Mlem for Lemmy

Mlem 1.1.1 is now available on the App Store, bringing 0.19 compatibility, new icons, and some highly-requested features!

Major Features

• 0.19 compatibility. Mlem is now up to date with the latest Lemmy (0.19.0-rc.12, as of this posting), meaning that users on lemmy.ml, lemmy.sdf.org, and other instances running bleeding-edge beta builds can once again use Mlem!
• New default app icon designed by our very own Sjmarf. The classic Clay/s icons are still available in Settings > Appearance > App Icon, where you will find another new icon (Alien) and a neater icon organization system.
• Tapping the Feeds, Inbox, and Profile icon now scrolls to the top if you are already in that tab

Minor Features

• Updated the image viewer. It now appears much faster, and allows saving and sharing the image via context menu (long press).
• Jump button can now be placed in the center
• User labels can now display multiple flairs, including a new "banned” flair
• Added top 3/6/9 months sort modes
• Rewrote inbox backend. It should still behave the same, but it’s much more efficient now.
• Added context menus to search results
• Search bar is now always shown in the search tab
• Improved “no posts found” message
• Added a reset button to the Widget Wizard
• Adjusted haptic feedback
• Improved account deletion page

Bug Fixes

• Fixed compact comments not appropriately displaying vote status when net votes are displayed
• Fixed crashes and state loss when moving to the background on iPad

Cheers,

The Mlem Group

Mlem is a free and open source project. 100% of our funding, which pays for things like server time, comes from our generous donors; we do not, and will never, run ads or sell data. If you'd like to help support Mlem, you can donate here.

Tiny update that adds a prompt to reauthenticate when logging into a 0.19 server for the first time. This should fix the incorrect_login errors that users have been reporting.

While browsing your feed you can swipe a post to up/downvote it, or reply to it. However if you are within the post itself this does not appear possible and you have to use the buttons. Can this be changed?

Collapsing a post/comment currently only needs a slight touch, and as such I have collapsed posts, or a comment while merely trying to scroll. Can this action be made to require a long touch (or give us the option?)

If either of these are already available within the app would someone point me to the settings as I have been unable to find them.

While browsing in dark mode the color of the instance is very close to the background in color. Is it possible this could be made the same color as the community name? My poor eyesight is having a really hard time reading the instance name and there are some I just would rather avoid.

Thanks to the feedback from our wonderful TestFlight users, we’ve fixed a number of bugs with the 1.1.1 RC.

Features

• Jump button can now be placed in the center

Bug Fixes

• Fixed decoding error when marking posts as read that caused the error haptic to trigger every time a post was opened or an image was viewed
• Fixed being unable to block users from a post
• Fixed being unable to edit own posts from the expanded post view
• Fixed image uploading not working on 0.19 instances

We have achieved (hopefully) full 0.19 compatibility, and added a couple new features while we’re at it!

Features

• 0.19 compatibility. You should now be able to properly log into and use accounts on instances running 0.19.
• Double tap feed, inbox, and profile to scroll to the top
• New image viewer. We’ve moved from QuickLook to a popup sheet that appears much faster and lets you long press the image to save, share, or open the full QuickLook interface.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed crashes and state loss when moving to the background on iPad
• Sorting by top 3/6/9 months now works

We have released our first release candidate for 1.1.1 to TestFlight. This is a backend-focused update that adds compatibility with Lemmy 0.19 and cleans up some of our backend logic.

