this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2023
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Liftoff!

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A mobile client for Lemmy running on iOS and Android

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Limbo and Limmynade have joined forces, and will continue development together as Liftoff!

The past couple of weeks have been tremendously exciting times for all of us as events elsewhere have led to a massive growth in interest in and usage of Lemmy.

Our two separate projects both started with the intention of bringing an existing open-source code base Lemmur up to date, with the aim of helping new users to have a great first experience of Lemmy, while giving existing users access to many rich features. As soon as we became aware of each other we realised that we would work much more effectively by combining our efforts. Read more about what makes Liftoff! special.

We are:

Zach—Extensive experience in Enterprise full stack architecture and infrastructure.

Michael—Many years experience of developing and managing commercial and open source software projects.

Liftoff! is written in Dart for API support and Flutter for front-end development, meaning that it can run wherever Flutter runs. Our primary targets right now are Android and iOS, but the sky’s the limit!

Our current development priorities are to:

  • Ensure that the app runs robustly on iOS and Android platforms.
  • Identify and address any major bugs affecting key functionality
  • Work to improve the user experience on both platforms.
  • Release 1.0 version

Beta builds now available on TestFlight and will soon be available on F-Play and Google Store. (Note that the TestFlight page still refers to it as Limbo, but it does indeed install as Liftoff!)

Liftoff code is made available under GPL2.0 and can be found at https://github.com/liftoff-app

We have already had tremendous support from enthusiastic Lemmy users as separate projects and we look forward to continuing to work with you all. Code contributions, bug fixes, issue reports and suggestions are all welcome, so please join us on our journey into the unknown!

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Hey there! (developer of Thunder here)

I would just like to pop in and say congrats on getting Lemmur up and running! I'm happy to see more Dart/Flutter apps popping up. Since both Thunder and Liftoff use Flutter, this could also be an opportunity for our projects to help one another in good ways - maybe starting off with the lemmy-dart api

I am currently using a very basic lemmy-dart library that I built from scratch, but this could be the opportunity to migrate to using your fork

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You'd be more than welcome, and don't feel shy about picking through the code for ideas and things you'd like to do better! We'd welcome any suggestions or contributions you make.

I have to say Thunder is looking good too!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Kudos to the devs! I use Liftoff on Android and i think this is it for me!. IMO the number one thing that will help the fediverse gain adoption is good mobile apps, I'm leaving reddit because of two things:

  1. Fuck you u/Spez and u/ModCodeOfConduct
  2. RIF is fun is shutting down and i do most of my reddit time on my phone.

The app is in early stages but i trust that you'll make it great!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's really good, I've tried a few apps and I'm sticking with Liftoff!

My only request rn is a transparent or white nav bar because Pixel.

Thanks to all involved 🖤

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Could you explain what you mean by that request? Happy to log it but I don't send much time on Android so I don't understand it :-)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry, I didn't see your reply till now.

Gesture navigation on Android features a small black bar at the bottom of the screen, it's transparent (like iOS) most of the time but devs specifically have to account for it, either make it a specific colour or transparent or it just appears black, which is quite ugly when the surrounding app is white or any other colour.

Some manufacturers like Samsung allow you to remove the bar completely, but on others including Pixel there is no option.

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/166478545 - as you can see, lots of people have issues!

Android 14 beta has a transparent nav bar option (currently only sort of working) so hopefully this will be one less thing for devs to worry about in the future.

Thanks for your work on this app, it's fab!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay, got it now. I've just copied your great description into a new issue: https://github.com/liftoff-app/liftoff/issues/128.

Thanks for the report, and for the nice words!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Amazing, thanks.

I have noticed that in v0.9.18 that the bar appears white in the main feed but reverts to black when going to any other tab.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Could you share a screenshot of this? I'm on a Pixel and not sure I'm seeing this issue

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think this is the most 'complete' android client for Lemmy right now! Feels the most seamless to me at least

Walking users through registering an account here would already make this recommendable to people upset about 3rd party reddit apps going down I feel.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Out of all the Lemmy apps I tried, this is the best one so far. Hope you guys will come up with a way to clearly separate posts when using the amoled theme. And maybe a toggle to choose how to collapse comments, between tap and tap&hold.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Is there a way to assign a default YouTube player? It looks like when a YT link is pressed it automatically opens YT in a browser. Is there a way t o force it to always open Newpipe?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

By far the most complete app for Lemmy. Huge respect for the dev team.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm testing Limbo right now, and was about to send a suggestion via TestFlight, but since it concerns the UI I think it should be more useful to the community to leave it here.

I am not sure about the rounded corner cards with dark gray shadows you use to separate posts, since we only see top and bottom shadows and it makes the separator look really weird. Maybe it's the shadow that's too dark on the white background I don't know.

What do you think?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's some options in Settings you might like :-)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can I choose which account I comment from? If I have my sh.itjust.works acct and lemmy.ca acct signed in I'd still rather comment on Lemmy.ca communities with my sh.it acct since I check it more often.

The feature is cool for seemlesly interacting with beehaw but otherwise I'd like more control.

Great app otherwise though.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We're certainly looking at how we make the multi-account feature work better for people, thanks for the example.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, I had trouble wrapping head around some of it at first. If I understand when I select a different instances local feed I'm also automatically signing in to that acct?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, we use your credentials on that server for anything that requires authentication, such as voting or posting and picking up your subscriptions.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is there any way to override that? I'd rather use this account on Lemmy.ca communities despite actually have a lemmy.ca account.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

We've got some issues open and are thinking about how to manage all this in the future, but at present if you've subscribed to them from lemmy.world and are in your [email protected] feed, your interactions should automatically use your lemmy.world credentials. Let me know if that works for you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is the best app so far! One issue I'm having with it is that the keyboard covers the text box I'm typing in so it makes it difficult to see what I'm typing.

I'm on android.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I appreciate it!

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