CreatureSurvive

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/11649661

Download Arctic on the AppStore!

I am thrilled to announce that Arctic is now available on the AppStore! Looking back, it's amazing to see how much progress Arctic has made in the last six months. Initially, I began working on Arctic as a personal project to fill the void after leaving Reddit during the API fiasco. I had no intention of releasing it publicly. Now, I have a fully-featured Lemmy client, a fantastic group of beta testers on TestFlight, and an official release on the AppStore.

However, the journey isn't over yet. I have many exciting plans for Arctic, and this is just a significant milestone. Going forward, I plan to release more targeted updates on TestFlight and create a public roadmap for AppStore releases.

I would like to thank everyone who was involved with Arctic's TestFlight for all the valuable feedback and suggestions that have helped shape Arctic!

Links

• Website: getarctic.app
• TestFlight: testflight.apple.com
• AppStore: apps.apple.com
• Issues: github.com
• Community: !arctic@lemmy.world

Hopefully if all goes well in review, and review times are not extremely long right now, then I will be releasing Arctic on the AppStore within the next week or so.

Thank you to all the great testers for all your support and feedback!

TestFlight builds are not going anywhere, I will be continuing to push new builds as often as possible, though releases may change a bit. Going forward we will have RC (release candidate) builds which will be targeted at bug and stability testing to ensure updates are not introducing new issues into the AppStore releases. I’ll have more information on this when I release the next TestFlight build.

Sorry for such a delay in posting release notes, I’ve been very busy the last few weeks, and almost all of my free time has been spent working on updates. Since my last release post, I’ve released v0.3.0, v0.3.1, v0.3.2.

Arctic gained quite a few new features in these releases. I’ll list off some of the most notable changes, and as alway you can find the full list of changes below.

v0.3.0 was primarily focused on markdown rendering improvements. I added support for Lemmy spoilers, subscript, superscript, highlights, and syntax highlighting. Code and blocks are now rendered with a styled background for better distinction.

v0.3.1 added an all new private messages view. Messages are now sorted into conversations, and displayed in a iMesages style feed. You can now edit, delete, and report private messages. This release also included forward navigation. If you swipe back in the navigation stack, you can swipe back forward and pickup where you left off. There is also a new action to quickly switch the post layout while viewing a feed.

v0.3.2 added options to hide read posts, and mark posts as read while scrolling. There a new post layout Headline which is a compact style that only displays the post title. I also improved the layout of other compact layouts. Reddit gallery links will now be rendered as regular image gallery posts.

I’ve also spent some time preparing the first AppStore release for Arctic. I just about have everything ready for submission, with only iPad previews left to design. I hope to submit the first release to the AppStore by the end of the month.

One last thing I would like to include in the first official release, is a new default icon for Arctic. I’ve tried my hand at a few icons now, and so far I’ve not found any that feel adequate. If anyone here is a graphic designer or digital artist, feel free to reach out to me.

v0.3.0 Changelog

• Added support for new Markdown features to the Markdown Editor
• Added a loading indicator for Lemmy Explorer
• Added option to set the instance used for Guest Mode
• Added font size preview when using the font size slider
• Added appearance settings for adjusting the style of the top and bottom bars in Lemmy
• Added a warning message that will show at the end of feeds if you're viewing a filtered feed eg: listing mode set to Local
• Added a new preview controller when composing a post or comment
• Updated Swimmy to use a single instance of Lemmy Api for all API calls
• Updated the account switcher to use the applied font settings
• Updated to save and restore listing mode when switching to/from guest mode
• Updated Markdown rendering:
  • Added support for syntax highlighting in code blocks
  • Code blocks and inline code will now be rendered in a box
  • Block quotes will now be rendered in a quote box
  • Added support for ~subscript~ and ^superscript^
  • Added support for ==highlight==
  • Added support for Lemmy spoilers
  • Added settings to adjust syntax highlighting behavior
  • Added support for loading remote images inline
    • Note: This behavior is not enabled yet, I still have more work to do to support videos and animated images
• Fixed issue where non-account cells could be reordered in account settings
• Fixed Safari Open In extension causing a crash due to a previous update
• Fixed Lemmy Explorer failing to load Communities
• Fixed issue where the tab-bar profile title would not update for Guest Mode
• Fixed an issue that could cause font size changes to not apply unless using the iPad layout
• Fixed color themes not applying to the top and bottom bars immediately
• Fixed issue where the listing mode could unnecessarily change when switching to guest mode
• Fixed issue where changing the sorting/listing mode when viewing a post would not reload the feed if the feed was empty before changing

