Hi, it's been a while since I've done one of these so this will be changes between 150 and 171. I've been focused on resolving image and performance issues mainly in this time but I also added a couple new things too. Youtube links now open in-app (configurable in settings), there's an option to remove special characters from display names which also changes bubble letters into plain letters, search results are now sortable, and mentions now show up correctly in the inbox.

Added

• Tagged comments (person mentions) now show up in the inbox
• Option to control where Youtube links open
• Option to hide special characters in usernames (and transform bubble letters)
• Added sort options to search
• Youtube links now bypass the webview and open directly in app
• Added experimental setting to highlight new comments (defaulted OFF)
• Added back navigation inside web views
• Added scaled / controversial sort options
• Added initial support for Lemmy 0.19

Upgrades

• Upgraded various libraries
• Upgraded Fliutter 3.13 -> 3.16

Fixed

• User Profile comment links on foreign instances now resolve correctly
• Fixed an issue clicking on saved comments from foreign instances
• Fix a flash when expanding images in some scenarios (not in cache)
• Fix a minor flash on user avatars and community icons
• Video Player bar text is now always white
• Fixed an image flash when a cached image is no longer held in memory
• Fix an issue with how I'm calling the Pictrs API on Webp images
• Added a secondary image cache for avatars/icons
• videos now start smaller while loading instead of taking up full height
• Fixed an issue where images could fail to load when clicked
• Fixed comment notifications not showing the correct comment thread
• Smoothed out the image close animation a bit more
• Possibly fixed a bug with clicking comment replies from the inbox
• Fixed a bug with the link handler resolving post card clicks
• When link handler resolution fails now loads posts from the remote instance
• Fixed a comment display error with inline videos
• Fixed a link handler issue where it could fail on posts from different instances
• Fixed an issue with urls similar to Lemmy format being mistaken for a Lemmy instance
• Fixed a crash related to link handler finishing before its transition completed
• Fixed issue with vote actions not refreshing post cache
• Refreshing post list now scrolls to the top
• Fixed an animation flash when expanding images
• Fixed a login issue with instances on v0.19
• Video player now mixs with other audio instead of taking over
• Upgraded various libraries
• Fixed an issue with thumbnails apppearing blurry
• Fixed a bug where links without any protocol prefix would crash
• Increased the cache size from 100 objects to 200

Thank you everyone for all of the support and suggestions, please keep them coming and we'll continue to make Connect the best app for browsing Lemmy!

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi, this update is mostly focused on some performance updates to Image rendering and memory management. I stripped out the old plugin I had doing this and am now handling things a bit more manually. Hopefully this should improve the experience of long scrolling sessions. I did refactor a lot so if you see any bugs here please let me know! Large new additions in this release are URL domain filters, and video zoom. I'm starting work on settings import/export but it's not ready just yet.

Added

• Added URL Domain filters
• Added video zoom (double tap, pinch)
• Added a link icon to posts without thumbnails
• Added None as a comment long press action
• Better handling when proxied comment resolve fails

Fixed

• Fixed voting on posts refreshing the video player
• Fixed some issues with image heights not fitting correctly
• Minor hotfix to change the link icon on posts to be centered and not left aligned
• Improved the list of subscriptions for large lists
• Fixed an issue where images would sometimes not free from memory
• Fixed photo view not expanding
• Fixed a small screen flash on image expand
• improved performance of large images
• All Snackbars now last for 5 seconds
• Fixed markdown not loading in some cases when it should
• URL confirmation prompt now also applies to external links
• Fixed an issue with switching accounts when uing an email to log in
• Fixed an issue with Spoiler tag sometimes not appearing
• shouldInstanceBlockIncludeUsers no longer defaults to on
• Fixed reply swipe gesture
• Improved freeing of memory in some cases for preloaded images
• Fixed comment navigator when showing all comments
• Create comment screen no longer has discard prompt if drafts are enabled

Thank you everyone for all of the support and suggestions, please keep them coming and we'll continue to make Connect the best app for browsing Lemmy!

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi, I've just been responding to feedback and implementing suggestions and release 141 is just that. Large new features are in-app release notes, customization for comment long-press actions, and community filters. Alongside a dozen smaller fixes, additions, and optimizations.

