Hi there fellow Apple enthusiasts!
Yesterday I announced that my native iOS app for Lemmy called Avelon is finally ready for testing, and I figured some people here might also be interested in checking it out!
My focus for the app has been performance, design and ease of use. As you can probably tell I got a lot of inspiration from Apollo and other iOS-first apps - but I think I’ve added my own cool spin on both the design and functionality.
Here’s a couple screenshots of the app:
If you wanna try it out I’d greatly appreciate any feedback/suggestions so I know what to focus on next! I think the core experience is pretty solid already, but the app still lacks some important features such as adding new posts.
Avelon is developed in Swift using almost enitrely SwiftUI. For those unfamiliar, SwiftUI is the newest UI library by Apple intended to replace things like UIKit over time. SwiftUI is cross platform, so Avelon also runs on macOS actually, though the UI is not tweaked to fit mac just yet. The tech is really great to work with, and it makes it super easy to fit right into iOS. I posted some more details about the project over on the community page for the app here if you wanna check it out.
Thanks, let me know what you think!
Tried using it and it crashed on every attempt to post a reply to something. That being said I’m on the iOS17 dev beta so that could have something to do with it. Looked good though.
Let’s try this again from your app.…
The onboard flow is bar none the best in the Fediverse. UI is great too.
I think the UX, especially the tab choices and arrangement, are sub par. In particular, I would rethink some of the tab drill down. Subscriptions on the left when the default state is to not be logged in, is weird. I think I would hide that entirely until a user is logged in, or find a better way to default to or drill into your subscriptions after logging in.
Arrangement definitely looks off. The icons should have the same distance in between and the labels should just overflow. Also stretch more to the edge
App looks gorgeous! Once it has some more features parity to memmy or voyager I can definitely see myself switching to this.
Do you have a community yet to discuss the app?
Thanks! Yeah, the community is !avelon@lemm.ee
Ah, support for Lemmy community links is missing I guess 😅 Avelon opens the link in Mail. Anyway, thanks for the very good work, I already love the app (Memmy user here)
Wow, thank you. Finally a compact view that is actually compact while still telling me everything I need to know about a post. You know it’s good when it takes all of 5 seconds to get used to the layout.
Summary of me looking at the app for about 20 minutes:
Having subscriptions as it’s own tab is confusing as hell to me and leads to a weird UX as the UI first needs to switch to the posts tab before triggering the navigation there. This results in a harsh change of the content followed by the pushing of the new screen. Took me a while to realize what was happening as I thought there was a bug that added images to the subscription rows as this happens fast enough to not make you realize you are seeing Posts/All for a split second.
All/local/… does not react to changes in the set post style. Pull to refresh will not help. Only switching via the Navigation Bar menu will update the post layout.
While we are at it. A preview for this setting would be great.Switching to the account tap will always return you to the first screen and not the sunscreen you were on previously. At least that problem does not exists for posts.
Guests instances could really use an explanation about what they do.
The NavigationBar is very not iOS like.
The back button should have a meaningful label and having no title until you scroll feels wrong. I think you are trying to emulate the butchered detail view of the mail app, but without the back button text this just feels empty but adding it might be enough to make it work.Also there is a UI bug when the navigationBar (dis)appears where the back button vanishes first/gets added before the bar appears.
Tapping next to the comments count beneath the post sometimes collapses/expands the post. Sometimes not.
Sorry if I sound a bit harsh. I see a lot of potential in this app. But also a lot of work.
Onboarding is pretty great though.Keep on keeping on!
Looks good on my 12 Mini. Thanks!!
I can’t log into my instance. It gets as far asking for my MFA code, but it’s never correct. (Yes, the code works on other apps/devices.)
EDIT: Actually, I can’t log into Mlem either. It might be my instance. False alarm.
I’m quite a fan of voyager (née wefwef), but out of curiosity, I tend to install all lemmy apps and give them a whirl.
I have to say, there is quite a lot to like about your app. I’m very curious to see where it goes next.
Oh my God! This is my favorite Lemmy app now. I’ve been looking for a good native app and this is it! So fluid, fast loading, it’s awesome!!!
Keep up the good work, can’t wait for new updates.
It fails to log in for me. It gets past the 2FA step but then fails to log in afterwards. Strange.
Same here. It won’t accept my MFA code no matter what.
And here I thought nothing was going to pull me away from Voyager/WefWef
This is damn good
Voyager doesn’t have full screen gestures yet (swiping to get back to feed), so I’ve been looking around.
Liftoff! has so far best matched my Apollo style lurk browsing habits. Although the feed is a little more busy looking.
Gestures work no problem in Voyager here.
It does? Like I can do that from this post to get back to my feed right now.
Swipe where? Mine just brings up comment upvote if I’m on the comments, I can’t swipe back on the post either, what am I missing?
Swipe from the edge of your screen. Starting in screen is the upvotes, a swipe that starts off screen takes you back.
Thank you for that!
But yeah, that’s not true to Apollo’s full post swipe back option. I have to put my phone down to reach over to the left edge in Voyager.
I upvote comments a few times per year, but need to get back to the feed multiple times per session.
Hopefully gesture options come out in the future.
Excellent job with this app! Like it so far. Will report bugs as discover them. Thanks for sharing!
This is probably my favorite out of all the ones I’ve tried. Only one that comes close is Mlem.
Would love to see some gestures in here but otherwise it is great for a first pass. Nice work! Excited to see where it goes
Back for some more feedback.
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Comment threads are a little overwhelming and need some spacing or distinction between each individual comment.
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I also can’t figure out how to see my posts and go to them with ease (checking for replies and such)
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No notification area…so I’m missing out on replies to my posts.
Other than those things, it is so smooth and a pleasure to use.
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