I did a poll and nearly 30% of the people who voted said they used Sync! It’s stayed around that percent the whole time too!
EDIT: Here is the poll I forgot to put this here like five times lol https://strawpoll.com/wby5A21R1yA
After reading this I decided to try it out. Within 5 posts there were ads. No thanks, I’ll stick with Connect.
Edit: I was scrolling everything and replied. I didn’t see this was in the official community. My opinion doesn’t matter in here. I think it’s great that sync is successful and I hope it continues. So yea, keep on keeping on.
It’s a single developer that should be paid for his work. You can easily upgrade to the ad free version for a few bucks…
I don’t disagree that they should make some money for their efforts, but isn’t every client for lemmy made by a single developer?
You’re bothered by the ads? Just pay money for it
lol
Oh no! Someone wants compensation for their labor?? The horror!
How dramatic of you
Do you own slaves? Because you seem to expect everything to be unpaid labour
Where are all my foss slaves at
Does paying for it also remove the trackers, or just the ads?
Both
If it was reasonably priced, I’d agree. But €20 is just insane, especially when the clients it competes with already have no ads for free
Yeah, I agree the ad-free price seems a little steep. I would be much more fine paying 5-10 dollars for it.
I’ve been using systemwide adblock on all my electronics for years now so I forget that in app ads are a thing. But yeah, I see your point. They do offer a one time purchase to remove ads.
Me too, which makes Sync an endless scroll of black squares where ads should be. No thanks, Connect it is.
You might need a better adblocker. With AdGuard I see an empty box from time to time. It’s in the colour of the background.
That still looks horrible
You can pay to hide it completely.
I know, i would pay for it (as I did buying the reddit pro and dev versions) but I don’t consider that it has a fair price and I don’t support subscription models either.
I’m happy hopping between connect and eternity. Boost beta is coming next week as well, so I’m not worried at all.
Scrolling through those black spaces is for sure a bad user experience for me, but to each his own
It’s good we have plenty of options. I’m going to try Boost as well because it’s the app that really hooked me to reddit and in the end it brought me to lemmy. Although Sync has been so great there’s no guarantee I switch. And if Boost released earlier, I probably wouldn’t even tried Sync. Let’s see them compete. Or collaborate. Or both.
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I’d pay 5ish bucks like I did for RIF, but for now ill just donate to Liftoff or other open dev without ad injection needs. Id rather buy Sync outright for a few bucks than have yet another ad platformed app running.
You can do that, I did that
that’s what I see without an adblocker
Maybe it’s this?
I use nextdns and I don’t see any blank squares. It just looks like it’s ad free.
I just ditched apps that show ads so now I don’t need a system wide adblock on my phone or computer. Ublock Origin in Firefox is enough
Suggestions on adblock for system?
Well for my phone I used RethinkDNS before I rooted it again. After rooting I use AdAway.
Use a pihole as your DNS server. Applies to all the devices in your network.
I’ve used sync for almost ten years now… I think it’s worth the fee to remove ads. But sure, there are ads.
It’s strange, both on Sync for Reddit and Sync for Lemmy I’ve always seen the space for ads, but never an actual ad showing in that space. So I just get random black spaces between posts
Sync on reddit also inserts ads in image gallerys i think.
Pretty sure you’re right there, Imgur galleries used to contain ads when viewed in Sync
To each their own, I’ve heard connect is a great app!
from someone that used Connect before Sync was available: it works but feels like someone’s hobby. lots of issues and quirks to work around. Sync is absolutely perfect and I wouldn’t be using lemmy without it.
FWIW you can use list or compact view and it won’t show ads (for now at least). Or just pay the pricey one-time fee to remove ads.
That must be why I’ve never seen ads. I see people bitch about it every time someone mentions Sync, but have literally never seen one. Also the dev is a bad ass. I’ve twice mentioned bugs in release threads and he’s fixed them within a few minutes each time.
$20 really isn’t that bad for ad removal
How much do you pay to remove ads in other apps? Serious question.
There is no other app I use nearly as much or as often as Sync.
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I really enjoy using connect. RIF vibes within lemmy is what im here for
Your opinion matters! Yea the ads suck but if you like how smooth the app is you can get rid of them for a very small fee. But if you are happy with another ap, Connect, more power to ya!