Added

• Added hex input to colour pickers
• Added setting to change comment long press action
• Added option to hide nsfw in main feeds but not inside communities (note currently only applies to 'hide')
• Added sign up button on sign in page
• Added sticky sort (remembers changes to sort)
• Added community filters (filters posts from communities whose name matches a filter)
• Added setting to control notification time Interval (10S to 12H)
• Added share and hide to comment swipe actions
• Added release notes to app startup
• Added setting to control release notes

Fixed

• Fixed table markdown in some scenarios
• Fixed the exit confirmation not showing when the left drawer was disabled
• Fixed issue with jumping to parent comment being offset in comment navigator
• Fixed draft comments loading the wrong comment while editing when you have multiple comments
• Fixed 'View full post' modal not disappearing on click
• Fixed theme setting not persisting
• Some optimizations to how posts are laid out, scrolling should feel smoother
• Small logo tweak

Thank you everyone for all of the support and suggestions, please keep them coming and we'll continue to make Connect the best app for browsing Lemmy!

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi, I wanted to get more into theme and customization improvements but a lot of great feature requests came up and I ended up just implementing those instead. I might need a better system to compile release notes soon as in the past week there have been 11 beta releases and it's a bit tedious to go through each to compile the final release notes. Probably the biggest change in this release is the way back navigation works, hopefully it's now in a state that is more intuitive instead of back activating the drawer menu.

Thank you to everyone that has taken the time to provide feedback and suggestions, even if I haven't had the time to respond I've read them all. It's really appreciated!

Also Connect turns 2 months old on Tuesday. Kind of crazy how quickly that went and how much the app has changed in that short amount of time. Thank you again to everyone that has stuck with me these past 2 months, Connect is as much your app as it is mine.

Changes

• Changed back button behaviour and a swipe gesture to show the menu.
• NSFW blur is now a real blur
• [Post card] Changed the comment icon to go to comments and added an optional 'reply' icon which preserves the older behaviour
• Added Search bar to settings since they are now a lot of settings
• Changing sort order in list views no longer changes your sort order setting
• Long pressing a setting will now copy its name
• Marking posts read on scroll should now be more reliable for long posts
• Added 'Undo Hide post' action when hiding a post
• Added some padding to user avatars
• Added setting to autohide comment replies
• Increased the hitbox for the comment button to include the number
• Added undo for the 'Hide Above' action
• Removed a small fade in for images so they now load immediately
• Added 'Subscribe' to the post action menu
• Added setting for sticky bottom bars or hiding on scroll
• Fixed an issue with the 'Saved' page now combining posts and comments correctly
• Added experimental option to remember scroll position in comment lists
• Added setting to hide markdown images
• Added "copy article url" to post action menu
• Added volume controls to video and saving so changes persist to future videos
• Added icon to flag bot accounts (robot)
• Improved 'Experimental post swipe navigation' to include a swipe to previous and if swipe gestures are turned off the entire page is a swipe target
• High refresh rate defaults to on
• Improved the 'Block' page, list of communities to block now shows all results instead of 1 page of results
• Fixed issue within the inbox where comments could sometimes be duplicated
• Fixed table markdown when combined with images
• Fixed an issue with .website instance names not loading correctly

More theme customization is coming!

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi, past couple days have seen a influx of new users so welcome everybody! This release is aimed at improving customization options and some requested improvements. The secondary buttons on post cards can now be customized, added a 'Hide above' option which will hide all posts above the selected post, and the upvote colour can now be customized (also applies to the new comment counter and swipe action background on upvote tiles).

Changes

• Upvote colour can now be customized
• Fixed a bug with the subscribe button not being in the correct state within About Community
• & symbol now renders correctly on posts and comments
• global setting moved up within the Settings page to make it more obvious
• filter terms now accept regex (should start and end with a "/" eg /foo/)
• spoiler tags should now work for multi-line spoilers
• Added a toggle to display comment debug information (shows id, children count, hot rank, upvotes, downvotes - probably only useful for debugging).
• Fixed an issue where 'View More' is showing when it shouldn't be

What would you like to see next: Tablet UI or more granular theme customizations?

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

&

-kuroneko

Hi, thank you everyone for the feedback. This release mostly is just added improvements that have been highly requested. 113 adds draft posts and comments as well as video playback for most video services. I've also added support for ::: spoiler tags ::: (although just a first iteration and I'm still playing with the styling), improved how communities and persons are fetched from remote instances (less API remote object not found errors) and some performance optimizations.

