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UPDATE! Fewer than 20% of Lemmy Apps display posts accurately

Updated! Updates are shown in quote text like this. Some scores are updated following app updates.

An Apps Experiment

Introduction

This is an experiment I performed out of curiosity, and I have a few big disclaimers at the bottom. Basically, I’ve seen a lot of comments recently about one app or another not displaying something right. Lemmy has been around for a while now and can no longer be considered an experimental platform.

Lemmy and the apps that people use to access the platform have become an important part of people’s lives. Whether you are checking the app weekly or daily, and whether you use it to stay up on the news or to stay connected to your hobby, it’s important that it works. I hope that this helps people to see the extent of the challenge, and encourages developers to improve their apps, too.

How I did it

I wanted to investigate objectively how accurately each app displays text of posts and comments using the standard Lemmy markdown. Markdown is a standard part of the Lemmy platform, but not all apps handle it the same. It is basically what gives text useful formatting.

I used the latest release of each app, but did not include pre-releases. I only included apps that have released an update in the last 6 months, which should include most apps in active development. I was unable to test iOS-exclusive apps, so they are not included either. In all, 16 apps met the inclusion criteria.

I also added Eternity, which is in active development, although it has not had a recent update. I was able to include several iOS apps thanks to testing from @jordanlund – Thanks, Jordan! This made for 21 apps that were tested.

Each app was rated in 5 categories: Text, Format, Spoilers, Links, and Images. I chose these mostly based on the wonderful Markdown Guide from @marvin, which was posted about a year ago in !meta (here).

I checked whether each app correctly displayed each category, then took the overall average. Each category was weighted equally. Text includes italic, bold, strong, strikethrough, superscript, and subscript. Format includes block quotes, lists, code (block and inline), tables, and dividers. Spoilers includes display of hidden, expandable spoilers. Links includes external links, username links, and community links. Images included embedded images, image references, and inline images.

Thanks to input from others, I also added a test to see if lemmy hyperlinks opened in-app. There was a problem with using the SFFA Community Guide that caused some apps to be essentially penalized twice because there was formatting inside formatting, so I created this TEST POST to more clearly and fairly measure each app.

In each case, I checked whether the display was correct based on the rules for Lemmy Markdown, and consistent with the author’s intent. In cases where the app recognized the tag correctly but did not display it accurately, that was treated as a fail.

Results

Out of a possible perfect 10, only 4 apps displayed all markdown correctly:

Jerboa (Official Android client) - 10.0

Alexandrite - 10.0

Voyager - 10.0

Connect - 10.0

Photon - 10.0

Summit - 9.7

Quiblr - 9.5

Arctic - 9.3

Interstellar - 9.1

Lemmy-UI - 9.0

Thunder - 8.9

Tesseract - 8.6

mlmym - 8.0

Lemmios - 8.0

Mlem - 7.5

Boost - 7.3

Eternity - 7.0

Sync - 6.9

Lemmynade - 6.1

Avelon - 5.7

More details of testing here

Disclaimers## Disclaimers ### I Love Lemmy Apps (and their devs) Lemmy apps devs work very hard, and invest a lot in the platform. Lemmy is better because they are doing the work that they do. Like, a LOT better. Everyone who uses the platform has to access it through one app or another. Apps are the face of the entire platform. Whether an app is a FOSS passion project, underwritten by a grant, or generating income through sales or ads, no one is getting rich by making their app. It is for the benefit of the community. This is not meant to be a rating of the quality or functionality of any app. An app may have a high rating here but be missing other features that users want, or users may love an app that has a lower rating. This is just about how well apps handle markdown. ### This is pretty unscientific You’ll see my methodology above. I’m not a scientist. There is probably a much better way to do this, and I probably have biases in terms of how I went about it. I think it’s interesting and probably has some valuable information. If you think it’s interesting, let me know. If you think of a better way, PM me and I’d be happy to share what I have so you don’t have to start from scratch. ### My only goal is to help the community I do think that accurately displaying markdown should be a standard expectation of a finished app. I hope that devs use this as an opportunity to shore up the areas that are lagging, and that they have a set of standards to aim for. I don’t have any Apple thingsSorry. This is just Android and Web review. If someone would like to see how iOS apps are doing, please reach out and I’ll share how we can work together to include them.

cabron_offsets ,

Voyager, bruh.

