I was using Jerboa up until now and am now using Sync because I used it for Reddit.
…and that’s it. I don’t understand why this gets so much talk. There are so many options. Just use something. We all want Lemmy to grow so I don’t see the problem.
I put this in a other thread, but am genuinely interested in getting feedback.
I’m currently on Jerboa and downloaded/installed sync yesterday. As a former RIF user, I don’t have a horse in this race. I am more familiar with Jerboa, but find the overall feel of both (admittedly, without a lot of use), to be pretty comparable.
That said, I kind of like some of the ideas in Jerboa more? For example, tap to minimize comments and their children on Jerboa is quite a bit faster. I’m kind of sad that both make selecting some of the text in a comment hard and miss the dedicated RIF collapse/expand comment tree button. Jerboa also matches the font size of everything else in my UI better than Sync. For example, the font size of this reply and my keyboard are the same in Jerboa. In Sync the in-app font size is quite a bit smaller.
At the end of the day, I think that both apps are going to be largely comparable for a fairly casual user like me. I bet both offer more functionality than I’m using, but so far I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.
You can customize both those options in Sync. I had the same initial issues, but you can switch comment collapse to single tap as well as increase font size.
I am exactly your use-case. Was using RIF, then I’ve been using Jerboa up until Sync was released. I never used Sync for Reddit.
My opinion on the two differs from yours, however. Sync seems SO much better than Jerboa to me. Yep, the font was small but I was able to embiggen it. Everything else seems faster and more intuitive. Jerboa was so buggy for me.
Jerboa was a bit buggy initially, but the only bug I’ve experienced recently was trying to expand hidden comments in a post with a ton of comments. That caused it to crash. It is slow to load some days, but I’ve been caulking that up to a slow instance. I could see how an app could work around that problem by not loading the slow instance but that seems… non ideal? Better CX sure, but it means different users would see different content based on what app they’re using.
I was jumping between Voyager, Jerboa, Thunder, Connect, Summit, Liftoff… Was using one until one or two things got on my nerves enough, then jump to another, then repeat. Since Sync came out I can finally settle in one place where I feel at home. Not dissing the other apps at all, they are very usable and do most things well, but there were always those couple of things not quite right… And of course it wasn’t the same things in all the apps.
Another killer features Sync has that (AFAIK) no other Lemmy android apps currently have:
long pressing a community in the community list drawers will open that community in a new activity windows, essentially the android equivalent to open in a new “window”. Use your phone’s app switcher to switch between these “window”. There is even an option to allow you to open posts in a new window as well. Very handy if you want to write a comment while looking for some information in another thread, or if you’re on a tablet and want to pin multiple sync windows on the screen.
Sync will open links to a lemmy post natively instead of in an embedded web browser. Basically solve one of the most complained issue about linking in Lemmy.
I started off using jerboa. Just installed sync to see what the fuss is about. At the core it’s pretty much the same. One thing sync does better, at least on my phone, is smoother loading/rendering of content. There were times id actually use Lemmy web instead.
With that said, my favorite reddit app Boost, is working on a Lemmy client too. So I’m looking forward to that as well.
This. I’ve been using Jerboa ever since making the switch to Lemmy. There wasn’t much of a learning curve and it basically does what I want, so I’m happy with it.
Me too, I have no idea where the complaints about Jerboa are coming from. I mean, it shows posts and comments, how radically different are these alternate apps? They all look the same to me!
I’ve tried a few apps (Liftoff, Wifwif or whatever it was called, and now Sync). I’ve not stuck with any of them, despite the fact I used RiF and later Boost both for years.
They just feel too early stage. Eg, Wifwif was super sluggish and I accidentally cancelled multiple long comments I typed up by trying to scroll, which is a big oof. With Sync, I noticed the comment hierarchy was messed up and when I went to post about that, I couldn’t do it from within the app because posting isn’t supported yet (feels like a big thing to be missing).
