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Sync for Lemmy
- leshenka 3y agoIf major 3rd party Reddit client developers adapt and repurpose their apps for Lemmy backends, can it drive significant user base there?
- cbarrick 3y agoI think so. The entire reason I'm on Lemmy is because of Sync.
- danielbln 3y agoSync has been my mobile Reddit driver for over a decade and when Reddit dialed its enshitification to eleven and banned third party clients I immediately jumped over to Lemmy, but the available clients weren't quite up to snuff. Good for how new they were (e.g. Voyager) but Sync is a very mature app. Having Sync for Lenny has been great so far, it feels like a lesser populated Reddit, for all intents and purposes, and I have zero need to go back to Reddit at this point. I see this as a win for the Fediverse, and there are plenty of open source Lemmy clients out there for those who don't quite gel with the closed source nature of Sync.
- d0gbread 3y agoMy experience also. To your last paragraph, I don't quite gel with the open source nature of so much of the ecosystem. The core framework being open source makes a lot of sense to me, but the instances being essentially volunteers makes me nervous about future burnout and lack of longevity. I'm not saying one way is right or wrong, just that it's something I'm watching and forming opinions around, and current state given the number of times Sync can't do something because an API call fails, it makes me wonder if a small subscription to the instance wouldn't be the worst thing. If an instance (Mastodon, Lemmy, whatever) was run by a business and came as part of a paywall subscription to say, The Economist, I think that might be pretty cool? Long living instance, more intention being the local communities vs just duplicated meme subreddits, a stronger stance around moderation, etc and enough federating that everyone has choice and there's little centralization.
- danielbln 3y agoThe BBC already put up a Fediverse instance (Mastodon), I expect that to happen more often. It's early days, but the fact that we're not at the whim of a couple of shitty Bay Area VC funded companies is so nice that I'll forgive the growing pains.
- BaseballPhysics 3y ago> but the instances being essentially volunteers makes me nervous about future burnout and lack of longevity. Welcome to the early dial-up and internet world pre-corporatization. I'm looking forward to Lemmy implementing account migration to add some insurance, but individual and community owned services was much of what built the internet. It's pretty resilient. Meanwhile, something being owned by a corporation is far from any kind of guarantee. Shall we go through the Google graveyard?
- d0gbread 3y agoYou might not be wrong but I wouldn't mind seeing some actual data on the topic (admittedly have not looked). Google feels like a cheap example since their non-ads business model is to throw mud at the wall, and the graveyard is full of tech that did often make it into core apps. I've been on Gmail since forever, which stands as a Google-backed example of my previous comment sans some serious but statistically insignificant drama, which has prompted some to migrate and still have email. Much of the early internet also isn't there anymore, and running a modern web application that hosts images, gifs, and videos at scale is obviously a different beast than static html where a marquee tag is as fancy as it gets.
- BaseballPhysics 3y agoI would claim the early web diminished primarily because the users left, not because the services died off and left users stranded (though I'll note that a lot of early services--IRC, Usenet, message boards, blogs, etc, are still around, though reduced in size and scope). As for services dying, I picked Google because it was easy. But the graveyard is endless: Myspace, Friendster, and Geocities all spring to mind, just in the social space (and since you don't want to talk about Google, I won't mention Google+ or Orkut). That's not to say the early internet was somehow perfect. My point is simply that a service being commercial offers no guarantee of longevity, and given the need to extract profit or die, with no way for a community to take over an unprofitable service and run it for their own benefit, I'd claim the opposite is true, especially as interest rates have risen and cheap funding has become more scarce, thereby placing a lot more pressure on those services to monetize or die. > and running a modern web application that hosts images, gifs, and videos at scale is obviously a different beast than static html where a marquee tag is as fancy as it gets. Except that's not what a Lemmy or Mastodon instance has to do. A small instance might only need to serve dozens or hundreds of users, and it only needs to host and serve the content they subscribe to. I'll take that over one massive single point of failure.
- 7ewis 3y agoI've tried moving to Lemmy, but as you've said it's less populated, significantly less from what I've seen. Almost to its detriment. What makes Reddit great is the niche smaller communities and the historical data they have (despite the search being awful). Lemmy sadly doesn't have this, small and even some big communities aren't there - wallstreetbets for example. Even subs with 100k+ users have low hundreds of members on Lemmy.
