🍂 Voyager Newsletter, Fall 2023
🍂 Voyager Newsletter, Fall 2023
Hi there! I thought I should give you all an update on Voyager as a newsletter format. This may become a regular thing, maybe not, I'm still not sure. :)
Voyager is now on F-droid!
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/app.vger.voyager/
Voyager joins Jerboa and Lemmur [discontinued] as the third Lemmy app on F-droid. However, Voyager is the first Lemmy app on F-droid to have reproducible builds! I'll let Izzy from F-droid explain why this is so cool:
[Reproducible builds] proves to you that the developer confirmed: „this is what I intended to publish, this was built from my code“. And that it’s distributed by F-Droid tells you: „F-Droid confirms, too, that this is the APK built from the very code the developer provided“. So neither of the two could have „sneaked in“ something not contained in the app’s source code repository.
https://f-droid.org/en/2023/09/03/reproducible-builds-signing-keys-and-binary-repos.html
I've been having a lot of fun learning about reproducible builds for the past week. Android users are really lucky to have such a great option for app distribution. Meanwhile, Apple users are forced to trust that the developer doesn't sneak anything into compiling binaries (thanks Apple)
The road ahead
There's a ton of stuff to work on. Many of these things are already tracked in Github, such as internal linking to posts (one of the next major features I'm working on!) or full width swipe back. Which reminds me...
Help me prioritize tasks
On Github, you can sort issues by most đź‘Ť reactions. This helps me prioritize work, and it's become more and more useful over time. So if you you have time, help me out and upvote tasks that are important to you!
Better onboarding
You already have a Lemmy account logged in to Voyager, so this doesn't really affect you, which is probably why it's not currently requested in Github. But for newcomers, Voyager may be their first encounter with Lemmy.
Right now, the new account creation flow is very rough. I'd like to improve onboarding and hand-holding through the signup process and instance selection. If you have any thoughts on this, please let me know below! This will likely be long term task with lots of brainstorming and mockups before writing code.
New icons?
I'm hoping to continue adding community-driven icons into Voyager on a fairly regular basis. (However, I can't add everything, since they all need to be in the bundle!) Maybe a snow/winter themed icon next? We'll see. You can download the Affinity Designer file for Voyager's logo if you want to play around. :)
Mod tools
Mod tools are coming, but I'm still determining how best to integrate this into Voyager's roadmap. I expect Lemmy's moderation API will significantly improve over the next year or so, so I'm still thinking timelines.
Anything else? AMA
This is probably the best opportunity to discuss Voyager at a high level. So AMA!
Thanks to my Sponsors đź’™
Finally, thanks to my Github and Liberapay sponsors. Your donations TRULY help! Build infrastructure and hosting runs ~$75/mo, and then there's one time costs like the various Android phones I've purchased for testing (yeah, I still need to tweak Android haptics).
If you're interested in sponsoring, head over here. You can donate monthly or one-time in any amount.
If it's not the right time to donate, you can also show your appreciation by leaving a review on the app stores! đź’™
- Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.vger.voyager
- Apple App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id6451429762?action=write-review
I would love only one thing at the moment…the ability to make post titles Bold. So simple.
I'm happy to look at it, looks like Apollo is slightly bolder too. Can you make an issue on Github? I forget things way too easily.
Done. Thank you.
Anything else? AMA
Would it be possible to make it so that long pressing the profile button opens the account switcher? Perhaps as an alternative option to the way it’s currently done or as a replacement entirely? It’s pretty much the only thing Apollo had that I’d really like to see added to a future update. Voyager as it presently exists is otherwise the perfect Lemmy app for me, so thank you for the hard work!
This is in progress, it's just tough to do well due to edge cases! But it will come at some point.
Awesome, I'm happy to hear it's already being worked on and I'm happy to be patient until it's ready to roll out. I appreciate the response.
Voyager is awesome thank you for all the hard work! And I love that it’s both in app stores and self hostable PWAs!
Is there any possible of adding the feature memmy has which is to enable post hiding only on feed and optionally in communities?