Cryophilia ,

Browser master race😎

gedaliyah OP ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

That’s Lemmy UI

Feathercrown ,

What features does the browser UI not display properly? 👀

gedaliyah OP ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

It doesn’t link usernames correctly. The editor has the option to convert usernames to links, but does not handle plaintext usernames:

@gedaliyah

Feathercrown ,

Oh, cool. Nice analysis! I know spoilers not rendering correctly is a big one.

sparr ,

And the spec says plaintext usernames should be rendered as links?

Natanael ,

Clients should convert automatically (unless the user doesn’t want it to)

AlexisFR ,
@AlexisFR@jlai.lu avatar

FYI, how wrote “Lemmuy - UI” in the post, I thought it was another app I didn’t hear about.

gedaliyah OP ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

That’s just what it’s called.

AlexisFR ,
@AlexisFR@jlai.lu avatar

Really? Not just Lemmy UI?

gedaliyah OP ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

I seriously did not catch that typo, even when you pointed it out 🫢

jordanlund ,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

@gedaliyah

I have an iOS device and am happy to repeat your methodology! Did you have a test thread or something with all the markdowns?

gedaliyah OP ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, I used the Markdown Format Guide linked above. For user and community links I used this comment, and for inline images I checked the FOSS icon here.

If you PM me screen grabs, I’ll add it.

jordanlund ,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

On it. I found 8 apps in the App store. I’ll PM you.

Arctic, Avelon, Bean, Lemmios, Mlem, Remmel, Thunder, Voyager.

There’s a 9th, CheeseBot, but it’s $2.99 and all the others are free.

gedaliyah OP ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

Cheesebot is a watch app I believe

threelonmusketeers ,

Who the hell is browsing Lemmy on their watch?

nokturne213 ,

People who use cheesebot.

gedaliyah OP ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

Some of those are Multiplatform (this should be the same across devices)

Beaver ,
@Beaver@lemmy.ca avatar

Thank you for this! I’m really going to appreciate your work.

nokturne213 ,

Bean is abandoned.

jordanlund ,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

Given the performance, that does not surprise me!

App does say it was last updated 7 months ago, but I see comments saying it’s abandoned.

nokturne213 ,

Yeah the dev took payments for the app and then vanished.

Jimbo ,
@Jimbo@yiffit.net avatar

One note on Jerboa, at least for me gifs don’t seem to play when embedded in comments. Otherwise 10/10 for me.

gedaliyah OP ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

I did not test different media types - but maybe in the future!

pancakes ,
@pancakes@sh.itjust.works avatar

I love Jerboa, it most closely resembles RiF from the beforetimes.

aeharding ,
@aeharding@vger.social avatar

Btw I just found out that lemmy-ui supports markdown citations.

It’s not documented AFAIK though.

SmokeInFog ,
@SmokeInFog@midwest.social avatar

If you’re getting that granular then you must’ve had to record the data somewhere. Did I miss where the OP is sharing their data set?

gedaliyah OP ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

Sure, you can DM me somewhere to share a spreadsheet. Just please keep in mind that DM in Lemmy is not encrypted.

JackbyDev ,

Just add it to the post lmao.

Gointhefridge ,

I’ve been using Mlem since week 2 and I have no idea if I’m missing anything or not. I’ve never visited any instance on anything but Mlem.

