this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Voyager

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The official lemmy community for Voyager, an open source, mobile-first client for lemmy.

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Happy v1... also, Voyager is going to the App Store (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by aeharding@lemmy.world to c/voyagerapp@lemmy.world
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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. πŸ™‚

Happy version 1.0! πŸŽ‰

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

New Contributors

Full Changelog: https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/compare/0.28.1...1.0.0

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[–] Lurklaughlove@lemmy.world 134 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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 πŸŽ‰

[–] Barns@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

long time lurker

User names checks out

[–] mistborn@lurkers.club 6 points 1 year ago

Welcome to the club

[–] oehm@midwest.social 41 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Awesome! Can’t wait to try the AppStore version!

[–] aeharding@lemmy.world 61 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The haptics are 🀌

[–] Amcro@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you plan on releasing it on testflight first?

[–] relevants@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

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

[–] greendakota99@lemmy.world 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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!

[–] kratoz29@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd suggest you to use both, because all Lemmy apps are awesome.

[–] EliasChao@lemmy.one 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I’m currently at 8 Lemmy clients installed. There’s something to like about each, so it’s hard to decide for just 1.

[–] kratoz29@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

It is not only hard for me it is impossible!

[–] AncientBlueberry@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What are your top 4?

[–] EliasChao@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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
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[–] BitingChaos@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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?

[–] aeharding@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

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 πŸ˜‰)

[–] BitingChaos@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

  1. this is awesome news!

  2. 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.

  3. 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).

[–] june@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] BitingChaos@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] CarlosCheddar@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] june@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

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

[–] yoichi@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] Cqrd@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] yoichi@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] Cqrd@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago

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

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[–] fraydabson@sopuli.xyz 17 points 1 year ago

Exciting stuff! Can’t wait to try the native iOS app!

[–] kratoz29@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

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!!

[–] unwinagainstable@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

Thank you for keeping the PWA!

[–] dm21@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago

Congratulations! And thank you for all the hard work!

[–] NotSpez@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

Only one downvote. Probably u/spez.

Can’t wait to tey the app!

[–] totallynotarobot@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

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!

[–] nic@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

big up dude best client out there

[–] Huxleywaswrite@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

That's awesome! You guys have done an amazing job

[–] gunnm@monero.town 9 points 1 year ago

You can also publish to Android without Playstore and it gives some advantages like pulling the APK from Obtainium or standalone download from GitHub.

[–] Mr_Buscemi@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 year ago

Congrats! Best Lemmy app I've found on Android yet!

Can't wait for it to eventually come to the Playstore!

[–] RIP_Apollo@feddit.ch 8 points 1 year ago

This is amazing. Thanks for all your hard work :)

[–] DaveNa@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

Congrats! And thanks for your effort. :)

[–] ccunning@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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?

(Also, a tip jar in the iOS would be great!)

[–] aeharding@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wrapper. It may lag. Depends on how affordable Ionic AppFlow Live Updates are ;)

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[–] kairo79@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Actually I only miss notifications now. Is this not possible with the web app or what is the reason?

[–] aeharding@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

It's possible, but to do it right without polling it depends on https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3552

[–] randomaccount43543@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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?

[–] Num10ck@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] shashi154263@lemmynsfw.com 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Glad to see you're planning to launch it on Play Store as well.

[–] LostDeer@infosec.pub 5 points 1 year ago

This is legit very cool! Awesome work!

[–] fer0n@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Are you planning a TestFlight release first or will it go straight to the App Store?

[–] OverdueCookie@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Looking forward to TestFlight Voyager!

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