That way I can doom scroll my feed but when I go to a community I can still find the post to read new comments
Thank you!
Haha thanks. SO I assume you just want to disable hiding altogether in communities? I suppose I could just check out Memmy
Yup pretty much that!
This lets it me go to any community and see all posts regardless of read status so I can find old posts to read new comments.
It’s an option in memmy to choose where things are hidden
Separate toggles for:
- in feed (aka subscribed or all)
- in community, so when you click into a community
Allowing people to choose where hiding takes effect
Only feature I notice missing is for images to appear in comments and the ability to stack instance name under the username in the feed so its easier to click on a post without click the title
And the option to unhide read posts, ideally by long pressing the hide read posts button
These all make sense and I believe they're tracked on Github! Thanks!
Can you make it so that blocking an NSFW community doesn’t ask every time if I wanted to actually block all of them, I don’t. If I do there is a setting for that. Maybe just display it once and have some messaging about the setting?
Yeah, I might just get rid of that message altogether, unless people think its useful. It was an experiment.
Since this is also an AMA, is voyager supposed to be inspired by Apollo or is it supposed to be more like a cloneÂż? I ask because I have seen you and sometimes others question certain feature requests or UI choice suggestions because they were not present on apollo
When it doubt, I try to stick to Apollo's design choices. It depends on the feature however.
Glad to hear that. I was fearing that ideas from the android world would be ignored because the ideas are fundamentally different to how things were done on Apollo.
A themed icon would be cool.
https://developer.android.com/develop/ui/views/launch/icon_design_adaptive
Voyager is the last one from the Lemmy apps that still doesn't have it on my home screen.
https://i.imgur.com/emNfJnQ.png
Cool app, nice work, btw!
That would be cool, I'm no designer but if anyone could make a good icon I can add it.
I didn’t see an issue about custom app icons in [this] the [most amazing] PWA [I’ve ever used]. Is that even possible? Are haptics?
[Keep up the amazing work! I have a mountain of Lemmy apps installed but keep coming back to Voyager.]
The native app available on the iOS and Android stores have haptics and custom icons :)
Unfortunately it's not possible with the PWA version of Voyager!
You’re amazing and I appreciate all your hard work and speedy reply. Thank you and thank you.
Thank you for creating this awesome Android client for an equally awesome FOSS place (Lemmy). I am a regular user of your Voyager app on my Android phone, and I use it together with Jerboa (which is still there in my phone as the OG app for Lemmy, no offences to Voyager, lol).
The only two features that I think are lacking in voyager and will make it the best are -
(1) Show the Avatars of profiles. Currently they are not displayed.
(2) More text editing options - not just limited to Bold and Italics - please add options to strikethrough texts and quote something to reply. I do know the keyboard shortcuts for these, but having dedicated editing buttons for them would be amazing !
Once again, thanks for this awesome app !
Hey, thanks!
Regarding #1, this is unlikely be be on the user page. Instead it will probably be in a sepatate user bio page. The reasons are mostly Apollo/old reddit DNA.
For #2 yes this is planned :)
Would it be possible to get the following?
- Swipe to go back for the ios app
- hide bars when scrolling or transparent bars
iOS app has swipe to go back already!
Hiding the app bars is planned
Hey! This is definitely a first world problem, but I use the app on iOS with a 120hz display and I’ve noticed the only part of the app that does have 120hz animation is the scrolling while clicking on posts and all other animations are stutter-y and 60 or below. Is this on the roadmap? Couldn’t find anything related on GitHub.
That and the full page swipe back are my two features I’ve been really hoping for personally!
Hi there! Apple still does not fully support ProMotion/120hz in Safari. You can follow this bug, for updates:
Ah, noted! Thank you!
I would love a basic simple icon! One primary background colour (gradient or solid) with the mouse in a space suit outline or something similar 🙏
Someone recently posted a really nice icon pack with Voyager included :) https://lemmy.world/post/7976252?scrollToComments=true
