Happy v1... also, Voyager is going to the App Store
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.
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 🎉
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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!
I was really curious about how you would go about making an AppStore app from the web app. Is it going to be simply a webview pointing to vger.app or is there going to be more to it?
theres typical a 'wrapper' native app that is a container for the web app, which provides things like access to local hardware like camera and bluetooth and better local storage. one wrapper tool that was common for ages is 'phonegap'. it can be as simple as just the webview or it could open more capabilities.
Looking forward to this. I haven’t been using Lemmy that much because I dont like any of the apps out there. I check lemmy out once in a while in Voyager. A dedicated app with this UI is definitely something I am looking forward to.
I’m not a developer so not sure if this question is even based on how things actually work or just how I imagine they work, but will the iOS app be a wrapper around the PWA, getting updates at the same time, or will it require separate updates and/or codebases?