v0.3.1 Changelog

• Added a new Private Messages controller similar to iMessage:
  • Messages are now displayed in conversations based on the recipient
  • You can now edit, delete, and report messages
• Added forward navigation, swipe from the right edge of the screen to re-open previously open views
• Added support for selecting text in the reply view context preview
• Added an option to the Posts Feed action menu to quickly change the cell layout style
• Added option to lock Arctic using biometrics (Face ID, Touch ID, Passcode), with an optional timeout before locking
• Added a timestamp to inbox comment cells
• Added additional support for internal Markdown customization (user settings coming soon)
• Fixed issue with the Syntax Highlighting settings page, where the preview would render incorrectly on iOS 16+
• Fixed issue where editing a post multiple times would not reflect the previous changes when re-opening the editor
• Updated font size and color in generated initial icons
• Updated the markdown editor to respond to font size changes

v0.3.2 Changelog

• Added option to mark posts as read while scrolling
• Added option to hide read posts in the home feed
• Added option to hide read posts in community feeds
• Added new post layout style Headline: a compact style that only shows the post title
• Added support for fetching images from Reddit gallery links
• Added support for viewing YouTube and Piped videos from opened posts
• Added support for opening links in private messages
• Added support for markdown [[BADGES]] (color defaults to red for now)
• Added a delivered notifications manager for deleting notifications once they are read in-app (not enabled yet)
• Added notification permissions status cell to notification settings, this is intended to assist users when encountering an error while enabling notifications
• Updated unread count polling, polls now allow for threshold waiting to reduce network calls.
• Updated support for inline HTML in markdown, HTML will now render with the correct font
• Updated NSFW blur view layout
• Updated HLS stream support to reduce stalling when playing streams
• Updated post spacing for compact post layouts
• Fixed media seek gestures blocking the navigation swipe gestures
• Fixed forward navigation transition causing a zoom effect for some views
• Fixed issue where canceling a navigation transition would clear the forward navigation stack
• Fixed an issue preventing videos from opening in the media viewer when viewing a post
• Fixed an issue where media gallery views could display duplicate images
• Fixed issue allowing a link preview to be displayed in a media post
• Fixed a crash that could occur when opening the media viewer in rare cases
• Fixed a crash that could occur when attempting to open a URL that not http(s)
• Fixed issue where animated images could display out of bounds when viewed in a paged media viewer
• Fixed spoilers incorrectly indenting paragraphs after the first line
• Fixed issue where selecting the active account in the account switcher would reload feeds
• Updated support for parsing lemmy semantic versions

Links

• Website: getarctic.app
• TestFlight: testflight.apple.com

Happy holidays everyone!

I released Arctic v0.2.10 on TestFlight yesterday. Additionally I forgot to make a release post for v0.2.9 which released a little over a week ago.

v0.2.10

This release features a new Markdown editor, Anonymous Logging, support for new sorting modes, and addresses issues with expired jwt’s on the notification server.

I finally took the time in this release to implement logging using swift-log for cross-platform logging which is shared between Arctic, Swimmy, and the notification server. If you encounter any crashes, please include your logs by going to Settings>About>Arctic Logs. All logs are stored only on device, and don’t include any personal or sensitive information.

The account switcher also includes some new features. Each account now shows a badge indicating your unread notifications at a glance. It will also show a warning if you login session has expired. You can now set a default account, whenever you close or relaunch Arctic, the default account will be loaded.