Changes

• Draft posts and comments
• inline video player (now muted and doesn't pause other audio sources)
• better post truncation (ends on a word end when possible)
• Inbox no longer limited to the first page, added infinite scroll
• Post list now displays a small page header every 20 posts (clicking jumps to the top)
• Enabling full usernames (@instance) now uses the username and not the display name
• Fixed an issue where some comments weren't showing up in large threads.
• post images now fade in (less flash)
• Fixed an issue where posting a comment would stay at the edit page

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

&

-kuroneko

Hi, apologies in the long delay on this release. It took a couple days for Google to approve it and it went through a number of beta rounds before the bugs were ironed out. This release brings swipe customization and a couple new settings. As always thank you everyone for your feedback!

Changes

• Swipe customizations
• Comment navigator now moves to where your previous comment was and not centered
• Image caching should be a bit smarter now and release memory when not in view
• volume navigation now defaults to OFF
• edge to edge display now defaults to OFF
• Image close gestures can now be controlled in settings
• Post card layout UI improvements
• Added setting for double tap to like posts
• Post card is now affected by the 'handedness' setting
• The list of moderated communities now shows up in the sidebar
• Adds list of Admins/Mods to the about instance and about community pages
• Current Sort title text is now in the tertiary theme colour to make it stand out a bit more, removed 'via ' text.
• Added option to see full upvote and downvote counts on post cards
• The top app bar should now appear sooner when scrolling up
• !community markdown now correctly links to a community
• Card view with height limited will crop the image versus displaying the image fitted to the container

Also I'm testing out a fix to some comments not appearing on 1.0.109 beta, let me know how that looks. Next on my list is either drafts or an improved video player.

Edit: 1.0.110 beta changelog

• Adds draft functionality for posts and comments
• Adds video player for most video types (still experimental, working out the bugs on this one)
• Fixed going into comments from the inbox not scrolling the view

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

::: Test :::

-kuroneko

Hi, happy Thursday everyone. Just a small release which brings an option for per-account settings, settings now auto-save (no more 'save' button), and an option for turning off volume button comment navigation. and a minor bug fix. Going to be testing it a bit and then hopefully it will be live later today.

Changes

• Per-account settings
• Auto-save settings
• Setting for volume navigation
• Fixed an issue with comment creation sometimes not including the post when adding a top-level comment.

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi all, just some small fixes and a much requested feature in this update. I made the arrow hit targets a bit bigger so they're easier to click. Also comment navigation got a fix and should work more reliably now. This release brings community suggestions to the 'Create a post' page so the list should auto-populate as you type.

Please use this thread for any feedback about the changes! The update will hopefully go live tomorrow.

Cheers, Kuro

EDIT: follow on changelogs below

1.0.91

• Changed comment icon to a reply
• Changed FAB icon in post details to a reply
• Blocking an instance from the post card now blocks the community instance
• Reduced the padding on the bottom drawer

1.0.92

• volume control comment navigation

1.0.93

• Report dialog for adding report messages

1.0.94

• swipe up or down to close image views

1.0.95 (now live)

• back button fix

Hi, firstly thank you to all the beta testers that have helped find bugs and issues. I hope this release is even more stable as a result. It's been a couple days since the last release so I was able to get a lot done in this one. Big changes include a bottom navigation drawer, comment navigation, and improvements to the settings page.

What's new

• Optional bottom navigation drawer
• Comment 'next' 'prev navigation bar
• Left hand/ right hand mode which squishes comment actions to the left or right.
• Setting to mark post as read when viewing image
• Added setting for changing the theme text colour
• Community label is displayed in the profile list of posts
• Ability to mark posts as read when viewing images
• Ability to fix the top bar
• Added sort option for Top '1 hour'
• Clicking links now first confirms with the user

Fixes

• Memory optimizations to make scrolling smoother
• After adding reply, no longer switch to single thread view
• Fixed issue with reply button
• Display message when all posts in a list are being filtered
• Fixed issue with editing replies with special characters
• Improved comment navigator to scroll to a more centered position
• Added a post image to the settings post edit page
• Fixed issue with preload option not saving
• Bell notification icon should update a bit more smartly

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi, I'm working on the next release and there's a lot of changes so rather than just release it straight away I'd like your help! Hopefully this way those that don't want the newest features can enjoy a more stable experience and those that want to play with new features can do so as well.