… Izzy?
Watch out, those are fighting words according to the .world admins!
I had to trawl through the cookie settings and manually disable every single option. After that I no longer see any ads, just a space where the ads should be. Annoying that I had to do that though, with Reddit Sync I’d paid a one off fee I think and never saw any ads.
I get it though. I think this app is the devs main job, and the user base is significantly smaller than what it was for Reddit so he’s having to put ways in to recover some income.
If you click “reject” it does the same.
I could be mis-remembering but I think I did click that, but the “legitimate interest” options were still ticked?
Nah reject should reject them all 👍
Sync is the reason I left Reddit and joined Lemmy!
That said, the new pricing options scared me away (you can’t tag users unless you get the super expensive one? Why? I used to be able to on the Reddit app) so I’ve been using Jerboa. It’s not as good as Sync (maybe 80% as good, for my purposes at least), but it’s free and getting better all the time.
I hate this too. Ultra is already worth it without having to lock a basic tagging feature behind it.
Not being able to tag users like I could with the old Sync pro is the main thing that peeves me about it too.
I’vr never used sync on reddit. What’s the workflow of user tagging? Do you get to create a sort of local database of types of accounts?
You could add a little tag beside their username saying whatever you wanted it to. It was great if you found someone to be particularly helpful or knowledgeable about something and then would see them pop up in other places. I remember tagging that guy who really knew vacuums for e.g… Or maybe there’s some other little quirk. I’ve forgotten the username of the dude who didn’t want to shit for three days here on Lemmy and definitely would’ve tagged them as such.
Now that I think about it, I remember seeing how many times I’d upvoted people beside their name too (was that in the app or an RES thing?) which is another nice little feature.
For example, I had a tag labeled “don’t click” for the guy on reddit that had that weird spinning Pikachu hyperlinked on the period at the end of his posts. That tag saved me from wasting so much time.
Connect has user tagging and is free
Interesting, I might have to give that app a try!
If only the developer of Relay had jumped to Lemmy as well.
Thunder is the closest I’ve found to Relay!
A lot of people are mad about sync, because of dumb reasons. but man I just wouldn’t use lemmy without it. I’d rather just not.
Even if I’m not using Sync, I am happy that Lemmy has a great app that draws Reddit users, and a smorgasbord of apps to choose from.
That’s probably why people are mad. I’ve seen lots of comments to the effect of they don’t want Redditors here because they’ll “ruin” Lemmy.
Sync makes it harder for them to gatekeep.
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As a former Redditor myself, I’m not going to be able to answer that question. I do agree, though: users don’t magically come out of nowhere.
I wish i could lot in on sync…
Eventually kbin support will be added
Heck, lemmy is barely supported. The dev just bootstrapped the lemmy API into the reddit app and published it as a beta. We were all happy for that, but it will be a while before it’s a polished lemmy app.
I’m not mad, I just prefer open source software that doesn’t collect my data. What are your favorite things about sync that I can’t get with Jereboa?
If you aren’t the kind of person that says things along the lines of Sync is bad because it has an ad supported version which is optional but it shouldn’t be optional for some reason, then we aren’t talking about you.
to answer your question, sync has a nice and modern user interface that is enjoyable to spend your time with.
Jerboa is… functional, Sync has design and thought behind its interactions and user experience. If that’s okay with you, then that’s fine. But I wasn’t happy there.
Sync is great… Lemmy as a whole? Lots of work to do. Shit is pretty stagnant around here.
Like Lemmy is to Reddit, FOSS clients are to paid alternatives.
The only way I can see to stay clear of business practices I don’t like is to support the FOSS model.
I’m not saying Sync isn’t a good client, or that the dev has anything other than the best intersts of his users in mind, it’s that at any point a decision can be made which you have no control over. Service models for software, for example, very rarely seems to be in the users interests.
Give the FOSS clients a shot, they are also constantly improving!
I installed both Jerboa and Liftoff and ended up on Sync.
I run Linux and 99% foss software on PC and same on phone.
