I have about 5 different apps installed right now, and while I plan to test them all out, curious what people’s conclusions are thus far.
The moment I tried Sync for Lemmy I have this feeling of closure, like I finally can make peace with the fact that I’m leaving Reddit behind for good after using it for 13 years (8 years of those on Sync). The only thing that top this is the first time I saw federation in action where people from various lemmy, kbin and mastodon instances talk to each other in the same thread and deciding to jump ship on the spot.
Yeah, man. I’m with you and I’m incredibly pleased. My old experience I’ve enjoyed on reddit for years is finally back and is functionally identical, at least for the basics I missed so much.
Sync is extremely polished. The rest have had their issues for a while.
Sync doesn’t have posting yet though
Dev says it’s coming within a week
What exactly is coming within a week? I’ve been using Sync since yesterday morning.
NVM I’m dumb
Too much money. I feel bad for the instance devs because sync had probably made more money than them
Not sure how it can be too much money, it’s literally free to use. There are ads, but there aren’t many and not obtrusive at all. I haven’t really noticed them. I’ll probably buy the pro version just to throw some money at the developer. Otherwise, I wouldn’t mind just using the free version.
There are ads, but there aren’t many and not obtrusive at all.
It’s the only Lemmy app I know of that has them at all.
Hard pass.
Still want LIF in my life.
Thunder is better than RIF, then Summit is a close second. The best part about Lemmy apps is how close in comparison they are. After an update one is better than the others, but they’re each getting updated multiple times a week.
Like Summit for example, the first week it came out you could only browse, no login, no upvoting, no anything. Now it’s pretty damn close to being better than RIF.
Thunder is better than RIF
You take that back, blasphemor! And so far nobody has hit RIF for feel yet, I was a daily driver on it since release.
So far I’m between Liftoff and Sync. Does Thunder and/or Summit offer anything particularly unique by comparison?
I used RIF for 12 years and I think Thunder is pretty close. The only thing it’s really missing for me is better comment navigation.
I actually really enjoy the gesture upvoting it has, and it’s very customizable. The debs are super active and responsive on github and matrix too.
I am using Sync, and I paid for a year of it. A year from now, I’ll evaluate and maybe pick something else. Do I care if it costs a tiny bit of $ for a solid app experience that performs better than the rest, because it has dedicated development resources? Nope. Having read the details on what data is collected, do I have privacy concerns? Nope. Do I think folks have gone a little over the top about certain things? Yes. Bad enough having to leave reddit without making it even more complicated.
Just fyi, the tracking is only for ads and all tracking is gone once you remove the ads through Ultra or the one time payment. I don’t expect this to please most, but as someone who has used Sync for Reddit for basically my entire existence on Reddit, I’ve only paid a couple bucks back then for an app I used every day. So far I feel right at home here and I’m willing to pay after some time and seeing how this goes. The number of options is only growing and Sync is bringing new users to Lemmy either way. I’ve been through like 6 other Lemmy clients and Sync is still the one for me.
Edit: Several users confirmed tracking wasn’t present after removing ads.
I mean hypothetically the tracking is gone
I haven’t got a single hit on the duckduckgo app tracking. I bought a year, and if I’m still liking it then, I’ll probably drop ultra and just go for the lifetime no ads. Not even sure how bad the ads are on free, because I was on my piholed network when I installed it, and paid before going to mobile data.
Hopefully the developer keeps respecting user privacy in the future.
My pihole hasn’t shown any tracking. Ad free truly gets rid of it.
Can’t you just get lifetime?
The cost of lifetime is 6x the cost of one year. I can understand just getting one year to see how things go.
Ultra (subscription) and “no-ads” are two different options…no ads is a one time 20USD. Ultra includes additional features beyond the core app. It also has a lifetime option, which is the very expensive one.
for me is 20 lifetime no ads, 18 for one year ultra.
( in the last update there is now the option for one time pay for no ads )
I was using Jerboa for the first month. It’s good, functional. However, with all due respect to the penguin people, it felt like working on Linux. Just a bit too utilitarian and function focused.
Yesterday I installed Sync and it was like switching to Windows/OSX. So much more polish, much more pleasant experience.
On Reddit I was using BaconReader - and had no idea Sync looked (and felt) this good. Great UX, though still has some ways to go. The comment font size when typing is super tiny!
