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.

Download Avelon (Testflight)

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!

  • Pea666@lemmy.worldEnglish
    25·
    1 year ago

    Looks good so far. I’m really missing the swipe to up/downvote, reply, collaps, report options in compact mode. Any plans for something like that?

    • evgiz@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      17·
      1 year ago

      Definitely, I’ve implemented a few swipe actions already, but they’re still a bit buggy so I need to rework the gestures before it’s ready to release.

      Edit: The latest release now has customizable swipe gestures!

    • outdated_belated@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      Collapse seems to work for me. Otherwise, agreed. It’s much snappier than Memmy (what I’ve been using mostly thus far), on the upside!

      Edit: also would like an option to see both upvote and downvote count

      • Pea666@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Collapse on tap works just fine for me as well. I was talking about the swiping gestures mostly.

        • outdated_belated@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          Oh I see, you meant swipe actions in general were missing; “collapse” is one of several possible swipe actions, so that’s why you mentioned it.

  • Thaurin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    1 year ago

    So apparently Avelon doesn’t support iOS 15. So that’s a no go for me. If you aren’t specifically targeting iOS 16+ API’s consider targeting lower version of IOS. It’s why I’ll keep using Memmy.

    • fer0n@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Probably a dumb question, but I have to ask anyways: can you not upgrade or do you choose not to?

    • DynamoSunshirtSandals@possumpat.ioEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      My OG SE is stuck on 15, was disappointed to see this as well. Memmy has some minor performance issues on this phone so I was psyched to try something truly native.

  • Mereo@lemmy.caEnglish
    13·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • AgentCorgi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    1 year ago

    Commenting from Avelon. App is very smooth! I don’t know if it’s just me, having that subscriptions on the leftmost side on the nav bar kinda threw me off, was expecting posts there haha

  • bdonvr@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    11·
    1 year ago

    And here I thought nothing was going to pull me away from Voyager/WefWef

    This is damn good

  • bisq@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    1 year ago

    Does it have Apollo’s full width swipe back? That’s the one thing I have yet to see implemented with any other app ever. As someone who just broke their wrist it’d be a damn godsend.

    • evgiz@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      I really want this too actually, but I honestly have no idea how Apollo did this. Might have to write the whole iOS-navigation-UI-stuff from scratch which is a bit much. I considered adding a floating back button of some kind - not quite the same, but better with a broken wrist hopefully.

      • lightsecond@programming.devEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        Here you go. It was a custom implementation but i don’t know enough about iOS development to say how difficult it would be to implement.

      • evgiz@lemm.eeOPEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        In Apollo there was a setting that allowed you to swipe to go back from anywhere, not just from the edge of the screen. Super nice if you have a large phone since you don’t have to stretch your fingers as much.

  • Kronusdark@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    Hey, one of the Mlem devs here, Welcome to the club. Be advised we are hitting issues getting on the AppStore, apparently Apple says that we are “exploiting the popularity of the Lemmy trademark”. You might have to deal with that once you submit… Good Luck, Your app is looking good. ❤️

      • wavebeam@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        The latest episode of ATP had a big rant about how fucking stupid app review is. It honestly seems like it’s being done by ChatGPT or something it’s so fucking stupid.

  • keider@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    1 year ago

    Just downloaded it and the interface is stunning. The app is fluid and smooth, I’m surprised it’s so polished. Nice job!

    • evgiz@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Really glad to hear that, worked hard on polishing the core stuff and making the app as smooth as possible. Thanks!

  • rezz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • fer0n@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      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

  • yesbutnobutyesbutno@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • JoumanaKayrouz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    You can’t sort by Top: 1 hour, 6 Hour, 12 Hour. That’s a no go from me, because this site needs that. Sorting by Hot is broken.