TheRealCharlesEames ,

Same, and I suspect we are missing stuff because I’ve never seen a gif and often see a bunch of emoji (in place of a photo album? Idk)

Beaver ,
@Beaver@lemmy.ca avatar

I don’t think Mlem has link embed support

mtchristo ,

I might consider eternity abandonware now

1 year no updates

gedaliyah OP ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

Eternity is in active development. It was sleeping for a while, but @bazsalanszky has confirmed that it will see a new release soon.

Lightsong ,

Ouch, I use Boost and paid for ads free. Pls bring it up to 10.0.

tacosplease ,

Sync only got 6.9 but I have no complaints about the app

yo_scottie_oh ,

cross-posted

Minor nit pick, but did you know that Lemmy has actual cross posting functionality?

Either way, interesting study. This is the type of content that I Red er… Lemmy for, so thanks for posting. I use Voyager myself, being an Apollo refugee.

gedaliyah OP ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, cross posting is another quirky Lemmy thing. AFAIK it just generates a new post with the same content, and also maybe varies by app. That could be wrong though: I’m not sure.

threelonmusketeers ,

AFAIK it just generates a new post with the same content

Yup, that is exactly what it does. So if the original post is edited, none of the changes propagate to any of the crossposts.

In my opinion, crossposts should embed the original post, not simply copy a snapshot of the content at the time the crosspost is made. That’s a Lemmy issue though, not an app issue.

WanderingVentra ,

Ya I’ve only been able to cross post on the web UI. I’ve seen apps like Jerboa and Voyager at least show cross posting correctly, I just wish they made it easier to cross-post in app.

threelonmusketeers ,

I’ve yet to find an app which uses the same Lemmy crossposting function that is in the web UI.

Microw ,

Boost has a very easy-to-handle implementation of crossposting

WanderingVentra ,

Oh nice. I don’t think I’ve tried that one yet now that I think of it.

DieserTypMatthias ,
@DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml avatar

What’s the score on Eternity?

woelkchen ,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

I can’t answer that but the test comment looks OK.

JackbyDev ,

test ~test~

The above feels wrong but idk if Lemmy has a formal markdown spec. I haven’t had time to dig into it. This is what it looks like in Jerboa. If it wasn’t 6 AM I’d try to file a big report.

https://programming.dev/pictrs/image/56cf2f34-12c1-4aff-8901-e150e9ec7d72.png

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

I started on jerboa, but ended up moving to connect because of the bugs.

Plopp ,

What bugs?

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

This was over a year ago now Jerboa may well be in a better state now. I can’t remember specific bugs but they were frequent and serious enough to frustrate me, a professional software tester, enough to move to a different app.

Squorlple ,
@Squorlple@lemmy.world avatar

There are a lot of image/gif(?) posts that I haven’t been able to view either on the Memmy (Apple) app or in-browser with either Safari (Apple) or Google Chrome. I imagine it comes down to the file types as well as the lack of native hosting to standardize posts of different media types, but I’m not the techiest person to consult on that. One downside of the fediverse is the lack of standards for file hosting/conversion/displaying to ensure that all media can be accessed regardless of the browser/app (or, alternatively, the lack of an all-encompassing app for all devices [Jerboa sounds like the closest to this to me but it is not available for iOS yet]), as well as the self-funded nature of the instances commonly not having the budget to natively host multimedia content such as videos.

Aurelius ,
@Aurelius@lemmy.world avatar

Left this comment in the other thread too, but posting here for visibility:

Quiblr should now have each of the markdown criteria fixed. Huge thanks for the feedback and for all this analysis. Consistent markdown is important for a great and consistent user experience across the lemmy ecosystem

gedaliyah OP ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

Great! Thank you for the gorgeous app. I really love the style, and I think the personalized feed is brilliant.

On my device, the lemmy hyperlink in the test post is still opening outside the app. I’m not sure how other web apps handle this but it would be the only additional change that would make it a perfect score.

As an aside, I would love to see it as a PWA or standalone app. I don’t know if that’s on your roadmap but I think it would be neat.

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