As a Linux guy, i disagree. I don’t know what version of Linux (or how long ago) you tried Linux. Sync is more like Linux, so many options and features to make it exactly what you want.
Maybe it’s not just the OS vs OS but more like Gimp vs Photoshop. Both accomplish pretty much the same tasks, but one feels way more polished than the other.
Maybe this will work: Sync feels like a Product, while Jerboa feels like a Project.
There are pros and cons to both approaches. I happen to be looking for a clean, pretty app that integrates with my Android 13 theming etc.
I’ve been enjoying Jerboa so far, there have been a ton of quality updates. Reminds me a lot of RiF which was my preferred Reddit app so that may say something.
You can change the font size under settings/view type
I believe that menu is just for the text on existing posts. There is another one for default baseline text size, but modifying it changes everything.
I’m quite happy with all the sizes, except for editor.
i get the idea of your comment but i don’t like the examples
You can adjust it here
Nope. It controls the size of the font in comments that are already posted and I am reading.
I’m looking to increase the size of the font in comment editor while I’m writing one.
Absolutely fair, I don’t think that’s a feature yet. You could try requesting it, @ljdawson@lemmy.world is super responsive!
I’ve tried Connect, Liftoff, Thunder, Voyager, and Infinity. It’s just bugs galore. The back button will take you to the wrong activity, comments won’t post (due to the app not the instance), some instances or accounts won’t load, and a laundry list of UI or functionality bugs. Liftoff gave me the fewest issues of all of them, apart from using Lemmy in the browser.
But Sync really is polished, and the experience is night and day. I’m a big FOSS proponent, but I don’t think it’s wrong for a developer to want to make money when their income source suddenly disappears and they need to pay bills (and region-specific pricing is coming soon). The level of customizability, spit and polish in the other apps doesn’t even come close. I’m sure they’ll get there eventually, but I think it’s a mistake to drive away passionate developers who want to help Lemmy succeed.
I’ve given pretty much every app or browser front-end a fair shake at this point, and I’m gladly choosing Sync for now.
The amount of bitching I’ve seen on Lemmy over paying the developer for their hard work has been insane. I was happy to pay the measly fee for ultra. This isn’t in response to you, just the general vibe I’ve seen here. I thought we had a more tech-minded space where people might understand the need to monetize these things, but that doesn’t seem to be the case lol
measly fee for ultra
you have to take into consideration that not all people have your level of pay, your quality of life and so on. That ‘measly fee’ is two day’s pay for some and they can’t afford that. Yes, I understand that the dev has to make a living, but I think it’s a bit expensive. And I was paying for Sync (for reddit) since the beginning. I even got Pro for my wife, who didn’t use it at all, just to help LJ.
Okay, people who can’t afford two dollars per month to pay for something that they use every day are welcome to use another app, or deal with occasional ads. That’s the thing, there’s a variety of different app choices. The bitching comes off as “I love this app but I want to use it without paying for it or dealing with ads” more than anything else.
The other apps are not free to dev and maintain either. You got to give what you can.
I agree. I will donate to liftoff and summit. I feel better when I use open source software.
It’s not about paying the Developer. It’s about paying the developer that much. $20 just to remove ads is a lot and a price people are not willing to pay
They’re welcome to use whatever other app they want, or deal with ads. Options abound. I seriously doubt the sync for lemmy dev is swimming in cash. We’re not talking about shoveling money at a company like reddit, we’re talking about supporting a solitary, highly trusted dev who’s worked hard to create a great app.
you fail to realize that the dev barely did any work to the app, it’s literally a direct port from reddit to lemmy, yet he’s recharging people money at a very steep price too and he’s running ads on the app when the official lemmy site has NO ads nor does it’s official app Jerboa.
Lmfao recharging people money. Base sync for reddit was free and then you could pay like $5 for lifetime support. Sorry the dev is looking to be compensated for his work, I know $2 per month is a “very steep price.”
Use Jerboa.
I mean, I paid $3-4 for Sync literally years ago. Once. I personally don’t have a problem kicking the dude shekels given that I literally paid pennies a month for how much I used it. To play devil’s advocate, groceries cost twice what they did 2 years ago. Everything is more expensive across the board and it sucks, but these are the seas we swim in
Except the ad market is down. An ad supported user is going to generate $2-3 in revenue over the lifetime of the app at most. The pro version price should be in line with that. Or at least not vastly more.
