Lemmy Finally feels usable! Thank you LJDawson
Any 50% of the posts on lemmy in the last 12 hours are about Sync.
Hope we get some more diverse content soon lol
The hilarious thing is you can’t post from Sync yet, only comment, so for every post about Sync someone had to use their browser or another app to post it.
🤣😂
We will. Lemmy seems to easily get flooded with singular stories. Eg whenever Elon comes up with yet another dumbass decision.
There’s a golden ratio somewhere, it feels like Reddit has become overflown with posts and empty discussions, even on relatively niche subs. I could get behind a more sane approach to my web browsing habits but of course it will take some time.
today was the first time I forgot if I was browsing reddit or lemmy. its so good to be back on sync
It feels good to be back to normal. Balance is restored.
I’ve still got revanced sync installed and I’m forgetting which one I have open occasionally, lmao
Same here. Loving that the new icon is black and the old one is white. Makes it easier to see I went to the “dark side” 😂
Same, regardless of the “BuT iTs nOt FoSs” cries. You are free to use whatever app you want.
I definitely prefer FOSS, but hey if it gets you on the fedi, go for it.
One thing that worries me about Foss is the eventual lack of updates and potentially become abandonware. Many people mentioned that the Foss apps protects are a side project for most developers. They could easily lose interest or have other things happen in their life that take up more of their time.
These arguments are valid for closed source as well I agree, but this being the devs main focus makes me feel better about updates in the long term.
I mean the opposite can be said as well. Since open source apps are, well, open source, if the developer abandons them, someone else can pick up where they left off, but that’s not the case with the closed source apps.
Although the developer being paid to make the app can often make it higher quality.
It ain’t FOSS but it’s totally BOSS.
#NoFussNoFOSS
Sync is great. Lemmy is still lacking content. Shows I watch, bands, etc… those communities have no activity (if they even exist).
Be the change you want to see.
There needs to be 100 times the people for any change to manifest. No matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to convince tens of thousands of people to switch.
Altho true someone has to be the first of those 100 people. Slowly but surely people will come
But those people have already made the choice and it isn’t Lemmy.
And that’s fine, if they don’t come they don’t come. I like Lemmy so imma stay
If they don’t come then they will be making communities elsewhere. Which means less relevance for Lemmy.
Yes you will. It will just happen gradually over a couple years. No one is expecting this to happen overnight.
I am. LET’S GO! 🤣
We’re all here already, right?
I actually followed a guy on reddit who shared his phone number with me. I just searched for him on Lemmy and he’s not here. texted him to get over here! lol
I’m working on it!
Not at all! Just like with price, the difference between zero and one is hugely more consequential than any extra dollar added. Think of it: if you see a community with no posts in the last hour, or day, it does feel a bit deserted. Or a post without comments. By adding a post, or the first comment, you can be the difference for the next guy’s impression, and encourage them to do the same, and then the ball gets rolling, and that’s how you get momentum.
Same as Reddit in the beginning, Digg was so strong back in the day.
Niche communities start when the user ase grows quite a lot. Give it time.
My ass is pretty fat already. It doesn’t need any more growing.
It will take years before you see more niche communities like that.
You guys have high requirements :)
But I agree, fantastic app. I think second best app is Liftoff though, it’s a bit cleaner since it doesn’t have a billion options.
Sync is like the professional choice in clients
Maybe I’m alone facing this, but I tried a few apps and the website itself - I was finding the interface very unintuitive and confusing
It has sooo many options, it could be a good idea to hide some of them behind an Advanced menu. That way the user interface still looks clean but power users can customize.
I think that would help a lot
old.lemmy.world should fix those woes.
I switched to Liftoff this week after Connect stopped letting me control my volume. My only complaint with is not being able to align post thumbnails to the left side of the screen. Other than that, I love the look and feel.
Sync is doing fine but I honestly don’t understand the hype.
There is a dozen apps out there since the reddit migration with some having nearly the same features but without ads, without subscriptions and regular updates ever since.
Off the top of my head: Voyager, Summit, Connect, Thunder, Liftoff.
I keep hearing people mention all of these apps, and I’ve tried most of them (I’m on Android, and besides Sync, I currently have Liftoff, Connect and Thunder installed; I had Jerboa and the Voyager PWA, but removed the former due to bugs and the latter due to slow startup).