Features

• Rewrote inbox backend. This is the biggest thing to test in this release, since we’ve implemented a completely new approach to displaying feeds that we hope to roll out across the app. There shouldn’t be any new behavior (although swipe actions should feel a tiny bit smoother), but it’s way more computationally efficient and should be easier to work with moving forwards.
• Added Lemmy 0.19 compatibility and features (note that these features are only available on the few instances currently running 0.19 pre-release software):
  • Added option to delete posts and comments when deleting your account
  • Added cursor-based pagination, which should result in slightly more efficient page loading
• Added context menus to search results
• Improved “no posts found” message
• Search bar is now always shown in the search tab
• Added a reset button to the Widget Wizard
• Organized app icons by creator
• Added a new icon, “Alien Mlem,"" by Sjmarf
• Adjusted haptic feedback
• Improved account deletion page

Bug Fixes

• Fixed compact comments not appropriately displaying vote status when net votes are displayed

Cheers,

The Mlem Group

Hi Mlem Community,

It’s been a bit quiet here recently, so I just wanted to let you all know what we’ve been up to in the last couple weeks.

Development Progress

The current development cycle has been very backend-focused, so there hasn’t been much shiny new stuff to push to the TestFlight. We’ve instead been developing stable long-term solutions to thorny problems that we didn’t have time to address while we were racing towards core features. There should be a TestFlight coming out soon-ish with some major backend rework that will make the app more stable and robust.

Donations

We are extremely excited to announce that you can now donate to the project!

Where do I donate?

Right here

What will the money be used for?

100% of the money that you donate goes directly towards the project. It will be used to cover operating expenses (e.g., Xcode cloud server time), dev tools, and new features like push notifications that cost some money to operate.

Our donations are run through Open Collective, which means that all of our income and expenses are fully transparent so you can donate with confidence.

What do I get for donating?

The eternal gratitude of the development team, a bright future for Mlem, and some cool updates down the line. Due to App Store restrictions, we cannot currently offer perks as a reward for donation; see below for more details.

Can I donate in-app?

Not yet. In-app purchases must go through the App Store, which requires a whole bunch of additional setup that we are currently still working on. The App Store also prohibits us from selling “content or functionality” through any market but the App Store (App Store review guidelines §3.1.1), which is why we can’t offer tangible rewards right now.

Will functionality ever be paywalled?

Absolutely not, and nor will we ever run ads. Ads and paywalled functionality violate the fundamental philosophy of the Fediverse: social media created by and for the community, free of corporate influence, supported by nothing more than the community’s desire for the platform. When we do get our in-app purchases up and running, we will never restrict the functionality of the app; every feature will be available to every user. Rewards will be in the form of digital bling (e.g., a custom flair visible to all Mlem users), wholly cosmetic perks (e.g., special icons or color themes), or bragging rights (e.g., a shoutout on our info page).

If you have any questions, drop them below and we’ll do our very best to answer them.

Cheers,

The Mlem Group

Hi! Thanks to the devs for their great work with this app. I've enjoyed using it as my primary since the latest update. I was wondering if there are plans to implement different theme (highlight) colors instead of the standard blue. I like the blue just fine, but would sure love other options to choose from like Lemmy's mint green. I imagine other users would welcome this option as well. Thanks for the consideration! ✌️ 🙂

If you remove all post widgets, you cannot add any back. Dragging any back up does nothing.

It would be nice to just double tap the „feed“ and „inbox“ and than you would jump to the top and get a refresh for said tab. It’s a small annoyance for me, as of now I close and reopen the app, as scrolling is sometimes way to tedious.

Thanks for the enhanced search tab, but I noticed that you can not search inside a community or am I missing something?

At long last, Mlem 1.1 is ready! We’ve been working on this one for a while and are super excited to bring what we’ve been working on to the App Store:

Major Features

Fully Customizable Interaction Bar

All the buttons you want, exactly where you want them. Want to be able to upvote from both sides of the post? You can do that. Instance doesn’t support downvotes? You can remove the downvote button. Want six separate upvote buttons? Yup, you can do that too. Check it out in Settings -> Appearance - Posts or Comments -> Customize Widgets.

Enhanced Search

Search has been given a major facelift, and we’ve added the ability to search for both users and communities. You can also now subscribe directly from search results.

New Icons

We have two all-new icons for the app:

• Classic Lemmy, designed by Eric Andrews, based on the Lemmy icon
• Stargazer, designed by Sjmarf

Jump Button

We’ve added a button to the comments view to let you jump to the next comment, because scrolling is just too much work sometimes.