I don’t mind paying for a good appz even $20, but I just don’t know if I will get that much use out of it. If another app comes around and I like it better, that’s it.
Everything’s more expensive so people are less willing to pay more since they simply not have the money
I think I might have felt differently at a stage of my life where I didn’t have nearly as much disposable income as I do now.
Over the past few years, I’ve adopted the attitude of trying my hardest to pay for the things that I would be genuinely disappointed if they went away.
I have system-wide ad block, so the $20 or whatever for Sync actually bought me nothing other than the knowledge that if LJ decides to pack up Sync and go and work for a FAANG instead, I don’t need to feel guilty.
This attitude would be unrecognisable to my younger self.
I agree with you. I think it’s a lot of kids with summer jobs doing the complaining. I’ve got system wide ad block too, I paid for ultra purely to support LJ because he’s earned that trust, and then some, over the years.
It’s not just about Sync being the only app with ads or the fee to remove them (whether one thinks it’s steep or not is apparently up for debate – I find $20 steep for a mobile app, full stop).
It’s also about the fact that Lemmy is a FOSS system that requires independent instances to run. These instances incur costs. I hope that the people paying $20 to remove these ads are also donating to their home instances. If that isn’t happening, we need better messaging to users: paying to remove ads on an app does not support Lemmy itself or any individual instances, though the app and its popularity puts strain on those instances.
I get the idea of paying a dev for their work if you like it – though mandating it vs. relying on donations is a difference between Sync and pretty much everything else. However, it seems strange that the people pushing to support this single dev who happened to chose an ad model aren’t equally pushing for people to support their instances. Sync is useless if everyone just pays to remove the ads but doesn’t donate to help with the costs of running this platform, and I wonder how many people who came to Lemmy on the heels of the Sync release actually know that.
I agree with you that we need better messaging to users about instance donations. For the record, I’d also support instance admins who employ an “ads or pay a fee” model. I think it’s probably the best option for larger instances. I doubt purely donation based models will be sustainable over time.
If anything, I think LJ missed a trick by not having the option of doing a double subscription (so £3.99), and saying the extra £2 gets split between the instances, weighted by the time you spend time on them.
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Infinity is exactly what I was waiting for.
Could you share what your favourite features of Infinity are? I’ve never used it before, here or on the old site.
A bit like Thunder, all the navigation is horizontal, no voting arrows up the side life jerboa.
Apart from that it’s all muscle memory and first impressions probably.
Also using volume buttons to scroll posts/comments is a plus.
Not OP, but for me it’s the fact that it’s super customizable, and still very usable and smooth out of the box. It being FOSS is the cherry on top.
I found all of the prior Lemmy apps to either be missing something, clunky, or buggy. The one I liked most was Voyager/Wefwef, but even then it was missing stuff.
Now Sync is in beta and has bugs, but thanks to past development from Reddit it’s already so much more polished than all the others, my Lemmy usage has gone up considerably, I’ve barely touched Reddit today. It does have ads, but they aren’t visible when using DNS Adblocking.
What’s this DNS adblocking thing that everyone has been talking about lately?
Basically, whenever you make a request to access something from the internet (say, an ad image), it goes to a dedicated server that tells you “Where actually do I find www.website.com” (the answer is, you find it at address 128.129.130.1, this is the IP address). This is the DNS server.
If you tell your phone to use an ad-blocking DNS server - Instead of “normal” ones like e.g. those provided by Google - , whenever it receives such a request to find the address for you, and the address leads to a server that serves ads, it tells you, “Sorry, nothing found here” and the add is not displayed.
Phones, at least Android, have a setting where you can change the DNA server to an ad-blocking one (a different IP of that server).
Examples are nextdns (cloud hosted) or pihole (self hosted).
Sync has always been a superior UI/UX to anything else.
And I’m happy to pay $20 for the developers work. Ads would barely pay him anything anyway.
I feel like all you lemmings are getting way too hung up on the whole ads = spyware thing. It’s not the app that’s the issue, it’s the ad platforms - and those platforms are how he makes money. Don’t like it? Pay $20 for a lifetime without ads.
Sync is good because it’s a full time job for the Dev. That means the guy needs money to survive. I’m more than happy to help towards that, so I can have a better experience.