Here is the link to join:

• Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kuroneko.lemmy_connect
• Join on the web: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.kuroneko.lemmy_connect

edit: I won't post the release notes until it fully releases in a couple days or so so as to not spoil anything :)

Beta 1.0.85 Changelog:

• Fixed issue with reply button
• Display message when all posts in a list are being filtered

Beta 1.0.84 Changelog:

• Fixed issue with editing replies with special characters
• Improved comment navigator to scroll to a more centered position
• Added a post image to the settings post edit page
• Fixed issue with preload option not saving
• Bell notification icon should update a bit more smartly

Hi, only bug fixes in this release as the feature I'm working on isn't quite ready yet and I had to set up a local instance of Lemmy for testing purposes without spamming a live instance. Hopefully this means more testing from my side going forward and more app stability. For thumbnails I'm now loading in better compressed images so you should see memory and network improvements, especially on list views where I also scale the thumbnail to the size of the list card, 1MB images are now 10KB in my testing. I changed the upvote colour to more of an orangey colour. It matches the app icon orange now. If you have the setting to open links in a external browser it no longer applies to opening images.

What's new

• Upvote colour is now orange
• Thumbnails are now more efficient (especially list views)
• Images no longer open in external browser
• Communities will now respect the 'Should Launch Externally' setting on open

Fixes

• Comment hint text ('Comment') now matches your theme settings
• Comment textbox is now autofocused so no extra click needed
• Improved the text visibility of the Notificiation icon number
• List view images are now aligned to the top and not the center
• Fixed a minor left padding issue on List view body text
• Adjusted the text for 'Show Post Bottom bar' to better reflect what it does
• Fixed a bug with Subscribe/Unsubscribe not showing correct values in the top right action menu
• Fixed the error message when unable to find a person
• Fixed copy url action item for web views

Thank you so much for all of your feedback! A bottom nav drawer seems like the most requested feature currently so please look forward to that! It will have an option to disable for those that don't prefer it.

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi, mostly small improvements in this release. I spent a bunch of time on a horizontal swipe to go to the next post but it still needs some work. Anyways if you want to check it out it's under an Experimental tag at the bottom of settings. If you use List view I hope you like this release as I made some improvements to the List view layouts.

What's new

• General font size adjustments
• Comment replies are now selectable when replying
• Added Reset buttons to all colour pickers
• Blocked instance comments now have an optional message to show them
• Improved the 'Show more comments' button in some scenarios. Should show on Profile views now too if there are responses.
• Moved the instance name down from the title as it was getting cut off in same cases
• Added user tag options to comments and posts action menus
• Experimental feature horizontal swipe for next post
• Improved the UX of the list views
• Added 'Copy URL' to image views

Fixes

• Fixed theme surface and background not resetting
• Fixed an issue where saving settings would override theme customizations in some scenarios
• added option to block instances via post options menu
• Now only one comment can be active at a time, clicking another comment will deselect the previous one
• Changed user tags to use the tertiary comment, should be more obvious now
• Clicking the + button to create a post in a community should now autofill that community.
• Fixed a bug where the reply button wouldn't work if swipe navigation was turned off.

Question: would you prefer to see a bottom navigation drawer or top level comment navigation (^ prev v next) in the next release?

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi, Thanks for all the tremendous feedback yesterday. I tried to take that into account and add some of the more requested features. Things to look forward to in this release would be: Improved search options (with tabs for posts, comments, communities, user), user notes section which lets you add global tags to users that only you can see, and report options to comments and posts. I tried to address some of the bugs reported too, and hopefully settings should be working as expected through the upgrade.

What's new

• Added indicator of how many unread messages you have in your inbox
• Added 'Open' option to the about instance page
• Searching for a community with a !community or !community@instance format will now take you there directly
• Added total user counts to the about instance page Added new search page
• The info bar on posts now displays above the image when 'Title about image' setting is active.
• Added user notes (option on the user pages in the top right)

Fixes

• Replying to a comment should now more reliably show that comment
• Card views and lists now use even less memory
• Fixed a left side padding issue in list views when there is no thumbnail
• Fixed user profile 'Joined at' dates to be more accurate
• Better handling of different aspect ratios for the user avatar in the drawer header
• Adjusted some divider spacing on the post details page (reduced some unnecessary white space)
• Hide read posts no longer applies to the 'Saved' page
• Toast colour now matches theme

I'm continuing to monitor a subscription issue where some of them don't show up, I added some retries if the API call fails and more error handling.

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi, Connect 1.0.63 is our two week birthday (from this post). Hard to imagine it's only been two weeks. This version brings a lot of new things but the big features would be instance level blocking, 'show more comments' buttons to make comment views more compact, new theme options, and the ability to mark a post as read while scrolling.