The markdown editor toolbar has been redesigned. It now features a scrollable action list, and will be easier from me to expand on in the future.

v0.2.9

In this update, I improved the workflow for moderators with a new Mod Zone for accessing all your reports, mod-logs, and user applications. I also added a new section to the subscriptions list that shows all your moderated communities for easy access

Arctic finally supports opening links from other instances natively. For instance if you are browsing lemmy.world and open a link to a post on lemm.ee, Arctic will now resolve the link and open it on the instance you are browsing. In some cases this may fail, for instance if the link is to an instance that is blocked, in this case, it will be opened in the browser.

Most of the other changes in this version are minor tweaks to the UI and a couple of crash/bug fixes. You can read about all the changes in this version below.

Upcoming Changes

I’ve started working on a new markdown renderer using TextKit for a future release. This will offer much improved rendering for markdown. Thinks like embedded tables, code highlighting, backgrounds for blocks like block-quotes, and code. Support for tags, and spoilers, and in-line previews for links and images. This is very early in development and will likely not be released in the next several versions.

v0.2.10 Changelog

• Added logging support, you can now find logs for arctic in settings (logs are anonymous and never leave your device)
• Added a new Markdown toolbar to improve Markdown editing
• Added support for Lemmy v0.19 sort modes (Controversial | Scaled)
• Added support for showing taglines in Instance Sidebars
• Added unread badges to the Account Switcher
• Added the account name to the post composer to show what account you are posting from
• Added support for inline HTML in rendered markdown
• Added 3 new app icons
• Added support for selecting a default account that will automatically be used when reopening Arctic
• Added options to disable Account Switcher badges and warnings
• Added support for parsing semantic versions to determine Lemmy instance versions
• Fixed a crash that could occur when attempting to load the duration of a video
• Fixed more navigation bar layout issues on iOS 15
• Fixed a layout issue in the LoginRefreshController
• Fixed issue where arctic would attempt to fetch video thumbnails for unsupported video urls
• Fixed upvote by pressing upvote label in comment cells
• Fixed an issue where notification options could be reset after certain actions
• Updated to use new features in Swimmy and removed some outdated backend code
• Updated adding an image link to the post composer, the image will be loaded and displayed
• Updated the post composer
• Updated block-quote appearance in rendered markdown (quotes are now rendered as muted italic)
• Improved the readability of popover views
• Re-authenticating an account will now update your auth (jwt) on the notification server (if applicable)

v0.2.9 Changelog

• Added a new Mod Zone for accessing:
  • Mod Logs
  • Reported Content
  • User Applications
• Added swipe action to subscriptions list view for unsubscribing
• Added a moderator section to the subscriptions list view
• Added support for video thumbnails in Grid Gallery views
• Added a reply arrow to the reply composer to better indicate the context being replied to
• Added support for tappable links in profile bios
• Added support for accessing the community selector from inside post views
• Added chevron to the navigation title view to indicate it's tap action
• Added support for resolving urls from other instances
  • Note: when opening a link to a post or comment that is not local to your instance, arctic will fetch the local instance url prior to opening the link. This should resolve most instances of lemmy urls being open in the in-app browser.
• Updated the section header font size in the subscription list view
• Updated the appearance of report, and mod reason controllers
• Updated the subscriptions list view index slider to adjust to theme changes
• Updated action menus community and moderator action menus
• Updated url handling to attempt redirecting http traffic to https
• Updated font size handling to support views presented over the main view
• Updated the indentation width for child comments in comment threads
• Updated about settings section
• Fixed a crash that could occur when using the hue comment color theme
• Fixed an issue where the inbox may fail to load all items in various sections
• Fixed issue where the select text popup would not allow text selection
• Fixed issue where arctic could attempt updating a view after its been dismissed, causing a crash
• Fixed Lemmy Explorer failing to load instances due to API changes

Links

• Website: getarctic.app
• TestFlight: testflight.apple.com

Arctic v0.2.8 released on TestFlight yesterday. The biggest change in this version is updated support for Lemmy v0.19. I noticed d that several lemmy instances have already updated to v0.19 RC, so I wanted to get this release out as soon as possible.