Honestly, none of them feel as polished as Sync. They do offer pretty much the same functionality, sometimes even better, but the UI and UX of Sync is just smoother.
Maybe it’s just that I’m used to Sync after using it for reddit for many years, but in any case I thought I’d put this out there in case others were feeling puzzled as I was from all the mentions of other apps suggesting they can replace Sync without any quality loss. Sure, maybe not functionality-wise, but to me the user experience is just as important.
Edit: for reference, here’s an album of screenshots comparing the same views in Sync, Liftoff, Connect and Thunder (yeah, I’m a fan of the compact list view): https://imgur.com/a/MvawTYm — there are pros and cons to all of these, but IMO the sync experience is the one with the best design and UX polish. Happy to hear your thoughts, though!
This x1000
I tried basically every app going on Android and they are all either buggy as fuck, unintuitive or janky in some other way. The user experience was just horrible.
I really do not understand all the people claiming Sync has an equivalent. It just does not right now in terms of a polished user experience.
Honestly it’s just Linux vs Windows kinda situation to me. No matter how many nerds tell me Linux can do everything the same and is more customisable and better, it’s just a worse user experience. Windows is far more intuitive and polished and there is a reason it has the market share it does.
Yeah, but I’m using Sync exactly because I’m using Linux lol. Much more convenient and polished, and there’s no such thing as intuitive UI, there’s only UI you got used to.
I really wanted to stick with voyager, but just switching between inbox and posts was just a crap shoot. Sometimes it would switch, sometimes it was acting as a back button… Then you’d lose your scroll position in posts… Just very alpha feeling
That said I hope they keep going! Competition is always good!
It may be the 11 years of using it on Reddit, but Sync already works how I expect it to. Just things like hitting the preview takes you to the link instead of the comments, or how tapping the community name on a link takes you to the community. Every other app just doesn’t behave as intuitively or efficiently.
A lot of it really comes down to your personal settings for these apps. Both my Sync & Connect experiences are very different from your own.
(screenshots cropped & combined to be slightly less obnoxious inline)
Here’s my Sync:
And here’s my Connect:
Both apps are honestly pretty similar, in my preferred Card View.
Thanks for this, it’s really helpful. Confirms that the Sync interface just feels right to me.
Honestly because IMO no other app compares to it in terms of polish, UX and smoothness; that’s not just out of lemmy apps either that’s phone apps in general.
And tbh that shouldn’t be too surprising, It’s got 10 years of development behind it and the dev works on it full time—no other lemmy app has that currently
Some of us have been using Sync for 10+ years, we’re not exactly looking for something new
For real. Sync works incredibly well. The developer is responsive to the community. I know how to use it. I don’t want to learn a new app.
This is the case for me. I’ve seen more comments and posts than ever in Lemmy because of Sync
Sync is already the most visually and ergonomically polished by far. That’s not all that matters, but it’s very important for me and many others.
For me it’s the force of habit. I’m already used to the UI, I know where everything is, what to expect, I can navigate it very quickly and set it exactly how I want.
All the features I’m used to like comment drafts or the comment navigation bar (jump between top-level comments easily) are right where I’m used to. Doing the Android “back” gesture from the left works like it should, I don’t have to confirm exit with a button, all these small things.
It’s also very polished, for example I encountered two issues with Connect:
-
it didn’t handle internet dropping out (e.g. temporary loss of mobile signal) well - it just kept failing on the retry button even after connectivity was restored, had to restart it
-
the search in the sidebar didn’t show all the matching communities, this seems to have improved recently
-
Every single one of those apps except Summit and Voyager has janky scrolling, which is easy to notice on a 90Hz screen.
Sync has not dropped a single frame since my install on all my devices.
And every one of them has just one tiny annoyance I can’t let go.
E.g.
Connect: only left hand voting. I use my phone almost always in one hand and it’s my right hand.
Liftoff: no auto-hide the bottom (quite big) bar.
Summit: post actions only available when in the post. (Like save or share.)So stuff like this. They are not the end of the world, but y’know: better without them.
And the stutter on most of them. Annoying as hell.
Interestingly I quit using Voyager because the scrolling wasn’t high frame rate, but maybe that was because I was using it on Firefox? Thunder is smooth for me.
