’t be made available to all apps running in WebKit or similar as the implementation isn’t scrutinised.

I’d definitely prefer an app. I’ve run into a lot of freezing, actions not registering and a bunch of other small things that aren’t problems in dedicated apps.

Whenever a dedicated Lemmy app pops up I’ll probably be changing over

Yeah same here. Backspace being very laggy when editing comments is a major pain as well. Wefwef is my preferred app at the moment, but I'm waiting impatiently for the showdown between Artemis, Sync and Boost for my ultimate solution.
Where do you notice the freezing? Open an issue with details on the github page
https://github.com/aeharding/wefwef
- For the record, I prefer wefwef being a web app (PWA). It's amazing the flexibility, fast updates, how lightweight it is and being no-store dependent. That being said, I have a lot of freezing in my iOS (iPhone 13, iOS 16) device using Safari as webview. In Android (Realme, Android 12) using Edge as webview I've never had this problem. When it freeze in iOS, I have to swiping up to access the iOS App Switcher, then I tap on it to reopen it, and usually, the app unfreezes after that. Or sometimes I scroll from other screen area and after a 3 seconds it works. Btw, it only happens to me like 1 time every 2 days. Before the updates, it was more constant, so I think it has been improved
I’ve also had freezing up while scrolling through things, not all that infrequently but often enough to be noticeable. That said it’s a slick app most of the time so I’m curious to see if those performance glitches can be resolved or if it’s an unfortunate byproduct of it being a PWA and the browser being a limitation. Could also be my Lemmy instance being unresponsive, which has been the case at times, but the app not yet handling that gracefully due to being an early release.
Happy to wait and see. When it is flawless, which is most of the time, it’s beyond any web app I can recall using.

I am a programmin' folk, and I was even considering making a Lemmy reader for my own amusement, but wefwef is so good that I'm not going to bother. I wish I had time to learn React and the rest so I could contribute myself, but my brain is already full of frameworks and I'm afraid if I try to learn a new one, it will push out one that I actually need for my job.

As a web app I can (at least on iOS) rename it to something other than “wefwef”.

I’ve added it to my Home Screen, how do you rename it? (Not that I will) just wondering! Thank you for any help!
- I’m not sure if you can after the fact, but when you’re adding initially you’re given the option.
woofwoof?

As an obsolete ass Android phone user, thanks for web app. Looking good. Please add lemm.ee

Ok I found the "other" server option now! Cool.

I'm amazed how well it works. Didn't know a PWA could be this good. The only thing that I really miss is being able to save posts to check later, because I hide read posts.

I’m in wefwef, and my UI has a save icon.
https://pixelfed.social/p/SDK/582032564957249217
- It didn't do anything hahaha. But the latest updates added the save feature!

I think it works perfectly as it is now except for the Safari bug where swiping back a page makes it refresh the page and force you back to the top of it. I guess there’s nothing the wefwef devs can do about it but damn it’s annoying.

Comments collapsing is not nice and snappy. Compare it to jerboa. These kinds of animations really make the experience feel slow.
- It's very snappy for me on iOS, perhaps you have to re-"install".
I never experience what you’re describing. You installed the web app to your Home Screen as instructed and you’re not just using it inside Safari, right?
https://wefwef.app/settings/install
- Yeah I did that. But I’ve always had this issue even when using Safari by itself so I know it’s not a problem with wefwef. Safari just doesn’t seem to cache previous pages correctly for me.
Have you tried re-adding it to your home screen?

100%

I mean it works great as is. What do you not get right now that you’d get as an app?

Are web apps able to do push notifications? That's the biggest feature and advantage I could think of if so.
- Yes! It’s possible for both android and iOS. Not sure how long Android has had it but iOS 16.4 and up supports it.

I'm not saying that the PWA is horrible, but I think a native app would be better too. Really, the only issue I have with it is the refresh rate. For some reason, the display randomly switches to 60hz, especially when sliding to go to the previous page.

Using the developer options to see the current refresh rate does not represent this, but you can clearly see it. I feel that a native app would be able to force 120hz throughout the app.

The only reason I say this is because, when first tried to install the PWA from Kiwi Browser which was pretty smooth but switched to 60hz here and there. I thought this was because of Kiwi Browser so installed the PWA from Chrome. When I did that, it was fully in 120hz only, completely unusable, so I went back to the Kiwi PWA

Edit: the refresh rate is fine while in Chrome browser, it's only in the installed PWA that the refresh rate goes to shit. Anyone who has a 120hz display knows that even going back to 60hz for a second is jarring.

shit i never even noticed it wasn't 120hz, and it's weird that only the PWA suffers and the app in chrome runs fine
i don't think i can unsee it...

I still have it installed on my phone but have found it to be quite laggy when scrolling content so i don't use it much. I keep checking every so often in hopes that clears up though..

