Hi all, keeping this post short, I am working on a new Lemmy app for iOS and Android, heavily inspired on the Infinity for Reddit app.
The app is very much still a work in progress, but I’s like to share some screenshots and a few MVP functionalities already implemented:
Already implemented:
- Anonymous browsing;
- Login;
- Multiple accounts support;
- Account switcher;
- Post cards
- Sorting posts by Lemmy’s sorting options (Active/Hot/New/etc…);
- Listing posts by Lemmy’s listing options (Subscribed/Local/All);
- Upvote, downvote (and counters), comment counter, save;
- Mark post as read;
- Infinite post scrolling (keep on scrolling, app loads more posts in the background);
What’s next before I make it available in the app stores (MVP):
- Post view (see post’s comments);
- Add a comment to a post;
- Create a post;
- A sexier selected account card on the sidebar;
What’s still to do before I can call it a beta version:
- Profile view;
- Community view (rules mods other details);
- Search;
- Dark mode;
What’s to come after:
- Custom theming/Material You support;
- Advanced post filters;
- Community groups (Add communities to a group, see posts only from selected group);
- A video player with controls over speed playback and maybe quality if possible;
- Alternative posts view (compact card, list, etc)
- Other cool misc options.
Dreams:
- Kbin and Mastodon accounts support.
Keep an eye for future posts, I may be able to announce the MVP by the end of this week if everything goes well, but I can’t promise anything :)
EDIT:
This post got so much traction than I had predicted. Thank you so much for all your comments and ideas! I tried to reply to as many as I could.
I also collected from this post a bunch of good suggestions from you which for now I am keping track of here: https://brunofinger.notion.site/brunofinger/Beyond-45cabaae7f724cd5ad2b77d902e9a97e
The app name probably will be “Beyond” as suggested by a couple of users here, and really like this idea as it creates a sort of symbolic link to Infinity as the inspiration for my work by the famous “To Infinity and Beyond” phrase :)
Happy to see some new apps on the horizon! Android user here and happy to beta test when the time arrives.
No name suggestions… and that’s probably for the best ;)
Feel free to suggest names here :)
I don’t have much of an imagination so I asked Bing AI:
- LemmyGo: A simple and fast way to access Lemmy on your mobile device.
- Lemur: A cute and catchy name that plays on the similarity between Lemmy and lemur, a type of primate.
- Lemo: A sleek and modern name that sounds like a combination of Lemmy and emoji.
- Lemix: A name that suggests mixing and sharing content on Lemmy.
- Lemyx: A name that uses an unconventional spelling to stand out from the crowd.
If it’s OK with u/iamthatis, I’d suggest … Mercury (the Roman name for Apollo).
I like going the lemming related route…
- Lemmini
- Lagurus
- Muskrat
Or in a different direction: Lemmyn. With a yellow citrus 🍋 logo.
Also, Infinity was my most recent Reddit app of choice. I miss it. Really looking forward to testing yours out.
Infinity was my absolute favorite, I shall watch this app with great interest 😁 lemme (Lemmy?) know if you need any additional testers
If you’re interested, I can put this in the stickied thread on !android@lemmy.ml
Thank you for this.
Lemmy definitely needs more and better apps.
But just a curiosity question if you don’t mind. You said that your app is heavily inspired by Infinity which is already open source, so why not just fork that and modify it to work with Lemmy?
That’s honestly a good point but:
- Infinity is written in Java code specifically targeted to Android only, I am targeting both iOS and Android with the same code using React Native (maybe even web in the future but it’s a little more complicated due to CORS);
- I have worked with React for at least the past 4 years, so using React Native now for me feels like almost no learning curve at all, while if I’d be given a Java-based Android codebase now, I’d probably need to spend the first week figuring out the basics :)
Does it have a name?
It’s probably gonna be Beyond :)
Post cards was the first thing I turned off in RIF. I don’t want a photo gallery, want a concise list of threads and maybe a small thumbnail at best. Thread title, domain of post’s link, how many comments and upvotes and the pertinent things to click, in as efficient a format as possible.
Do that and you can get like 10 posts per screen would makes browsing and scrolling very efficient.
Now, if you want to make it god-mode then add tabs at the top for queuing up stuff to peruse in detail.
Honestly I loved the card view because of the gallery, put focus on the post image.
Having that said, card won’t be the only layout available but it is the first I am working on.
The merrier the better.
In theory, once you’ve connected with Mastodon you could just view hashtags as subscriber communities and any top level toots as posts. Leaving the replies to show as a thread. Then fix it to be seen in reverse if you’re in your Mastodon account.
could you please try and port this feature as well? there are Zero third party apps that load new posts on frontpage after refreshing, infinity is the only one which has it, and it works flawlessly. hope we get something similar for lemmy too
Looks good. I can’t wait to try it out. I’m liking Jerboa so far, but having more apps competing to be the best would be great.
Thank you all for all your comments and suggestions. I’ll go through them and try to answer as much as I can, I am generally quite busy on Tuesdays so I’ll probably be able to do it later at night today. In any case I am happy with the amount of support!
This is awesome. What are you coding it with?
Looks Dope. Infinity is my favorite android reddit client
My reddit app has always been baconreader. My favorite feature, and the reason I’ve stuck with them for almost a decade is their slideshow view. Basically an infinite side scroll of consecutive posts in whatever sub you’re in. Would love to see that feature and would be happy to beta
