I just tried it and it’s slow as fuck for some reason. I have a Galaxy S20+ and Sync is buttery smooth, as is Liftoff, but Voyager is stuttering and taking some time to open any thread when I tap it.
Weird, I have pretty much all Lemmy native apps installed on my S22 and all of them run buttery smooth. The Voyager native app runs noticeable smoother than the web app for me.
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.
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.
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.
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).
I just downloaded infinity to give it a shot and I find the UI to be a little rougher around the edges. The most noticeable is the layout of posts on the feed - the icons dont look like they are consistent sizes and the lack of grouping compared to Sync (like having a box around both vote and vote count) makes it look more cluttered. I also think the default theme color (the intense blue color) kinda hurts my eyes because it’s too high contrast maybe, so changing that was the first thing I did- I think having a milder default would provide a better out of the box experience.
I have no major gripes about the base functionality, they’re both functional enough for me but the aesthetics of sync win for now. Also it seems like both sync and infinity don’t collapse the comment you pressed and only the replies, making it seemingly impossible to collapse top level comments which inconveniences how I read threads, by collapsing top level comments as I go down the thread - long top comments stay expanded so I have to scroll past a lot more.
Those are my first impressions based on never using either sync or infinity (be it lemmy or reddit) before like this week.
Edit: Just downloaded Connect too, looks very similar to Sync in level of polish so I think those will probably be my top 2
Sync is pretty good but its font options are awful on my phone. If I set the comments font size to “huge”, it’s still smaller than e.g. the clock in the notification bar. And then it’s an unreasonably large jump from “huge” to “header”.
It needs a simple font size slider instead of preset mystery values. As it is, it’s just uncomfortable to use.
Not sure if Sync for Reddit had the same problem since I used other clients more.
Try going into setting and modifying “Base font size” then based off that modify comment and post font sizes accordingly? I had the same issue and the base font size allowed for more precise modification
I’m surprised by how much of a big deal apps are for the users. I would have kept Jerboa if it was more stable. I got Connect for no specific reason and don’t really see a reason to try anything else… I was still using old reddit and an app called Slide, so I guess I’m some removed user or something. Happy that those apps brings more users tho.
Honestly just using Lemmy in a browser (or Tildes even more so I imagine) I keep wondering why apps are a big deal to begin with. They both work 100% perfectly fine.
It’s the same with Mastodon, in fact their official PWA gives a fair few apps a run for their money.
Just using their websites can be a pain when links to content and other users or communities or whatever ends up taking you to a new domain because of the federation. Apps allow everything to stay together, so you can keep interacting as your intended user account.
Mastadon was much better for that like. I haven’t touched lemmys web interface on a while. Not a fan of its look or UX personally, so I don’t know if they fixed that.
Same here! Two things I like more on Sync as of now: So many useful options how things look and behave (seriously, the amount of options is insane!) and the list view (I hate the card view, always have, alway will!) is smaller and uses the available space slightly better imo. But I have a good feeling Voyager will improve immensely considering how good it got in the past months.
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