I also finally added support for overriding the default system font size, and an option to open links in the default browser, or in reader mode.

I finally tracked down a long standing bug that would cause crashes for many users when exiting a post view, or shortly after doing so.

Coming up next in v0.2.9

In the next release I’ve added an all new Mod Zone for quick access to all your mod/admin tools. You can view all your reports, or mod-logs per community. I also added Admin support for managing new user applications.

You can now access your moderated communities in a new section on the subscriptions view, and you can also swipe to unsubscribe from communities.

I’m working on a few more QoL updates before rolling out the next release

v0.2.8 change-log

• Updated support for Lemmy v0.19     - Note: Not all of the new features are supported yet, though all of Arctic's current features should be supported
• Added support for customizing the font size in Arctic
• Added the instance Lemmy version to the sidebar
• Added link options:     - Open in default browser     - Open in reader mode
• Added support for editing Community Watchers
• Added a new App Icon
• Fixed issue where the community selector search did not respect the sorting mode
• Fixed Lemmy Explorer failing to load communities
• Fixed issue where the application badge would not update immediately after changing notification settings
• Fixed an issue with image loading that could cause a crash when exiting a post view
• Updated post composer to pre-select the open community when using the long-press gesture
• Updated in-app Safari to use Arctic's tint color
• Updated Arctic's theme support

Arctic Push Notifications

• Added support for updating community notification
• Added support for notification sounds
• Added support for running on a local machine for debugging
• Added support for sending local-urls in notifications
• Added collapse identifiers to notifications, in the off chance a duplicate notification is sent, it will be collapsed with the previous one
• Fixed incorrect parsing of dates in community notifications
• Fixed an issue that would cause registration application notifications to send repeatedly until they were all approved
• Updated badge notifications to update less frequently, and improve reliability
• Updated support for Lemmy v0.19
• Updated the format of sent notifications to improve client-side parsing support

Links

• Website: getarctic.app
• TestFlight: testflight.apple.com

Arctic v0.2.7 is out

Arctic v0.2.7 is out on TestFlight. This update is focused on backend optimization and push notification features.

Community Notifications

You can now setup notifications for individual communities. Notifications can by filtered by post keywords, post author, and post score. In the coming releases I will add support for more filtering options. To list a few, filter by phrase rather than keyword, upvote/downvote rather than just score, multiple authors, comment count, pinned(stickied) posts, etc. I’ll also be adding support for temporary notifications,community notifications that will automatically expire after a set amount of time.

Account Notification Options

Account notifications can now be toggled by type, you can toggle notifications for: badges, replies, mentions, and messages. This also adds support for mods/admins. You can enable mod notifications for new post/comment reports, and admin notifications for new user registration applications. note that user application cannot currently be viewed within Arctic.

Community Jump

You can now tap the title in any posts feed and quickly jump to a different community using the community selector.

Backend Improvements

Arctics Lemmy API wrapper has now been extracted into a swift package (Swimmy) for improved maintainability and so it can be utilized as a shared code base for Arctics Push Notification server. In doing so, I also added support for Combine allowing for improved error handling with the API.

Arctics Server

I’ve migrated Arctics notification server to a new hosting provider. With the new provider, I may be able to offer all notification options as a free service provided I can sustain off of small donations. This would be ideal, as I never wanted to paywall any features in Arctic. I’ve also setup getarctic.app a new home for Arctic. The website is quite barebones at the moment, but I will be updating it as my time allows.

As always, thank you to everyone for helping test Arctic, and providing feedback. I know new features have slowed in the last few releases. Going forward I’ll be working on polishing the current feature set in hopes of an AppStore release in the next couple of weeks.