What's new

• Added community icons next to names in the main feeds
• Added an option to show @instance labels on all usernames and communities
• Added instance level blocking
• Added dividers between cards
• Create post community suggestions are improved, will now autofill with your subscriptions and suggest a community you've subscribed to first
• Added show more comments buttons
• Added option to mark posts as read on scroll
• Added more theme options

Fixes

• Fixed an issue with the profile tab not refreshing in some scenarios
• Changed community icons to be smaller and they should load faster
• Added some new sort options for posts
• Fixed notification icon hopefully (no more blank square)
• Fixed swipe to reply not working from the inbox
• Viewing a comment from your inbox will now remove the comment when you go back
• Improved the tap target when interacting with a short comment
• Fixed an issue with uploading an image in comment view
• comment title text now wraps instead of getting cut off
• Improved memory usage when scrolling through a lot of images (still some more improvements coming on this one, we're not freeing up images in memory as often as we could be)
• Fixed an issue with NSFW communities not being searchable (and subsequently some link handling being broken if the community is marked nsfw)
• Fixed an issue with the search back button
• Fixed an issue with incorrect passwords if the length is more than 60 (it's now capped to 60 which is what Lemmy does).

In case you're wondering what was in versions .60-.62, they were all minor hotfixes that have been combined into this list. Also for those wondering when it's going to be open sourced it's coming, I hear you! my focus right now is on adding features and improvements.

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi, Connect 1.0.59 brings a new profile page, improvements to how routes are handled within the app, and a host of new settings. I hope you like it!

I'm still thinking about what a 'new to Lemmy' onboarding might look like. Also I know some people reported issues with the markdown editor yesterday, if this version still have issues please add a comment and I'll try and sort them out today!

What's new

• Community name and user name are now direct links, with a setting to disable it.

• Added a quick link to the official community within the app

• Added confirmation on exit app

• Added swiping on the left edge of home will open the drawer.

• The drawer navigation actions should be more responsive now

• Added an option to adjust how nested comments look. Also I added a couple presets within Settings to change it. I hope you like the presets I've chosen.

• Added some improvements to the profile page. Tabs for overall/posts/comments and a page header

• Added some haptic feedback for swipe actions

Bugfixes

• Fixed comment cards in the reply view are no longer clickable
• Fixed a three dot menu being invisible (web)
• Fixed some routing issues when creating a comment or editting a comment. Instead of the previous state being in history it should now show only the state after the change.

Also please let me know what you think of the colour palettes I've chosen for the comment lines. If you're thinking of one that would be cool I'm happy to add it in :)

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi, Just keeping the momentum going. This release brings default sorting options for posts and an improved image viewer.

Still on the hunt for a new app icon, if you know a designer please let me know!

Changelog:

• Added default sorting option for posts
• Added better image viewer
• Adjusted Drawer header text colour for legibility
• Make swipe actions slightly more responsive
• Fix an SSL issue on Android 7
• Added block user and community options to the post card three dot menu
• Fixed a text ovelap issue for long display names
• Added an expand option to Profile options and some swipe animations to make things look nice
• Added message button to person views
• Fixed an issue with fullwidth card height
• Added a divider when viewing fullwidth card posts
• When signed in a guest there is now a sign out button

Note: as of writing this post 1.0.44 is still publishing in Google Play. If you're on 1.0.43 the only different is a bug in the image view where the three dot menu wasn't showing up.

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi, Today's update brings an improved community list in the drawer, block list management for users and communities, ability to hide read posts, and various minor improvements/fixes. You can also now view the about page for Communities as well including subscriber count, active users, and number of posts.

Thank you as always for your continued support and encouragement! The feedback has been very helpful in improving Connect. I hope we can make this the best way to browse Lemmy.

Still on the hunt for a new app icon, if you know a designer please let me know!

Changelog:

• Inbox now refreshes after marking all read

• Made the drawer lists more compact

• Added option to Hide read posts

• Show post titles when viewing a user's comments in user view

• Disabled loading more comments when scrolled to the bottom of posts as it looks like comment pagination isn't working properly on 0.18 and resulted in duplicate comments.

• Added indicator that a post has been read, the text will turn grey.

• Added pin icon to featured posts

• Added About Community view to see the details of a community

• Added instance names in drawer and community search suggestions

• Added share links to communities, comments and posts

• long pressing a post thumbnail will open the url in an external browser

• Added white background to web views to make text more readable

• Added block list management for users and communities

• Fixed a create post error on some communities (JSON relative path error)

• I'm now precaching some API calls so it should load things even faster

• Added de-duplication on post list API calls to remove some duplicates that were showing up due to the pagination implementation

• Fixed a bug where viewing a comment thread would show all comments

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko