Having joined Lemmy recently, I have been having a ton of fun. However accessing Lemmy through my mobile browser has been an awful experience, similar to my past Reddit experience till I found Sync.
I'm not sure how much longer I can tolerate the browser experience, and am hesitating jumping on a app. Where's your head at about this?
Edit (4 days later)
I've been on Connect and has been 8/10 so far. Gonna dual use with liftoff after seeing the comments.
I did a 5 minute ctr+F to see which were the most popular apps/ interfaces. Not sorted by pos/neg, just mentions.
On mobile, I'm using the Voyager app, which lemmy.world has installed as an alternative front end. Seems to work great.
On desktop, I'm using the amazing Alexandrite UI (https://alexandrite.app/) which solves all of my interface annoyances with the regular Lemmy UI (infinite scroll, opening posts without losing place in the feed, easily accessible communities list).
I love how flexible Lemmy is proving with its UI options... there really does seem to be something for everyone!
Voyager (former wefwef) quickly turned out the best. Good updates every day just made the experience the best. Go to their webpage from your browser of choice and install it from there.
Highly recommend Connect for Lemmy. I've been using it practically since I started, and it's been consistently great (as long as your instance is up of course)
I am writing this through Connect. It's the closest thing to Rif I found, for Lemmy. I've had some login issues at the beginning, but that seems to have been solved.
Using Voyager, the really downside was the iOS inspired theming but, with latest updates android theming is supported. It's still in beta but promising. Better than that native iOS look 😑
Connect for now. It isn't perfect but pretty good. Feed isn't as smooth (images load in later kicks your scrolling up) and you can't open links in it automatically.
My primary issue with Connect at the moment is it desperately needs a reduction in the amount of taps to do anything. It takes 3 to download an image, and 4 to subscribe to communities. Both of these are things I feel should be in the ellipsis menu of any post, but currently you have to click through to the post or community. Meanwhile there are a dozen things in there I rarely use absolut flooding the menu. I also wish it saved comment drafts, but that is relatively minor.
It just needs some reprioritizing of actions and it would be perfect IMO.
Using Jerboa app on Android...had a rocky start but it has updated a whole lot in the past weeks, getting close to 5/5 probably 3.5/5 right now
Even with reddit I seldomly used the browser on PC, if I'm home and on my PC I generally play games or YouTube/streaming shows rarely browsed reddit on PC
I went from Liftoff to Jerboa as well. Liftoff is great but I just had a few nitpicks. Frame drops from time to time. Upvoting and commenting feels really slow. No button feedback when downloading images, I ended up downloading images multiple times.
I've been using Liftoff on Android. It's way better than mobile browsing but no where near the same level as Sync. Biggest pain points are searching and subscribing to new instances as well as an insane amount of cache builds up and never clears on its own.
Currently I can't load my subscribed instances but I think that's a temporary bug...
I am eagerly and patiently awaiting Sync for Lemmy release.
I also had the issue with not being able to load subscribed instances. I think someone said it was tied to a forced logout of some sort that happened. I resolved it by removing the accounts from Liftoff, then re-adding them. Afterwards, it worked fine.
Browser of course! Sorry, but I'm just a Firefox Supremacist. I don't know why you have a bad experience with browsers, I've been enjoying using browser for everything. What exactly don't you like? Also what OS and browser are you using?
While other apps offer a nice interface I find the jerboa app by far the best app for actually posting and commenting /actually interacting
This is important because I find that interacting with communities is actually a much better way to get meaningful engagement of Lemmy than it was with Reddit (I.e: lurking)
Same here since it's the closest we have to Sync at the moment. It also lets me block entire instances, which is great since Lemmy itself doesn't have this feature yet.
I've been hopping around between the different Android apps and PWAs however, I always seem to come back to Voyager (wefwef). My primary app on Reddit was sync and hope to return to it if it functions as it did on the other site. If not, I am enjoying Connect and Jerboa. Thunder, Summit, and Liftoff have small things I would like to see tweaked and/or they have minor bugs that they are still ironing out, but I am not yet sold on a specific app yet until we get further down the road.