v0.2.7 full change-log

• Added Community Notifications
  • Setup notifications for any community
  • Configure filtering options (author, keywords, score, more filters coming soon)
  • Add unlimited watchers
• Added support for granular account notification options
  • Badges (Application notification badge)
  • Replies (Comment and Post replies)
  • Mentions (User mentions)
  • Reports (Moderator reports)
  • Applications (Admin user registration applications) (Arctic does not currently support showing applications in the app)
• Updated the community selector to default to subscribed communities
• Added typing suggestions when searching communities in the community selector
• Added support for displaying thumbnails in push notifications
• Added support for stripping markdown elements in push notifications
• Added community jump to the Posts Feed, tap the title in the navigation bar to quickly jump between communities
• Added Changelog to settings
• Migrated API backend to a package (Swimmy) shared between Arctic and Arctic's push notification server
• Fixed issue on iOS 15 where the Post feed search bar could overlap elements of the navigation bar**

Links

• Website: getarctic.app
• TestFlight: testflight.apple.com

Previews:

Arctic v0.2.2 and v0.2.3 has been released on TestFlight. I’m slacking a little and did not post about the v0.2.2 release. These are both smaller releases without many major changes. I’ve been trying to keep the updates a little smaller than usual, so I can release them faster.

v0.2.2

To summarize v0.2.2, this was mostly geared towards moderation tools. I redesigned the ModLog and added some convenience actions for moderators such as an Undo feature for mod actions. I fixed several crashes, and issues to do with the mod tools released in v0.2.1. For users I added support for sharing videos from the media viewer without needing to save them first. Fixed a crash when changing accounts that was introduced in the previous version. You can read more about this release in the changelog below.

v0.2.3

As for v0.2.3, this was a much smaller release that was mainly intended to fix a parsing issue with Lemmy Explorer. However I also added a couple cool new features. Finally some app theming support, you can now customize Arctics tint color, and comment colors. I also added a comment feed view for viewing your instance comments out of context similar to the web UI. You can also access this for individual communities, however several instances hav this temporary disabled due to performance issues. For mods, I added support for removing entire comment threads, I’ve seen this requested by several mods across lemmy. I also added the ability for admins to purge content from the database.

Upcoming changes

• Refined theming support, a few areas were overlooked in the initial release.
• A new comment jump button, for quickly navigating between top level comments
• All new swipe action design that triggers actions based on distance rather than the current drawer style actions, of course if you prefer the current style, you can use that instead.
• Comment and Post drafts so you can pick up where you left off if you dismiss the compose view.

v0.2.3 Changelog

• Added App color themes
• Added Comment color themes
• Added Remove Thread mod action for removing entire comment threads
• Added comment action to preview the comments parent
• Added Comment list controller for viewing community comments
• Fixed parsing issue when viewing Lemmy Explorer communities list
• Added Admin purge (comment, user, post) actions to mod menu (note: for now, this is only enabled on communities moderated by the admin)

v0.2.2 Changelog

• Added stats to Lemmy Explorer instance list
• Added large number formatting eg: 1.2K vs 1200
• Added support for sharing videos without needing to save them first
• Added support for filtering by all in the Mod Log
• Added Mod Log quick actions including an undo option for moderators
• Added community Mod Log shortcut to community action menu
• Added option to display user avatar as the profile tab icon
• Added backend support for instance blocking on Lemmy v0.19
• Added support for authentication on Lemmy v0.19
• Open In Browser now opens links using your active instance, rather than the original instance
• Rewrote Upload History controller
• Redesigned Mod Log cells
• Fixed profile comments being in incorrect order
• Fixed Lemmy Explorer timestamps not displaying
• Fixed a crash when refreshing the reports list
• Fixed a crash when (un)resolving a post report
• Fixed cell highlighting issue in the Mod Log
• Fixed a potential crash when performing mod actions
• Fixed a potential crash when changing accounts
• Updated date formatting to support upcoming Lemmy v0.19
• Updated post cell layout, and tweaked design for readability
• Updated settings icons
• Updated subscriptions title index to no longer require a long press to activate

Arctic v0.2.1 is now available for testing on TestFlight!

