Happy v1!
Yes, there are still outstanding bugs. It’s not perfect, and we will continue to make things better! But Voyager has come a long way, and all of the core functionality is there to use and enjoy lemmy. 🙂
Happy version 1.0! 🎉
This release only has one major new feature: Unique time-based sort icons! You can now quickly glance to see what sort you’re currently on. Thanks @tilden!
Voyager is going to the App Store
I’m also excited to announce that the next major focus will be on releasing Voyager as an iOS app! This will fix various iOS bugs that we’ve encountered (white status bar, scroll “freezing” etc), and bring some nice functionality like haptics and tapping the status bar to scroll to top, and also improve onboarding for people that aren’t familiar with Progressive Webapps. It also opens the possibility for other neat features, like the option to open links in your browser instead of in-app. You can see most of the work done in #410, to be merged shortly!
If you’re curious how this is possible, check out Capacitor and AppFlow!
Note, an iOS app is subject to approval from Apple which may significantly delay its public release.
(Don’t worry! The PWA isn’t going anywhere! It has it’s own benefits like being self-hostable, quicker updates and being available on desktop computers.)
Once the iOS app is released, work will begin on releasing to the Play Store.
What’s Changed
- Add custom icons for time-based sorts by @tilden in https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/pull/524
- Forcing high resolution icon for iOS by @fer0n in https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/pull/526
- Fix block, message user not presenting login when logged out by @aeharding in https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/pull/528
New Contributors
- @tilden made their first contribution in https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/pull/524
Full Changelog: https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/compare/0.28.1...1.0.0
Congrats from a long time lurker. It’s been amazing to see voyager come together all the way from WefWef.
It has been such a smooth transition from Apollo to Lemmy that I needed to come out if lurking to show appreciation for the hard work you guys have done on this app.
Thanks again for all the hard work, I really can’t believe how well done this app is as a non-native PWA app.
Really again, thanks for the hard work and congrats on the V1. Amazing job 🎉
long time lurker
User names checks out
Welcome to the club
Awesome! Can’t wait to try the AppStore version!
The haptics are 🤌
Do you plan on releasing it on testflight first?
Yes
Damn you weren’t kidding. I always felt the swipe in Voyager to feel a little “off” but could never tell why. It was the haptic feedback! Now it feels just as natural as it used to in Apollo
I’ve been using Memmy over Voyager for a while because I wasn’t the biggest fan of the PWA style. Now that this will be an actual app, I will definitely have to re-evaluate my choice!
Thanks for all the hard work!
I’d suggest you to use both, because all Lemmy apps are awesome.
I’m currently at 8 Lemmy clients installed. There’s something to like about each, so it’s hard to decide for just 1.
It is not only hard for me it is impossible!
What are your top 4?
I’d say, in no particular order:
- Voyager
- Mlem
- Memmy
- Bean
Also good but in earlier development stage:
- Bean
- Avelon
- Lemmios
This next two are pretty good and fast, but can’t get used to them because they feel very Android-y, which is not a bad thing, they just feel off to me on iOS:
- Liftoff!
- Thunder
I also have both liftoff and thunder and agree they look a little off on iOS, but still keep checking them out every so often.
Voyager as an actual app will instantly make it Apollo Lite for me. I am familiar with the look and its feature sets.
The “web app” thing and all its bugs and annoyances have been pushing me elsewhere. I’ll be happy to get rid of that.
Congrats on this important milestone and thank you for making one of the best Lemmy apps! Turning this into a standalone app is definitely an awesome move.
It’s probably not the focus for many and the app is already great as it is, but could we expect some basic mod tooling some day or is that out of scope?
Yes! This will be a focus post 1.0. I have had experience modding with Apollo in the past and I really enjoyed it, and I’d like to bring that to Voyager.
The question is how to. Unfortunately, certain parts about Lemmy’s API makes this difficult, such as not having reports embedded in the post/comment payload. But we have some ideas for workarounds.
You can see a modest start here: https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/pull/512 (note the comment nuke, my favorite Apollo mod feature 😉)
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this is awesome news!
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this is also a big message to Apple that their web app system is apparently broken. The whole “shit stops working” pausing/hitching that has been an open bug for YEARS is a real bad look.
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As good as this app is, it is kinda sad that an Apollo “copy” seems to be ready to go before the actual Apollo app (which may never come to Lemmy).
I doubt Christian will bring Apollo to Lemmy. He said that it was a labor of love and that after being burned by Reddit he’s done with that kind of dev work.
But Apollo for Lemmy could be more $$$ for him!
Maybe not as much as he got with reddit, but a lot of people would happily pay for it again.
If I had spent the past decade building something, I wouldn’t want to just throw it all away.
I think he missed the boat on this one if he had any intention of building an Apollo for Lemmy. I don’t see why anyone would choose to use a closed source app after seeing how well the open source community has handled Voyager.
I really don’t think that making more money is a big motivator for him. He was pretty clear that he didn’t want to mKe another Apollo there at the end
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I’d just like to say, Android users would love to see a native app and you don’t need to publish to the Play Store straight away. We don’t need to go through all the TestFlight shenanigans that Apple users do, you can just upload an apk to GitHub releases and we can beta test it for you
iOS apps don’t need to go through test flight either, it’s just a good way to get controlled feedback from testing an app.
I just expected Voyager to go through the same process as Memmy did, beta-testing through TestFlight and then finally publishing to AppStore once it’s “ready”. Meanwhile, on Android you don’t even need to publish on Play Store. A lot of FOSS apps choose not to simply because it takes so much longer when an apk file would do just fine
Oh you meant side-loading, I see. They’ll probably use Appflow’s live updates, which makes it pretty easy to keep apps updated. If you wanted an APK enough you could pull down their code once they push their capacitor-supported version and build it as an APK yourself
They could also publish to F-Droid and other third party app stores. F-Droid is great for FOSS apps
I was about to getting sad because I thought no Android version then I finish reading… Heck yeah dude way to go and congrats for V1!!
Exciting stuff! Can’t wait to try the native iOS app!
Thank you for keeping the PWA!
Congratulations! And thank you for all the hard work!
Did you guys do something good and clever with the swipe back gesture, or am I just getting the hang of it? It seems to be working much better, way fewer accidental upvotes.
Thanks for all the hard work and congrats on the milestone!
Only one downvote. Probably u/spez.
Can’t wait to tey the app!
big up dude best client out there
You can also publish to Android without Playstore and it gives some advantages like pulling the APK from Obtainium or standalone download from GitHub.
That’s awesome! You guys have done an amazing job