Yeah that’s a Firefox issue, you need to enforce 90Hz on Firefox using adb to make it work
It’s just how many of us are used to things. Particularly the collapsed comments along with rainbow colors depending on the nested comments. I’m sure one of those has it, but Sync has all my patterns. And it was as simple as importing my sync for reddit config to get all my options as they were. Worthwhile wait, and I don’t mind supporting a Dev. Especially when there is a one time ad-free payment option, which is all I need.
In terms of smoothness- 90hz screen only voyager and summit has that
I like Thunder best
Came here to say, memmy is crazy good and the developer is dropping revs faster than people can post bugs.
Connect for me
thunder is better than sync idk what everyone likes about sync just seems like a copy of all the other apps except they have to groundwork for ads and monetization
how revolutionary
Sync for Reddit was around for a long time, about 10 years. It came out before the official Reddit app, which on release had a design that was heavily influenced by Sync at the time, and still to this day has some design elements it took from Sync.
Sync for Lemmy may be a “new” app, but it inherited almost everything from Sync for Reddit. If anything, others are copying Sync, not the other way around. What you see in sync for Lemmy is the result of about 10 years of development and refinement from the reddit days being ported over to work with Lemmy.
My problem with Thunder is how inconsistent the Slide to go back vs. using the back button is. There’s a lot of inconsistency in the UI decisions.
This is my first post too! :)
Now you are counted as an active user on Lemmy. :)
Used Sync for Reddit for 7 or 8 years, this feels like home!
It really does, but between the blackout and this release I realised how much I was using Sync.
I’ve managed to start putting my phone down and doing other things.
I can solve a rubiks cube in 3 minutes now! Because I deleted Sync from my phone.
And now it’s back on my phone…
Just think of the things I could have done.
The app is beautiful. Former rif user and decided to give Sync for Lemmy a try and I’m not disappointed.
Same here
you should check out thunder i think sync is dog comparitively
all sync has going for it is a cluddered screen and ads no?
I was using wefwef.app and liked the colored bars on the left when several users replied to each other. Now in sync these bars are the same color. Can I change this?
You can link to settings?!
yes, hold down any switch or setting to get a sync-settings:// link in your clipboard to post, which is then clickable when in the app.
Settings shortcut: General > Community icons
holy shit! its that easy!
What a fantastic feature, never saw that in Sync for Reddit.
it was there but very rarely used, even on r/syncforreddit
this is the coolest thing i ever saw
I fucking love color bars and link to settings
Damn, I forgot this was a think in Sync for reddit. Just bought the ads removal even though I cannot see any ads anyhow. The dev deserves it.
It’s nice. I’m from Boost, but this works well
Same! Can’t wait for Boost! But I do like sync as well. Feels like a solid app.
I’m just going to keep using Thunder until Boost comes out. Sync feels a little clunky.
This is only he third time I’ve driven stick, but this Ferrari sure feels clunky.
No. I used to use Sync for reddit back in the day when there weren’t better options. I’ve just moved to apps that have more functionality and more convenient gestures/UI like Boost.
As for Lemmy, I tried Sync because I assumed it would be better than the initial lemmy offerings, and found it wasn’t much improved from the early days of reddit sync and was lacking options and polish compared to apps like Thunder.
Not sure why you need to be condescending, trying to defend some app just because I said it was clunky.
Same as you… Although I’m jumping from sync to thunder every now an then, for me personally, the way comments looks on sync makes some visual noise, thunder in this regards looks better, but for every other thing, sync is apretty solid app…
Yeah it’s pretty great. I’ve actually got to watch myself because I could see myself getting hooked in an unhealthy way like I did to reddit in the bad old days.
This is honestly a great experience, the app has integrated with my instance perfectly. Impressive work!
how did you forward a link to a setting? what magic is this?
In settings, long press what you want to share till it stays link copied and just paste it in your comment box.
That. Is so fucking hot. 😱🥹🤌🏼
For some reason all apps + web refuse to show me my comment people are replying to, even when pressing the “view context” button.
Sync does.
I don’t know why all of the other apps + web decided to break on me a week ago, but the only way I can reply to comments right now is because of Sync. Anyone else having this issue?
I haven’t had this issue on Thunder.
I’m a Sync user, but that feature worked fine in Liftoff.
