Mlem for Lemmy

After browsing down a few links if I want to return to 'home’ where I see all subscriptions together. The only way I see to do this is to press back a million times. Is there a faster way? I thought pressing the bottom left menu item might work but it does not seem to.

Hi, Mlem App Community!

We on the Mlem Team wanted to share some information regarding the progress on the development of Mlem, what we're working on, and where we see the project on July 1.

THE GOOD

For the next build, we're working on 5 major components:

1. Main Feed - We are refining both Large and Compact post views, improving their functionality and adding a bit more spacing to compact mode so that clumsy/"fat-finger" tapping results in fewer mis-taps.
2. SWIPE-TO-VOTE! - Yes, we have brought this feature to the main feed! Swipe right to vote (up/down) and left to reply/save. This is the only configuration right now, but we plan to add customization in a later build.
3. Profile Tab - This one is taking a lot of work and time, as we want to get it right. We felt that Apollo's profile page is a bit... blah, so we wanted to make something... prettier. Featuring both your profile picture and your banner image, the profile page will be information-rich and engaging. It will also feature a quick and simple way to sort between Overview, Posts, Comments, and Saved items without diving into a context menu.
4. Community View/Browsing - Another biggie, and one which takes a lot of work. We are adding a dedicated screen for browsing, subscribing, and favoriting communities (Local or All federated) and sorting by Local, All, and Subscribed. This functions similarly to the "All Subreddits" screen in Apollo.
5. Accessibility! - Our accessibility expert has audited ALL of these pages and tabs to make them 100% compatible with iOS's VoiceOver and Screen Reader Accessibility features, so those with visual impairments can use Mlem without impediment. We're proud to say that the next build of Mlem will be fully a11y compliant, as will be all future builds! Mlem is an app for everyone!

Of course, in addition to these 5 major components, we've also been working on tons of bug fixes and performance improvements.

THE BAD

We (especially me) have been telling everyone that we're aiming for July 1 for our 1.0 app launch. That was very silly to say, as the Apple App Store review process is... nuts. To realistically hit that date, we'd have to submit the app now, and it's pretty far from ready. So, suffice to say, that's not going to happen. We are now making a revised projection that we will have a Gold Master (GM) for 1.0 ready for submission to the App Store on July 1 which will go public whenever Apple decides to approve it. That could be days or weeks after initial submission--we will all just have to wait and see. Development will continue during that time, but further updates/releases will be much quicker after the initial approval.

We (I) apologize for setting unrealistic expectations with the Mlem community in this regard. We (I) should have known better. Nonetheless, we've taken this bad news and are moving forward with a renewed fervor to get this app up to snuff for the rigorous (and somewhat bastardly) App Store review process. Releases will be limited for now to our 10k TestFlight beta testers, for whom we are extremely grateful!

THE TEAM

We continue to labor. Our team, which ballooned to about 20 devs and designers at one point, has constricted back to about 10 main contributors, with about 6-8 core contributors. Such is the nature of FOSS projects as people come and go as their lives permit. This is a completely volunteer project where people donate their free time. It's not a job. We actively recruit when we have shortages in manpower or project goals that require specialties our current team lacks. Remaining flexible is critical. The best thing about our team is that everyone seems to like each other, and works together very well. Working with this team is a pleasure!

Our team currently has representatives from all over the world. From the North American cities of Seattle, Boston, Ottowa, and NYC to rural Indiana and all the way to Europe's Scotland and Slovenia and even to Sydney, Australia, we have team members contributing their time and talent 24/7 from around the globe to make Mlem the best app we can-- for you!

THE FUTURE

As mentioned, we plan to hit 1.0 GM by July 1 to submit to the App Store, with approval forthcoming afterward. Until then we're working as hard and fast as circumstances allow to bring as many 1.0 features and bug fixes as we can to make that a reality. We obviously can't get to implementing every feature and squashing every bug, but we'll build in many features as is realistic for a 1.0 app and squash as many bugs as we can. Until then the beta app will be missing some features and harboring some bugs. It's just the nature of the beast.