So for now, I’m still just using the website. And not with the PWA, because support for multiple tabs is really great and avoids weirdness with scrolling when going back.
Side note: why do literally no apps support tabs??? Number zero feature request I’ve ever had, for every single app. I even noticed that Sync has a long press to open posts in background, but it’s only for posts and it is rather convoluted cause it’s more like opening a second instance of the app. The back button goes to my Android home screen (not back to Sync) and it is hard to navigate to what you just opened.
Mobile Chrome’s tab groups feature is absolutely amazing. I hate using “normal” tabs anymore, cause the tab groups having the tabs accessible at the bottom of the screen is unbeatable.
Most of us were like that, but the sudden excitement we all had for the app release caused a counter-surge of people annoyed at our excitement and sometimes exaggerated statememts, which caused a lot of us to dig in our heels against the backlash in defence.
Add to that a user base used to no ads and no fees, with a user base who is okay with either, you’ve got the perfect ingredients for the mud soup we’ve found ourselves in.
I’ve been using Liftoff but Sync feels a lot more polished except what it does with the comments sometimes - showing child comments with no parent. Liftoff would show the parent comment so I don’t know what’s up with that.
There are a few Old Spice variants that I think are a bit fruit-forward and fresh and designed for men.
I’ve never liked the super cologney scents - I like smelling sweet, so Fiji is a good one for me. Smells tropical and a bit fruity.
I also liked Wolfthorne, which is super fruit forward. I actually got a pack of that because some super insecure dude was complaining about it in the reviews.
Outside of that, Stone from Henry’s is another fave of mine. Not fruit, but it’s light and I think anyone could wear it. Fig as well, but that’s more of a winter deodorant because I find myself needing to reapply, but it smells awesome.
I haven’t looked into what Sync is but it sounds like it’s more than just Reddit Lemmy?
Also a paid app?
If it’s a paid app then that makes me think quality to be honest. It’s probably misguided, but my default is to feel that if you need to pay up front for an app it’s going to be higher quality and not full of ads/microtransactions.
Sync for Lemmy is smooth and responsive. Just like how it was on Reddit. After using Sync, you will be comparing every other app experience against it.
Way better UI and UX, more and better features and customizability. It’s closed source though. This may be a deal breaker for some.
For me though, if I have 2 apps of the same quality, I’ll obviously choose the open source one, but if one is clearly better than the other, then I’ll choose the better app, regardless if it’s open source or not.
Unlike what some folks have suggested, I don’t notice any speed or loading advantages over the other native apps. Some of the other offerings may be a little better but the biggest performance gains when it comes to loading will come from moving off the largest instances to a smaller one.
The main differentiating characteristics IMO are below.
Pros:
The interface is essentially the one from the Reddit app. It’s a mature design in terms of polish and is overall more minimalistic and clean UI. I find it consistent and intuitive to navigate.
Decent amount of customization. While not exhaustive, the options presented are all well thought out. This includes moving things to side bar, bottom bar, and/or a floating action button.
Caveats:
Ads by default, with a $20 one-time payment option to remove them. There’s also an optional subscription (or a $100 lifetime subscription) for added features, which will include push notifications. Prices may be much higher for some other countries as adjustments for purchasing power haven’t been made yet.
As an early build, some basic functionality hasn’t yet been implemented including submitting posts or editing post titles. If you’re a moderator, mod functionality and reports haven’t been implemented yet.
Like other apps that were originally for Reddit, there are still some legacy references to subreddits. Sync also seems to still use orange for upvotes and blue for downvotes, which is the opposite from Lemmy.
It’s closed source. Without OAuth, the Lemmy devs have discouraged logging in with closed source apps (although I personally trust ljdawson).
Some people don’t trust Sync having ad tracking built-in. They’re disabled if you purchase ad removal. Otherwise, there was only one incident in the past where the app began injecting Amazon referral codes into URLs but this was reversed.
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