Sorry for the delay with this update, it took longer than I had originally planned. I’ve had a busy couple or weeks, and have not had as much time as usual to work on Arctic. Additionally this update was larger than past updates, with larger features and more commits than any of the previous updates. In the future I will try and keep the updates coming more frequently,

Notable new features

This update comes packed with some exciting new features. Arctic now has support for iPad layouts (split view, slide over, full screen). This is still a work in progress and will improve in future releases. Collapsible comment chains are finally supported, tap or swipe any comment to collapse it’s content and children. Mod tools have also joined the party! You can access mod actions when viewing content from any community you moderate. Just open the action menu for any post or comment for quick access to (ban user, remove content, speak as a mod, feature or lock a post). You can also review and resolve user reported content in the new Mod Zone accessible from the sidebar, and community action menu.

Mod tools and iPad support are still a work in progress and any feedback on theses features is more that welcome.

Less notable new features

Arctic now has Lemmy Explorer (lemmyverse.net) built in. This allows for browsing and searching thousands of instances and communities inside Arctic. Currently, you can access this through Lemmy Explorer in settings. However, I’m working on integrating lemmyverse databases directly in the Search tab, and in the Community browser to allow for better search results, and increase community discovery.

Media viewer action buttons are working now, not much to explain here. You can now vote, share, save, open in browser, etc directly from the media viewer.

Upcoming features

Better iPad support. I plan to add support for 3 column layout, and a context aware sidebar. I’m also working on adding support for multiple windows, so you can browse multiple accounts, or use mod tools while browsing etc. this may take some time and likely won’t be coming in the next release.

Mod tool improvements. Better UI support for moderation, currently the UI doesn’t properly update for all mod actions. Additional convenience actions for mods, such as speak as mod, and feature posts etc before submitting the post/comment.

Comments feed, view instance or community comments in a feed similar to the posts feed, this is to match the web UI.

Chat mode for comments. Disables hierarchical comments to view comments with absolute sorting. Additionally, child comments of deleted or removed comments are not shown.

Adaptive layout. Currently long usernames, or deep nested comments, etc cause some wonky UI, where elements will overlap. I’m working on adding better support in these cases to allow the UI to adapt.

Accessibility improvements. Voiceover should already be working fairly well, however there are a lot of areas for improvement. I’m working on going through the whole UI to ensure all elements are properly supported.

State synchronization. I know I’ve mentioned this before, and I haven’t gotten to this yet. I have a pretty good idea of. How I’m going to handle this, it’s going to take some time to implement though.

Customizable swipe actions. Adding support for user customizable swipe actions. This will also come with distance based triggers rather than the current drawer style swipe actions.

Until next time

As always, thanks to everyone for testing Arctic and providing feedback. We still have a fairly small community here, and I would like to increase engagement, so everyone feel free to post any feedback or suggestions here.

V0.2.1 changes

v0.2.1

• Added support for collapsable comment chains
• Added split-view iPad layout support (also supported on full size iPhones)
• Added option to select app layout (iPhone, iPad)
• Added Moderation options to post and comment action menus (must be a moderator for the community)
• Added Mod Zone for viewing post/comment reports, and resolving them
• Added Lemmy Explorer for browsing communities/instances
• Added support for uploading images from the Files app
• Added support for loading video thumbnails (WIP)
• Added option to save, copy, or open in browser any media
• Added swipe actions to the posts feed
• Added option to select text from the detailed post view
• Added support for refreshing the profile page
• Added open in browser option to community feeds
• Added alert for viewing detailed account score, and account age
• Redesigned settings page, and organized options
• Increased the posts feed page size
• Optimized image loading, and memory usage
• Refactored the profile view and added support for viewing save comments
• Fixed posts with no comments not displaying a no comments message
• Fixed issue that could cause community feeds not to load on certain instance
• Fixed issue where canceling an image upload would result in an infinite loading screen
• Fixed crash when deleting an image from the Upload Manager
• Fixed search bars on iOS 16 to match the layout of iOS 15
• Fixed layout issues after device rotation
• Fixed media viewer action buttons not working
• Fixed issue where posts would fail to load due to unencoded urls (matrix urls)
• Fixed crash that could occur when submitting a new post/comment
• Fixed sidebar banners displaying the icon rather than the banner
• Fixed comment reports opening a post report
• Fixed alerts displaying underneath the media viewer
• Fixed moderator list in profiles always displaying your own moderator list rather than the selected user
• Fixed crash that would occur when adding or changing accounts
• Fixed delated/removed comments always displaying "deleted by creator"

v0.2.0 is out!