Keep testing, stay excited, and check back here for updates and discussion about the Mlem App!

Cheers!

-- The Mlem App Team

• Mlem App Chat on Matrix
• Melm App Recruitment Chat
• Mlem App on GitHub

I see some posts while sorting by hot that are as old as 2 years. I sincerely doubt that those posts would show up while sorting by hot, and I’m not even sure there are posts that old on lemmy. I saw a post that had an article written 2 weeks ago, and the post said it was 2 weeks old which leads me to believe posts show the age of the link

I’d love to give the app a try! Is there a waiting list or invite code required?

I'm hoping what's there is sort of a placeholder. Will we be able to see more, similar to the info I get about my profile in Apollo?

I keep thinking I must be missing something, it there doesn't seem to be a way to see our list of subscriptions or to easily browse and add new communities

Unless I am missing something, it seems that there's no way to see local posts

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/45776

Seems like an easy missed opportunity. In the settings pane, there is a link to this community. Tapping it opens an in app safari view… if we’re already in the mlem app, why shouldn’t the link open the community as if it were a feed?

Would love for “dark mode” to be a selectable option as opposed to just following the system settings.

There should be the option to blur NSFW images or am i missing something?

Hi. I am new to the Lemmy world (like most of us). I try to contribute to the communities by posting relevant content. The app lacks of an easy way to share an URL directly from Safari. There should be an icon to mlem when, on Safari, you click on "share".

I think that it should be on the priorities to allow us to easily populate the Lemmy world with fresh content from iOS.

Thanks!

Hey folks!

I've been getting situated with the code base, but I wanted to start off with some low-hanging fruit, right now there was a big bug with VoiceOver and the search drop down. it was covering half of the screen and if you tried to use VoiceOver it was difficult to interact with posts in this area. this also seems to improve some Dynamic Text issues, but we still have some way to go.

Next up was the posts themselves, I wanted to group the related controls and simplify the interaction. Voting is now achieved by an adjustable action, simply swipe up or down on the post to vote.

I also added some connecting words to clean up reading the post stats.

Saving is not yet fully supported, but I went ahead and cleaned up the interaction in anticipation.

Up next is posting and commenting, We will have some videos to share once those are ready.

Looking forward to making Mlem the most accessible iOS app for interacting with Lemmy!

-- Weston, UX Engineer/Accessibility Specialist

The Mlem Team

• Demo video 1
• Demo video 2

Can we please get dark mode?

Collapsible comments is a game changer. I tried to navigate here in the app to comment, though, and realized there’s no way to list my subscriptions or search. Also, the /c/mlem link in settings didn’t work. ;-)

But is it normal I lost my favorites?

I’d like to support mlem development.

Maybe it’s niche, but I find the “New Comments” sorting to be useful compared to other sort methods for seeing newer active stuff (“Active” somehow doesn’t accomplish this). However it seems to be missing from Mlem’s options.

• Customizable text size. For some reason, the text seems a bit smaller than the other apps on my phone. May be just me, but in any case, being able to increase/decrease text size would be great
• Community name filter. Currently the block feature allows you to specify a word in the title to block. Is it possible to have a filter to block communities with a specified word in their names? For example, I want to filter out hentai, but I have to search for all hentai related communities and add them to my block list on the web ui. Instead, if it's possible to add keyword filters, it would be great.
• The sort that works best for me is the New Comments sort, which I see is missing from the sort options in the app. Could you add the new and most comments sort options? On a related note, is it possible to implement custom range for 'Top' sort? like Top Hour, Top 4 Hours, etc.
• The profile and message tabs are still not working for me, just showing the placeholder values. For the time being, is it possible to at least just implement a notification counter for the messages tab? If I can see that I have messages, I can logon to the website and check them out until the messages are implemented in app.

Thanks to the entire team for the great work on the app!