I never once used an app for reddit - the few times I did access it from my phone I'd do so through Firefox, with "Use Desktop Site" enabled.
I did bookmark wefwef / now Voyager for Lemmy, and I use it when I use Lemmy on my phone (I like that it doesn't need to be installed) - but I do that so infrequently it's basically a rounding error.
Liftoff on mobile. Don't get to sit at a PC for web browsing much. If sync feels like it did on reddit. I will switch to that and customize it exactly how I want it again.
Desktop browser on PC or tablet with multiple Lemmy instances pinned. I get different flavors of lemmy based on subscription.
Also wefwef.app and old.lemmy.
iOS Mlem and Memmy apps on phone.
I was using Jerboa because i was used to Sync for reddit. But, I got a bit tired of how rough around the edges it is, so I switched to just installing my Lemmy instance front page as Firefox "app" on my phone and realized it's not that bad as a UI, so sticking with it for now.
I'll probably try apps again in the future but I feel more open to "installing" good web apps now. Incidentally I tried the same trick with Reddit's mobile interface after Sync stopped working and realized it's also not so awful as I remembered. I did prefer Sync but I'll see how it goes with this method. So it's mobile web interfaces on Android for me for now.
Having said that, in both cases I think I'd prefer a more "simple HTML" type experience like old reddit over these dynamic SPA things they both have going.
I'm also using the Firefox "app" and every time I switch to another app or minimize the FF app it crashes FF. Does this happen for you too? Decided to just suffer through it cause I couldn't find any fix for it.
Connect is what im using until sync comes out. Im finding it difficult to find new communities to connect to, but i think thats more of a lemmy/fediverse casualty of decentralization more than anything. But at least i will have opinions on lemmy apps for when i do go back to to future with sync
Memmy is nailing it for me. Brand new app and it’s already super smooth, intuitive and functional. Experience is close enough to Apollo that I’m now fully onboard the Lemmy train.
For myself I have KES, Move Comment Box To Top, Notifications Panel, and Subscriptions panel, all of which have done wonders for me. (and tagging @HipPriest)
I have been using Voyager for lemmy.world. which is a progressive web app you can install to your phones homescreen. It is still is using the browsers engine for javascript, but it behaves as if it was a mobile app.
I am writing this on Connect. Mostly works, but about one in 5 comments fails due to "wrong language". I haven't yet found any option of even setting comment language, so I guess it's autodetecting and failing at that.
I may be new to the fediverse, but I’ve found kbin more visually pleasing than native lemmy website. That’s on desktop, on mobile, since there’s no native kbin app yet, I’ve added kbin as a WebApp to my Home Screen. I’ve heard good thing about Liftoff too.
on my laptop, i access the Lemmy web frontend through Tangram. on mobile, i currently just access it through Firefox, but i'd like to switch to an app once i find one i like
Mobile browser, it's a bit clunky but waiting for Sync. I haven't been back to reddit more than a handful of times since before the blackout. Patiently waiting for Sync.
The instance that Im on has both voyager built in, and a front end that makes it look like old reddit. So I use voyager on mobile and that old reddit look alike on PC.
Also using the Kbin PWA from Firefox. It got me to switch over from Edge because performance was terrible in any magazine that did something as simple as change the color of the title bar for some reason. Worked fine in Chrome oddly enough. But I'd sooner use Firefox over Chrome.
I jump between voyager for lemmy and liftoff while waiting for sync for lemmy. They seem pretty good so far. Better that using a browser imo. I mostly use voyager because looking at and replying to messages is kinda annoying in liftoff compared to voyager.
Using m.lemmy.world as a firefox web app. I guess that's basically voyager nowadays. Working great! For the times when I can't stand the ios gui I use jerboa.
But I also have Jerboa on my phone and Connect on my tablet.
I like Connect more than Jerboa, but both of them have some quirks when browsing and reading. I really prefer the experience of the site.
I'm also using Connect. I've got it looking pretty similar to RiF and it has some nice features. Plus, the developer is very active and is constantly pushing out updates and adding new features.