- squiffsquiff 3y agoYou realise that the subscriber count is typically showing only the subscribers from your own instance?
- kramerger 3y agoWell, speaking from experience... most people are waiting for a client that doesn't suck before moving away from reddit.
- corrigible 3y agoI've jumped completely over to lemmy and am mulling writing a bot to replicate external content to my instance (from e.g., unmigrated subreddits); the UX is fantastic though, tons of original content with almost zero spam. scaling the network seems hard as every event is a POST request (lol) but the community will persevere and overcome this imo
- rglullis 3y agoDid you look into https://lemmit.online https://lemmit.online?
- corrigible 3y agooh wow, thanks for this!
- mdaniel 3y agoI would encourage you to post that as a separate submission, since I have so many questions (https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lemmit.online https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lemmit.online shows nothing)
- cache_hit 3y agoSo good! Kinda just feels like I wouldn't even be able to tell the difference, save for my subreddits not being there. Love Sync, had always been my go-to app, and I'm glad it has a future.
- 0x6c6f6c 3y agoThe "Everything across the known Fediverse" option is pretty awesome. I was worried about the UX of searching and adding instances so this is an interesting take. I'll have to try it out
- 0x6c6f6c 3y agoI think we just killed lemmy.world
- jadbox 3y agoWhat does "Sync for Lemmy" do exactly.. there's no app description.
- Tajnymag 3y agoIt's a 3rd party mobile client for the social network Lemmy.
- wccrawford 3y agoAlso, the reason that people are excited about it is because they really liked Sync for Reddit, and have been anxiously awaiting the Lemmy version that was promised.
- atraac 3y agoThere's an app description, OP just linked to privacy page instead of actual page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.syncapps.lemmy_sync https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.syncapps.le... > Sync for Lemmy is a full-featured app for browsing Lemmy on the go. Featuring secure login, comments, messaging, profiles and more. > Sync for Lemmy highlights: • Material You design • A beautiful rich Material design user interface with loads of customizable options
- heelix 3y agoFor those of use who are old reddit fans, https://old.lemmy.world https://old.lemmy.world was exists and is close enough.
- guerrilla 3y agoOh my god, that's a beautiful sight.
- heyoni 3y agoYep. I am so glad this is happening because hopefully it means this is also the last time. RIP Digg and Reddit.
- paulcole 3y ago> hopefully it means this is also the last time What would make you think(or even hope) this is true? Until users are made to pay (ideally with dollars and not with attention) for a service like Reddit/Digg/Lemmy/whatever, these services are going to keep going away. Eventually there are bills to be paid and/or people who want to be paid.
- heyoni 3y agoThe fact that no one is really in control. I donate to my mastodon instance knowing that if it takes a turn for the worst, I can just go somewhere else and donate there. It’s not flawless but at least no one is holding all the cards.
- danielbln 3y agoInstances might go away, but not the Fediverse itself. See IRC, email and so on.
- paulcole 3y agoBut that’s like saying Gmail can go away but email itself lives on. Technically true but the Gmail users are gonna be pissed.
- unshavedyak 3y agoAnyone know if Sync has (or plans to have) an iOS version? Also boy that word is difficult to search for.
- rkangel 3y agoSync for Reddit was always a specifically Android app - designed only for that platform.
- selflock 3y agoI'd like to see Apollo for Lemmy
- darknavi 3y agoThere are a few Apollo-likes for iOS. One I contribute to is Mlem: https://github.com/mlemgroup/mlem https://github.com/mlemgroup/mlem
- stiltzkin 3y agoThat's Voyager, you can test right away as PWA on m.lemmy.world or native app.
- 16bitvoid 3y agoI've been using Memmy[1,2], which is similar to Apollo. 1: https://github.com/Memmy-App/memmy https://github.com/Memmy-App/memmy 2: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/memmy-for-lemmy/id6450204299 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/memmy-for-lemmy/id6450204299
- zacte 3y agoSync makes Lemmy feel a lot like Reddit, especially since it used to be my go-to app a year ago. Lemmy feels like it's been flooded with repost bots from Reddit making the content feel a lot less engaging. Personally I'm okay not having the topic on Lemmy if there aren't any people posting about it.