I believe I finally fixed the crashes some users were experiencing when refreshing posts feeds, if you still experience one of these crashes, please report it via TestFlight. Also, links in posts and comments are way easier to tap now, that was frustrating, I know. You can read about all the changes in this version below.

Upcoming features

Collapsible Comments has been implemented, and will be included in the next release. I’m working on integrating a Lemmyverse browser for exploring outside of your instance. I’m also working on proper a proper iPad layout. Browsing on iPad is a little off-putting at the moment, so hopefully I can fix that.

Issue Tracker

I completely forgot to include a link to the issue tracker in the last release, but if you would like to submit an issue, you can visit the GitHub Issue Tracker. I will add a Feature Request option soon.

v0.2.0 Changes

• Fixed a crash that would often occur when refreshing a post-feed
• Fixed pull to refresh not working in detailed post views
• Fixed Community Settings not properly loading the icon URL
• Fixed issue that could make links in post bodies difficult or impossible to tap
• Fixed issue that could make links in comment bodies difficult or impossible to tap
• Fixed a potential memory leak in the Posts Feed
• Workaround for an unsupported KBin link type, will redirect to browser for now
• Added ability to search posts from the posts feed, for searching limited to a single community
• Added support for creating communities from the Moderates section
• Added lock indicator for locked posts
• Added a title to the report view to indicate the type of report
• Added instance sidebars
• Added support for composing, and replying to Private Messages
• Added an instance browser to browse your instance's federation
• Added instance legal information to instance sidebars
• Added modlogs to the sidebar (WIP)
• Added option to report posts from the detailed posts view
• Tapping the active tabbar item will now scroll to the top, or pop to the previous view in all views
• The Media Viewer will now allow zooming up to 30x
• When submitting a post or comment, a progress indicator will now show to indicate it is working
• When editing a post that has an image as the URL, the image will be loaded and displayed

I haven’t been posting here about Arctic updates, and I realize that is a little counter productive towards building an active community here. So I would like to change that and start posting about changes in each release, and about active development.

I have been trying to wrap up a release every couple of days, and keep them coming as frequently as I can manage. Each update I try and throw in a mix of bug fixes and new features or quality of life improvements. I believe at this point I have all the crashes fixed except one, which I’ve received a good number of crash reports about. The crash usually happens after refreshing the posts feed when letting the app sit in the background for a while. Unfortunately I’ve not been able to reproduce this crash which makes it difficult to resolve. However I do know where the issue originates, and I hope to have it resolved in the next update.

What’s next?

In the next update I’m planning a few new features. First and foremost, is private messages. Currently, you can view private messages with Arctic, but there is no way to reply or create messages. I’ve been putting it off because I don’t have a clear idea of how I’d like to design this. I’ve never been a fan of the Messages app-like design within an app like Arctic, so I’m thinking of implementing it more like a forum than a chat app. Im also planning to add in UI support for post and comment reporting, as this is a critical feature that should already be implemented if I’m being honest. I’ll hopefully have instance sidebars added in the next update as well.

Going forward

Within the next couple of releases I’d like to tackle some of the biggest issues within Arctic currently. First is state synchronization. Currently the app state is poorly managed: for instance you can open a post and vote or comment on it, and back-out to the feed and the UI will not depict the changes. This is rather cumbersome task as UIKit does not have proper binding like SwiftUI does. But I have a good idea of how I will manage this.

The second issue will be improvements to scrolling performance in posts feeds. This is also a tricky task as UIKit does not handle changes to cell height in tables very well. Currently, Arctic tries its best to prefetch images before they are displayed to prevent having to resize visible cells, but dependent on network conditions, this may not always happen in time and it can cause some jumpy scrolling. I may never completely negate this issue without the the lemmy API providing image dimension data in the responses. However, I have some options for improving this that I have yet to try.