My experience with this is that it seems to be instance-based. I’m a member of both lemmy.world and lemm.ee, and I sing lemmy.world, wefwef was very laggy. I read here that lemm.ee had received some speed-related infrastructure updates, so I decided to test it out. It’s honestly like night and day. Everything loads quickly, and I’m able to comment and upvote where I couldn’t before!
That's because you're on lemmy.world
That instance has been brutally slow recently. I switched and it's so much better
- Which one did you switch to?
- That makes sense. I struggled to sign up on other instances with their need for me to write a paragraph about my intents with their instance. Lemmy.world was the only one with a smooth signup process for me.
  I just tried wefwwf again and couldn't even reply to this message of yours. Three keyboard won't pop up when I hit the reply button.
  So aside from lag, it's still got a few fit & finish issues too. I'll keep checking it though because i do like the interface.

It’s promising, but right now it’s a buggy disaster. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s a lot of features coming and hopefully it’s stabilized to compare with other apps that are already out- but right now, it’s not even close to ready.

I haven’t seen any bugs at all so I’d hardly call it a buggy disaster.
- I have, so I would.

I can’t believe how well it runs on iPhone, way smoother than the Mlem TestFlight app. I think this wasn’t an option for Reddit 3pa because once you try to monetize, if it’s not on the App Store you’re getting steamrolled. Anyways since that doesn’t seem to be an issue here it seems like a great solution.

Would be interested to hear from the devs how they plan to expand in the future.

Try out Memmy it works really well too

Mixed experience so far. Love the interface but for some reason the content fails to load at time even though it works on browser or Mlem. Case in point, this comment was made in Mlem because the community failed to load in wefwef. Hopefully this gets fixed.

I’m having the same issue. Mlem is pretty good though so not a big deal.
Not a dev but wonder if this is just due to scaling?Ton of new users just came in, including me...we probably fucking shit up at the moment haha.
- That would be my guess. It’s likely these apps are getting rate limited by the lemmy instances. So the more people that use wefwef, the more unstable itll become lol

I agree, I would likely use it if it was an actual app, sadly due to restrictions web apps have on my device I can't use it xD

Yes! If you set the font size to maximum, you get the Apollo app feeling.

You know.. my major complaint about wefwef was the font size, you Sir have made my day!!

Agree. Anyone know if there is a hide read posts option?

It’s in Lemmy account config on your instance settings.
They just added a manual mark as read swipe option. They seem to be planning on adding automatic mark as read on scroll in the future.
I need this so much.

~~Wish I could use it without needing VPN. I'm in Finland.~~

Edit: it's working for me now. It's strange because at the same time it wasn't working from my home and mobile connections it was working fine via airvpn in US.

I’m using it without vpn from Finland. Why would you need vpn?
- It's strange. Yesterday I was consistently getting connection refused from the site. There are some instances which are blocking the EU as far as I can tell (gdpr fear maybe?) and I thought this was more of the same. Thanks for the information!

Is it safe to use a web app without it having to go through apple security?

Yes because web apps are sandboxed by Webkit/Safari engine. It is more restrictive than the normal app sandbox.

Does anyone know how the dev did the installing functionality of the webapp? Anything you can link me to with more info on the subject?

It is called a progressive web app, or commonly referred to as PWA.
https://web.dev/progressive-web-apps/

The problem (and I don’t know if this is wefwef or lemmy) but most of my comments won’t show unless I refresh and even then sometimes it requires I leave the site altogether. Many times it won’t show the comments if anyone until I post.

Long way to go to make this place usable.

I made an account at thelemmy.club today and have been having really good luck with it. Much smoother than lemmy.world. Also seems to federate with other large communities that were missing from lemmy.world. As a bonus they host their own wefwef instance at app.thelemmy.club
- Oh hey there, glad you're liking it here.
Your problem is your using the largest instance that is being flooded by new users which is bringing instability. Make an account on a new instance and that should be fixed. Since it's decentralized, no one is running this on a server farm with 800+ like reddit does, which causes problems when everyone joins a single instance.
Most likely the lemmy instance you’re in. It’s actually better if you join a smaller instance than a larger one.

It’s open source.

An app fork will come with time as some things can’t be done in a web app.

Right now Lemmy is changing too quickly for it to be worth it anyway.

So just enjoy this fantastic web app for now.

Does anyone know how the dev did the installing functionality of the webapp? Anything you can link me to with more info on the subject?

It's called PWA - Progressive Web Apps, basically web apps as apps. Been around as a concept for a while and hasn't really caught on, but is useful for making offline versions of WebApps or easily updatable clients like wefwef.
- Another notable one I can think of is xbox cloud streaming.
  Apple won’t let them on the App Store so they made one of these.