Image Uploading

Our team is never afraid to push the envelope. After countless hours of groundbreaking development, we give you the ability to upload an image while creating a post. Revolutionary, we know.

Onboarding

We now have a proper onboarding flow for new Lemmy users. If you already have an account but want to see it anyway, you can remove all your accounts from Mlem.

Minor Features

• Collapse comments. Swipe all the way to the left to collapse a comment.
• Collapse post content. Posts are overrated—comments are where it’s at. In the detailed post view, you can tap a post to collapse it and get straight into the comments.
• Adjustable haptic levels. You can disable some or all of the haptic feedback in Settings -> General -> Haptic Level.
• Opaque insets. If you think material design is just a silly fad and solid colors are the one true path, you can make your navigation and tab bars fully opaque in Settings -> Accessibility -> Translucent Insets.'
• Added an option to upvote posts on save. You can find it in Settings -> General -> Upvote on Save.
• Added an option to show the user avatar in the tab bar instead of the generic profile picture. You can find it in Settings -> Appearance -> Tab Bar -> Show User Avatar.
• Edited posts and comments now display the updated time.

Quality-of-life and Other Improvements

• Instant vote feedback. Voting on posts and comments now displays the vote instantaneously, rather than waiting for that sluggish speed-of-light roundtrip to the server.
• Link posts now have an indicator on their thumbnail in Compact and Headline mode.
• You can now block communities directly from posts.
• Various actions have been flagged as destructive and given a nice little warning popup.
• Fixed some issues with images embedded in links displaying poorly.
• Fixed nav bar disappearing on device rotation.
• Haptic feedback no longer causes an animation hitch on first play.
• Made profile headers more readable.
• Updated the behavior of the NSFW filter. In expanded post mode, tapping anywhere on the image will dismiss the filter; in feed, the filter can still only be dismissed by tapping the warning sign.
• Very tall images now shrink to a max height. You can make them display in their full, glorious height in Settings -> Appearance -> Posts -> Limit Image Height In Feed.
• Smoothed out editor sheet animations.
• Clarified error message when trying to log into a private instance.

Bug Fixes

• Addressed scrolling jumpiness. Again. I really think I’ve got it beat this time, though. Please?
• Fixed a problem where the account switcher would be open when re-opening the app.
• Inbox now persists unread status.
• Search no longer has auto-correct or auto-capitalization.
• Fixed the “share” button crashing the app on iPad.
• Fixed feed refresh not behaving consistently
• Fixed login not handling incorrect 2FA code properly
• Added handling for inconsistent date formats across instances
• Fixed unencoded URLs breaking the feed
• Fixed instances with optional .admin field not loading
• Fixed large posts rendering incorrectly on iPad.
• Fixed the first ~40 posts not showing up
• Fixed posts loading after the end of the feed
• Fixed settings icons not rendering properly on iOS 17
• Fixed a bug where connecting to instances on localhost was impossible
• Fixed logging in before email verification crashing the app
• Fixed opening posts from URL links crashing the app
• Fixed swipey action animation and context menu animation trying to run at the same time (ONLY on iOS 17—some of the changes made in iOS 17 gave us the tools to disable this behavior, but there’s unfortunately nothing we can do about it in iOS 16).

Cheers,

The Mlem Group

Ahead of our App Store update tomorrow, we’ve fixed a whole lot of bugs and refined some of our new features:

Features and Improvements

• Recent searches are now stored per-account
• Optimized search view rendering
• Added a swipe gesture to delete a recent search
• Improved account switching screen
• Added an option to disable the “swipe up from tab bar” gesture

Bug Fixes

• Recent searches from instances not federated with the current account no longer appear
• Refreshing your own profile no longer causes an error
• Refreshing a profile now also refreshes the content of that profile, including things like vote counts
• Fixed certain actions being published on background threads
• Fixed inbox unread count incrementing every time you vote on a mention or reply
• Fixed search spamming the API
• Fixed home page sometimes having no items when navigating back from search
• edit Fixed info stack not aligning properly

