Hi there! I thought I should give you all an update on Voyager as a newsletter format. This may become a regular thing, maybe not, I’m still not sure. :)

Voyager is now on F-droid!

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/app.vger.voyager/

Voyager joins Jerboa and Lemmur [discontinued] as the third Lemmy app on F-droid. However, Voyager is the first Lemmy app on F-droid to have reproducible builds! I’ll let Izzy from F-droid explain why this is so cool:

[Reproducible builds] proves to you that the developer confirmed: „this is what I intended to publish, this was built from my code“. And that it’s distributed by F-Droid tells you: „F-Droid confirms, too, that this is the APK built from the very code the developer provided“. So neither of the two could have „sneaked in“ something not contained in the app’s source code repository.

https://f-droid.org/en/2023/09/03/reproducible-builds-signing-keys-and-binary-repos.html

I’ve been having a lot of fun learning about reproducible builds for the past week. Android users are really lucky to have such a great option for app distribution. Meanwhile, Apple users are forced to trust that the developer doesn’t sneak anything into compiling binaries (thanks Apple)

The road ahead

There’s a ton of stuff to work on. Many of these things are already tracked in Github, such as internal linking to posts (one of the next major features I’m working on!) or full width swipe back. Which reminds me…

Help me prioritize tasks

On Github, you can sort issues by most 👍 reactions. This helps me prioritize work, and it’s become more and more useful over time. So if you you have time, help me out and upvote tasks that are important to you!

Better onboarding

You already have a Lemmy account logged in to Voyager, so this doesn’t really affect you, which is probably why it’s not currently requested in Github. But for newcomers, Voyager may be their first encounter with Lemmy.

Right now, the new account creation flow is very rough. I’d like to improve onboarding and hand-holding through the signup process and instance selection. If you have any thoughts on this, please let me know below! This will likely be long term task with lots of brainstorming and mockups before writing code.

New icons?

I’m hoping to continue adding community-driven icons into Voyager on a fairly regular basis. (However, I can’t add everything, since they all need to be in the bundle!) Maybe a snow/winter themed icon next? We’ll see. You can download the Affinity Designer file for Voyager’s logo if you want to play around. :)

Mod tools

Mod tools are coming, but I’m still determining how best to integrate this into Voyager’s roadmap. I expect Lemmy’s moderation API will significantly improve over the next year or so, so I’m still thinking timelines.

Anything else? AMA

This is probably the best opportunity to discuss Voyager at a high level. So AMA!

Thanks to my Sponsors 💙

Finally, thanks to my Github and Liberapay sponsors. Your donations TRULY help! Build infrastructure and hosting runs ~$75/mo, and then there’s one time costs like the various Android phones I’ve purchased for testing (yeah, I still need to tweak Android haptics).

If you’re interested in sponsoring, head over here. You can donate monthly or one-time in any amount.

If it’s not the right time to donate, you can also show your appreciation by leaving a review on the app stores! 💙

  • Veedem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    1 year ago

    I would love only one thing at the moment…the ability to make post titles Bold. So simple.

  • ZeroCool@feddit.chEnglish
    171·
    1 year ago

    Anything else? AMA

    Would it be possible to make it so that long pressing the profile button opens the account switcher? Perhaps as an alternative option to the way it’s currently done or as a replacement entirely? It’s pretty much the only thing Apollo had that I’d really like to see added to a future update. Voyager as it presently exists is otherwise the perfect Lemmy app for me, so thank you for the hard work!

  • artichoke@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    1 year ago

    Voyager is awesome thank you for all the hard work! And I love that it’s both in app stores and self hostable PWAs!

    Is there any possible of adding the feature memmy has which is to enable post hiding only on feed and optionally in communities?

    That way I can doom scroll my feed but when I go to a community I can still find the post to read new comments

    Thank you!

    • aeharding@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      Haha thanks. SO I assume you just want to disable hiding altogether in communities? I suppose I could just check out Memmy

      • artichoke@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        Yup pretty much that!

        This lets it me go to any community and see all posts regardless of read status so I can find old posts to read new comments.

        It’s an option in memmy to choose where things are hidden

        Separate toggles for:

        • in feed (aka subscribed or all)
        • in community, so when you click into a community

        Allowing people to choose where hiding takes effect

  • Nix@merv.newsEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    Only feature I notice missing is for images to appear in comments and the ability to stack instance name under the username in the feed so its easier to click on a post without click the title

    And the option to unhide read posts, ideally by long pressing the hide read posts button

  • Daveofthenorth@lemm.eeEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    Can you make it so that blocking an NSFW community doesn’t ask every time if I wanted to actually block all of them, I don’t. If I do there is a setting for that. Maybe just display it once and have some messaging about the setting?

    • aeharding@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, I might just get rid of that message altogether, unless people think its useful. It was an experiment.

  • Sentau@feddit.deEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    Since this is also an AMA, is voyager supposed to be inspired by Apollo or is it supposed to be more like a clone¿? I ask because I have seen you and sometimes others question certain feature requests or UI choice suggestions because they were not present on apollo

    • aeharding@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      When it doubt, I try to stick to Apollo’s design choices. It depends on the feature however.

      • Sentau@feddit.deEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        Glad to hear that. I was fearing that ideas from the android world would be ignored because the ideas are fundamentally different to how things were done on Apollo.

    • aeharding@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      That would be cool, I’m no designer but if anyone could make a good icon I can add it.

  • lars@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    I didn’t see an issue about custom app icons in [this] the [most amazing] PWA [I’ve ever used]. Is that even possible? Are haptics?

    [Keep up the amazing work! I have a mountain of Lemmy apps installed but keep coming back to Voyager.]

    • aeharding@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      The native app available on the iOS and Android stores have haptics and custom icons :)

      Unfortunately it’s not possible with the PWA version of Voyager!

      • lars@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        You’re amazing and I appreciate all your hard work and speedy reply. Thank you and thank you.

  • DeadNinja@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Thank you for creating this awesome Android client for an equally awesome FOSS place (Lemmy). I am a regular user of your Voyager app on my Android phone, and I use it together with Jerboa (which is still there in my phone as the OG app for Lemmy, no offences to Voyager, lol).

    The only two features that I think are lacking in voyager and will make it the best are -

    (1) Show the Avatars of profiles. Currently they are not displayed.

    (2) More text editing options - not just limited to Bold and Italics - please add options to strikethrough texts and quote something to reply. I do know the keyboard shortcuts for these, but having dedicated editing buttons for them would be amazing !

    Once again, thanks for this awesome app !

    • aeharding@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Hey, thanks!

      Regarding #1, this is unlikely be be on the user page. Instead it will probably be in a sepatate user bio page. The reasons are mostly Apollo/old reddit DNA.

      For #2 yes this is planned :)

  • quaff@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I would love a basic simple icon! One primary background colour (gradient or solid) with the mouse in a space suit outline or something similar 🙏

  • Andre@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Would it be possible to get the following?

    • Swipe to go back for the ios app
    • hide bars when scrolling or transparent bars
      • Andre@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        sorry, i meant swipe anywhere to go back (full width swipe). ios swipe only works from the far left, is very cumbersome for one-handed use and with large devices then only possible with both hands. Thunder and Avelon have full width swipe to go back for example.

  • thecarrotstick@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Hey! This is definitely a first world problem, but I use the app on iOS with a 120hz display and I’ve noticed the only part of the app that does have 120hz animation is the scrolling while clicking on posts and all other animations are stutter-y and 60 or below. Is this on the roadmap? Couldn’t find anything related on GitHub.

    That and the full page swipe back are my two features I’ve been really hoping for personally!