Lastly, I’d like to address issues with links being un-tappable in some posts. This one is really annoying, and honestly I’m just going to throw out the current system and rewrite the system using official techniques.

Some more thoughts

Once stability and core features are a bit more polished, I’ll be focusing on design. Currently Arctic is quite static in design, but I’d like to offer a bit more user control over appearance. Things like app-wide color themes, comment color themes, customizable action/swipe menus, etc. while implementing all of this, the settings section will also get an overhaul and be a little more organized.

I’ll also be working on implementing mod/admin tools. This is likely going to take some time, as there is a lot to implement, and familiarize myself with. I’ll keep everyone up to date on my progress with this when the time comes. I may also seek out some mod/admin users to test these features in a private testing group to avoid issues

Anywho, I didn’t intend on this being such a blanketed post, so I will leave it at that. I’ve included change-logs below as I’m not sure if anyone reads release notes in TestFlight releases. I’ll be sure to make a new release post here every time I release an update going forward.

Thank you, to all of the users. You’ve all been great. Our numbers are still quite low at the moment, only 153 testers at the time of writing this. Hopefully I can bump those up with the coming releases.

v0.1.8

• Fixed videos failing to load in the media viewer if more than one video is in the list
• Fixed crash when trying to share a video from the media viewer (for now, only the link will be shared. I will add an option to share the video file soon)
• Fixed videos not posing when swiping to the next page in the media viewer
• Fixed the search bar not always showing on the initial load of the Search tab
• Fixed issue where some community icons would fail to load
• Fixed issue where some animated images would not animate in the full post-view
• Fixed issue where link previews would fail to display a default icon if a site favicon is not found
• Fixed markdown not being applied when opening the post editor
• Added loading indicator in the media viewer when loading videos
• Added support for cross-posting (option is available in the action menus)
• Added a community selector to the post composer, for changing what community you are posting to
• Added support for scrolling to the top when pressing the posts tab while it's already active
• Added option to open the post composer when long pressing the posts tab
• Added reply context preview to the Reply Composer, for viewing the context in which you are replying to

v0.1.7 hotfix

• Fixed crash when pressing the cancel button in the Search view
• Fixed placeholder text not hiding in the post editor when editing an existing post

v0.1.6

• Redesigned Post Editor UI
• Fixed issue that could cause the login screen not to recognize when username/password was pasted
• Fixed crash that could occur while trying to scroll the subscriptions view before it's loaded
• Fixed issue causing some comments to be truncated (cut short)
• Fixed layout issue causing odd behavior with the statusbar on non-notched devices
• Fixed an issue that could cause some animated images in the post feed not to animate
• Added a Upload History manager for deleting previous media uploads
• Improved error messages to be more descriptive
• UI now depicts when an upload is in progress
• Media in comments can now be opened in the Meia Viewer
• Index scroller in the Subscriptions view is now easier to grab
• Increased tappable area for user/community labels in post-cells
• Tapping the stats section of a post cell now opens the post
• Improved success rate for losing YouTube videos
• Improved image-loading behavior in the post feed
• Hopefully, TOTP tokens will now be auto-filled when using a password manager to login

v0.1.5

• Added compact post option (work in progress)
• Added a network monitor that will show when no network connection is available
• Added inbox paging, inboxes will now load more content when scrolling
• Added placeholder icon for users avatars in search view
• Updated Search and Profile styling to match that of the post feed (spacer between cells)
• Improved performance when scrolling posts in search and profile views
• UI now shows when you've reached the end of a feed, or the feed is empty when browsing posts

v0.1.4

• Fixed account switcher positioning issue that occurred after switching accounts
• Added Guest Mode to the account switcher

v0.1.3

• Added option to disable video scrubbing gesture
• Added upload history tracking to manage media uploads (No UI Yet)
• Fixed a crash that could occur while parsing username links
• Added image upload support to the markdown editor
• Provided default icons for communities without an icon
• Added BOT badge to post cells for showing bot accounts
• Community cells in the search tab now show more statistics
• Added option to override the interface style (light/dark)
• Added some experimental swiftUI views