Cheers,

The Mlem Group

I got a reply with a large width and the left border overflows „outside“ the screen

It’s here: our 1.1 release candidate! This is the last set of features for our App Store update next week, and we’ve got some exciting ones for you:

Features and Improvements

• Brand new search interface, allowing you to search for users or communities (posts coming soon) and featuring a beautiful new result preview
• Image uploading. You can now upload an image when creating a post!
• New icon: “Stargazer", designed by Sjmarf
• Edited posts and comments now display the updated time

Bug Fixes

• Fixed images all appearing as squares (and, I hope, finally put our scrolling issues to bed)
• Fixed settings icons not rendering properly on iOS 17
• Fixed a bug where connecting to instances on localhost was impossible
• Smoothed out editor sheet animations
• Fixed logging in before email verification crashing the app
• Fixed opening posts from URL links crashing the app
• Fixed swipey action animation and context menu animation trying to run at the same time (ONLY on iOS 17—Apple fixed this behavior generally in iOS 17, there’s unfortunately nothing we can do about it in iOS 16)
• Clarified error message when trying to log into a private instance

Known issues

• Tapping a “recent searches" suggestion for a community or user not federated with the current account will fail to load
• "Official Community" link on some instances federated with lemmy.ml still opens in-browser
• Items to the right of the spacer in the widget customizer do not initially register taps if the widgets have not been customized since the last build. This is due to inconsistencies in the saved widget config data, and can be fixed by simply moving some widgets around.
• Info stack does not properly adjust its alignment when it is the leftmost or rightmost element

Cheers, The Mlem Group

The info widget looks a bit out of place when it is moved to the left or right side, since its icons are always center-aligned.

Could you implement that the info widget icons are automatically left-aligned when the info widget is moved to the left side, and right-aligned when it is moved to the right side?

Or a manual way to chose their alignment.

Basically when I click on a reply in my inbox it opens the post. Where as I think it should also „scroll“ to the comment within that post. It’s sometimes painful to find the full context in a bigger comment section.

We're back with bugfixes, bugfixes, a new icon, and more bugfixes! Thanks to all of our wonderful TestFlight members for finding and reporting bugs--we really couldn't do it without you.

Small patch today, but we figured that the fixes are important enough to be worth releasing ahead of our regular cadence.

Features and Improvements

• Added a new "Classic Lemmy" icon, designed by yours truly, based on the Lemmy logo
• Refined the onboarding flow. The instance list now only shows the top 30 instances, with the others accessible via search; we've also smoothed out the navigation between pages.
• Refined the editor. Now it can be pulled down to only cover half the screen so you can see context while you're composing, and it can't be swipe-dismissed so you won't accidentally lose a half-written post.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed images not prefetching
• Fixed the first ~40 posts not showing up
• Fixed posts loading after the end of the feed
• Fixed large posts rendering incorrectly on iPad

Cheers, The Mlem Group

Hey guys, I just joined Lemmy a few days ago so I don’t know how this works lol, but I’m using Mlem. I wanted to see if there are videos on YouTube showcasing some Mlem features that I don’t know about and I stumbled upon this video with no views somehow. The guy in the video says he’s the guy who made Mlem, but there was some drama so he’s not around anymore… does anyone know if it’s legit? Thanks

We've rolled out a patch to the App Store that fixes some instances not loading properly. lemmy.world, beehaw.org, and others should work properly now.

