I’ve always been a lemmur user. But since it became unmaintained and unusable to the point of not being able to log in, I had to make the switch to jerboa. Although the latter is more or less functional, its ui and ux are very limiting and lack many essential features in my eyes. Here’s what I propose (if the lemmy devs are still interested in developing the app):

  • A settings page, similar to the website.

  • Default sorting: everytime I launchthre app I have to reconfigure the sorting from local & active to subscribed & new. but I found a way to fix that by clearing app data then once you launch the app fix the sorting before logging in and this will ensure that your preferences won’t change after relaunch.

  • Ability to search posts and users.

  • open links in app instead of web, bonus points if includes links to communities and posts from a federated instance.

  • community stats in sidebar + trending communities

  • there’s no way to see the sidebar of other federated instances from the app (or what communities they have). I didn’t even know which instances lemmy.ml federates with until I explored the website.

  • Cross-posting (?)

  • markdown editor with preview

  • see modlog of the instance (and other federated ones) and its communities.

  • fixing infuriating bugs when typing

I recall that Dessalines said that he had to learn android programming from scratch to make the app. So it’s understandable why we haven’t seen any update in a while. But it is still a fact nontheless that we mobile users are neglected. Anyways, I’m leaving this post here if someone wanted to take reference for any future contribution to Jerboa or any other similar project. I would’ve loved to learn coding myself and contribute but at the moment I’m biting more than I can chew (maybe in the future I’d have some time who knows).

    • Tatar_Nobility@lemmy.mlOP
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      2 years ago

      When you’re a predominantly mobile user, you’d expect one would use mobile apps. Mobile web just kinda sucks. I myself avoid apps if they contain more tracking methods than on web, but lemmy is a decent open source platform that respects privacy so I don’t see why not have an equally decent mobile app.

      • sexy_peach@feddit.de
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        2 years ago

        I agree that a good app would be a huge plus, but I am just saying that in this case, the mobile web is just as good as a proper app.