I used sync for Reddit for a loooong time, $20 is nothing compared to the value I’ve gotten out of it.
i wouldn’t have a problem to pay 20$ flat to support the dev … its a lot of time doing and maintaining an app
for now i dont see a reason to switch from voyager which shocks me bc i never thought a webapp could feel “that native”
the problem i see if i wanted to switch to sync ist, that without a google account i couldnt pay which basically kills it for me personally.
That’s an absolutely understandable point of view.
I’m just disappointed in the people who seem to think they deserve everything for free.
Of course you can use free apps, that’s fine! It’s great to have options.
Personally I enjoy the experience of using sync compared to the other apps on my phone (my own activity within Lemmy has spiked since it’s release!) And for that reason I’m happy to support its development.
The constant “just pay the Sync dev $20” reminds me of the Twitter tech-bros saying “just pay Elon $6” (or whatever the cost was for blue checkmarks).
It’s honestly reinforced how much I like Connect, more than anything…
(EDIT: The replies here are not helping…)
But that is 6$ a month. Not a flat ad free forever 20$ you are comparing apples to oranges.
Also Elon musk vs one dev lol
Thats because twitters business was advertisement and Musk fucked up one of the most important features for brands. Had they offered twitter premium in addition to verification that got you more features like youtube premium does that would have been fine.
If you can’t tell the difference between a small developer and god damn twitter, idk what to tell you other than I guess you do your job for free because paying people for their tallent is bad apparently.
I prefer Connect.
Agreed, it’s the perfect balance of looking nice and functional
Sync is far superior to the other apps so far, even with some features missing in the beta. I was using Liftoff, which is good, but not even close to the polish of sync.
People hating on sync’s optional cost have me laughing. Mf has to deal with the same inflation as my ass, I hope he’s gettin his.
Sync has been a much better experience than jerboa for me, as my two cents.
How much inflation has your ass had to deal with? Can you still fit in pants?
Has to buy two airplane tickets for themselves. Thoughts and prayers.
Seven inflations. I’m shopping at Big n Tall now and, cousin, we ain’t happy.
these are the questions we need answers to
He added the sync pro option to remove ads so I’m good.
Tried sync but honestly given that it’s an advertisement supported app, I couldn’t find a single justification to keep using it, short of the generic “spez bad sync good” base.
I switched to Jerboa, I don’t like the idea of accessing a free community via a paid/tracking app. It doesn’t make any sense to use an app that actively works against my interests, just because they did a good job making the app fast.
Jerboa seems good so far, I’m only ~9 hours into it though. It’s definitely more stable than lemmy beta was.
Also honestly I’m already tired of every fan boy (you’re out there don’t act coy) yelling about how amazing it is. My all page has waaaaay too many posts about sync, doesn’t feel organic. Was instantly not an issue when I switched to Jerboa however.
Reminds me a lot of how I had to block the “enough musk spam” because ironically they were filling my all page with TOO MUCH MUSK SPAM. Wtf
That’s interesting. All the sync stuff feels the same between sync, summit, and thunder. I guess ymmv
Yeah I’ve no idea, could have just been a timing thing too, I’ll never know. But I do know I like FOSS
Sync is the only reason i am on lemmy.
Been using sync for years now and it’s just a great app.
It runs so smooth, very clean looking, easy to read, highly customizable, tablet mode, dev is always updating and adding in requested features from the users.
Small features that make the app stand out like sharing a setting from the settings menu that will take you straight to it:
Settings shortcut: Comment options > Display navigation bar
Used connect and liftoff before and on Reddit RiF but for me sync is just the best.
Sync user here. It’s the reason that I found reddit usable. The effort that has gone into creating and refining the app is evident. I like it better than the the other apps, because it feels like home to me. I also enjoy the concept of u/spez unintentionally spotlighting lemmy, and literally tossing over the very best that reddit had to offer. Sync is just one of several excellent options already here, or on their way.
The free apps are anywhere from very good to very work in progress. I like Connect the best from what I’ve used. I expect that they will all improve over time, and have noticed improvements over a short length of time.
I actually enjoy the controversy/buzz over pricing, pricing models, privacy, and so on. This is mostly because I’m petty,and believe that all of this is hastening reddit’s demise.