Cheers,

The Mlem Group

I'm going to start by saying we didn't actually want to release this one just yet. A couple major instances changed their API spec without updating the published build number, which led to us needing to rush out a fix, so what we've got isn't quite fully cooked yet. Anyway, we figured it would be more fun to ship what we've got then to ship a patch, so here's what's new:

Features and Improvements

• Added an option to upvote posts on save (comments still WIP)
• Added an option to show the user avatar in the tab bar instead of the generic profile
• Made profile headers more readable
• Updated the behavior of the NSFW filter. In expanded post mode, tapping anywhere on the image will dismiss the filter; in feed, the filter can still only be dismissed by tapping the warning sign.
• Added post overscroll for the jump button

Bug Fixes

• Fixed website icon not appearing in the right place on thumbnails
• Fixed the "share" button crashing the app on iPad
• Fixed the widget customizer not working on iOS 17
• Fixed feed refresh not behaving consistently
• Fixed login not handling incorrect 2FA code properly
• Fixed instances with optional .admin field not loading
• Added handling for inconsistent date formats across instances
• Fixed unencoded URLs breaking the feed

Known issues:

• Swipe voting in inbox has an animation hitch
• Comments don't apply interactions instantly
• It's hard to get image posts to collapse
• Putting too many widgets and too much info in the bar causes view clipping
• Onboarding flow is kinda rough. If you've got thoughts on how to make it smoother, please share!
• In Large Post mode, all images are crunched into a square. This is a temporary hack for performance reasons while we polish up some fun new changes, and will be gone in the next build.

Cheers, The Mlem Group

The biggest feature I notice missing in almost all Lemmy apps, is jumping to the top on the first tap of the tab icon of the view you’re in.

E.g. you’ve scrolled down a bit while in the Posts tab, then you tap the Posts icon, in Apollo, it would jump to the top of the list view in Posts, then second tap would take you to the communities subscribed slideout view.

Would love to see both the first and second tap functionality added to the tab icons as it’s a great quality of life feature IMO.

We're motoring on ahead towards our 1.0.2 RC. It's a little ways off yet, but we've just got so many new changes that we couldn't help but share them with you.

What's new:

• The Widget Wizard: fully customize your post and comment interaction widgets with a new drag-and-drop interface! Check it out in Settings -> Appearance -> Posts or Comments -> Customize Widgets
• Jump button: we've added a handy little button to jump to the next top-level comment. You can disable it in Settings -> Comments.
• Instant post feedback: we've done some major backend work on how we handle posts to make the app more stable and set up new features down the line. You'll notice that posts now apply your interactions immediately, rather than waiting for network round trip. You might also notice some new bugs, which we would love to hear about.
• Onboarding: new users now get a proper onboarding flow. You can check it out by removing all your accounts from Mlem.
• Collapse post content: in the detailed post view, you can tap the title or body of a post to collapse it and get right to the comments
• Collapse comments: swipe way to the left to reveal a new swipe action: collapse comment
• Haptic levels: you can now disable some or all of the haptic feedback in the app in Settings -> General -> Haptic Level
• Opaque tab bars: in case you think material design is so 2014 and yearn for strong, assertive views, you can now make the tab bars fully opaque in Settings -> Accessibility -> Translucent Insets.

Quality of life updates:

• Link posts now have an indicator on their thumbnail in Compact and Headline mode
• Fixed a problem where the account switcher would be open when re-opening the app
• Inbox now persists unread status
• Search no longer has auto-correct or auto-capitalization
• Large images now display as shrunk. You can make them display in their full, glorious height in Settings -> Appearance -> Posts -> Limit Image Height In Feed.
• You can now block communities directly from posts
• Various actions have been flagged as destructive
• Fixed some issues with images embedded in links displaying poorly
• Fixed nav bar disappearing on device rotation
• Haptic feedback no longer causes an animation hitch on first play

Known issues:

• Swipe voting in inbox has an animation hitch
• Comments don't apply interactions instantly
• It's hard to get image posts to collapse
• Putting too many widgets and too much info in the bar causes view clipping
• Onboarding flow is kinda rough. If you've got thoughts on how to make it smoother, please share!

Cheers, The Mlem Group

Mlem does not like my iPad Pro at all. Maybe it's the aspect ratio but images are zoomed in and text is getting cut off. It's basically unusable. Is it a problem for all iPad users or is it a user configuration error on my part?