- fallinghawks 3y agoI used Sync for the last couple years and having it for Lemmy is great. It feels like I'm browsing Reddit and has made the transition much easier. I wish I could leave Reddit entirely, but there are a couple of subs that don't yet have an equivalent on Lemmy.
- alex_c 3y agoLink to the app listing (op’s link goes to the data safety info): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.syncapps.lemmy_sync https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.syncapps.le...
- rahimnathwani 3y agoStrangely, clicking OP (the data safety link) on my Pixel opens the Oxford English Dictionary app.
- lupanaro 3y agoThere is also Infinity for Lemmy. Feels like home... https://codeberg.org/Bazsalanszky/Infinity-For-Lemmy https://codeberg.org/Bazsalanszky/Infinity-For-Lemmy
- mcjiggerlog 3y agoThunder [1] is also worth checking out. IMO its UI is even slicker than Sync's, plus it's open source and not ad-supported/freemium. If you ever used Relay for Reddit, you'll feel right at home. [1] https://github.com/thunder-app/thunder https://github.com/thunder-app/thunder
- gremlinsinc 3y agoooh, I love relay! thx!
- rsolva 3y agoThanks for the heads up, i grabbed it from F-droid. Really nice app, much better than the other open source ones I have tried!
- d0gbread 3y agoSeconded Thunder. Sync will be my home but Thunder has been my hold over and has been very, very good.
- howenterprisey 3y agoAny signs of rif is fun for Lemmy? I've tried reaching out for the source code myself but got no response. Edit: Oh! The developer is working on a tildes app: https://www.talklittle.com/rif-is-fun/whats-next https://www.talklittle.com/rif-is-fun/whats-next Guess I'll just be waiting patiently, then.
- olig15 3y agoThere’s also ‘wefwef’ which is a SPA that’s highly based on the look and feel of Apollo for Reddit on iOS - https://wefwef.app/ https://wefwef.app/ I think they did a pretty good job with making it feel like an app, rather than a web page. If you add it to your Home Screen on iOS it’s imperceptible to an app and fixes safari lagging when you swipe back a page.
- izzydata 3y agoI'm going to have to give this one a huge thumbs down. Injecting ads into a free and open source webapp that previously did not have any just to get people to buy your ad free version is the kind of thing Lemmy is trying to get away from. This is quite unacceptable in my opinion. If the developer removes the ad-ridden version and only makes a single purchase paid version then it would be acceptable as you would be buying the software rather than paying them to escape the ads that they themselves added. As it stands the developer of Sync is basically profiting off of the free content of others by injecting ads next to all of their posts and comments.
- danielbln 3y agoWhat are you on about? Sync is a native app that uses the Lemmy API, not some webapp wrapper. And the original version also features ads unless you bought the pro version.
- izzydata 3y agoNo other Lemmy UI whether it be a webapp or mobile app has ads. This is exclusive to Sync.
- gremlinsinc 3y agoso you're saying app developers should create apps for free, out of the goodness of their heart while they live in a van because they work for free?
- izzydata 3y agoI didn't say any such thing. I said they should sell the software rather than put in ads and then get people to pay to remove them.
- neurostimulant 3y agoI actually agree with you on this (having ads in a community full of supporters of open source and anti-capitalism is a bad idea), but I think the dev has already run the number and decides going with ad-supported model and $20 permanent ad-removal IAP is the only way to make enough profit to sustain full-time development given (currently) low number of lemmy users right now (100,000 active users is too small market to profitably sell $3 apps). I subscribed to sync ultra to support the dev, and hopefully if the dev is able to sustain himself from subscriptions, he might be more open to removing ads in the free version later.
- mdaniel 3y agoSince there are other alternatives in the comments, I'll toss out Connect for Lemmy https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kuroneko.lemmy_connect https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kuroneko.l... which I find much nicer than Sync One should also try https://github.com/dessalines/jerboa#readme https://github.com/dessalines/jerboa#readme from one of the Lemmy contributors
- smusamashah 3y agoThere is also Boost for Lemmy https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rubenmayayo.lemmy https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rubenmayay... Have been using Boost for reddit for years, still using it with ReVanced patch.
- dadoomer 3y agoIt's great to see so many apps for Lemmy. RedReader for Lemmy would be neat.