Sync was the only android client I tried that was usable. The keyboard bug in jerboa was maddening
You could try out Eternity. It’s a fork of Infinity for Reddit and has great UI/UX design. Though not using latest M3 design guidelines it’s lightyears ahead of Liftoff, Thunder, etc. imo (which I couldn’t stand personally - tastes vary ofc!)
You can get Eternity from F-droid when you enable the IzzyDroid Repository (included in droid-ify, a much better fdroid client than the official one)
Just installed it. Long time infinity user, now a jerboa user after the switch.
Eternity looks great! The biggest issues I had with other apps is the unchangable Instagram layout where even with a log phone I can see maybe 1 post at a time. Then I also like seeing the community icon to know where the post is.
Compacter comments where you can easily see levels, but it doesn’t load every child comment all the time at once. Both jerboa and eternity are the only FOSS apps that fit that bill 😊
I was similar with Jerboa first then Sync despite being mostly a Bacon user at Reddit. I tried Sync just before the Hoopla started.
I found the sensitive swipe gestures of Jerboa difficult as there was no way to turn them off so when Sync came along it became the default for me as the swipe features don’t cause as issue for me.
I’m android and went through about 1 month of switching between clients to find the one I liked the most. Connect was the winner for me. Multiple accounts, hide read, good default UI amongst a handful of other things
What keyboard bug? I haven’t run into it, and I’ve been using it for months.
idk if the other commenter experienced the same bug as I did, but for me, deleting characters in the comment text box would also delete the last space. So, for example, if I typed “idk if the other commenzr”, and I started deleting the ‘r’ and then ‘z’, the text would turn into "“idk if the othercommen”. It would just keep going like that. Otherwise Jerboa is fantastic though, but it get’s annoying fast.
Yeah that’s the one
If you type a word then backspace to correct spelling it removes the space from the word before it. Basically smooshing everything together
I may have xome later to both, I find either very usable + no ads
it’s that at any point a decision can be made which you have no control over
This is true for any software you didn’t write. Plenty of FOSS software has gone in directions I didn’t like.
The only real difference is whether decision makers have a profit motive. That’s important, but that said, it’s not everything.
And at any time you or someone else who is likewise pissed off can fork the software and put it straight
That’s really not a valid argument for 99% of users. I’m not going to fork FOSS software because I’m an adult and have a full time job. I don’t have the time to learn about the inner workings of the software to fix it. Most users are less tech savvy than myself, anyways. Saying “just fork it and fix it to your liking” to the average person is not realistic.
There’s a big difference which is that clients have minimal lock in. Reddit has a monopoly over the community while you can easily switch clients with little lost.
But switching clients means wasting your time learning a different app and getting used to different UI. I wouldn’t like to switch from Connect at this point even though it’s a bit buggy so I think client does matter a lot. Reddit APIcalypse was all about clients and if I didn’t care about the client I would still use Reddit with RedReader. Or if I cared even less I would use Reddit app.
FOSS doesn’t solve the need to occasionally switch clients. FOSS is sometimes abandoned or something better comes along.
But I can always use an older APK, at which point I do have control over the changes. I can even inject custom code if I really want to - some people are still using Sync for Reddit with their own API keys.
And you’re stuck with potential security issues/missing regulatory chages, lack of new features…
Yes, if I choose to stay on a specific version, I’ll be stuck on that version.
And you’re stuck with potential security issues/missing regulatory chages, lack of new features…
But you have the same issue with FOSS apps if they change something I don’t want. If you choose to stay on a specific version, you will also be stuck with potential security issues/missing regulatory changes and a lack of new features.
Jerboa used to hilariously break every time it was updated if your home instance was even a minor-sub-dot version number behind absolute latest. I couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. Connect and Liftoff are both great clients, I just happen to like Sync more. But, I do still keep Liftoff installed beccause it’s got some outstanding diagnostic tools if you are trying to see all pieces of data related to a post or comment.
I’m pretty sure it’s been months since that was an issue on Jerboa. I wouldn’t say Jerboa is rock solid, but it’s my app of choice. However, as a longtime Sync for Reddit user, I’m happy to see Sync gaining traction. The more the merrier!
It may have been rock-solid in the last few months since, but back when they were having their version numbering issues, I was a very new lemmy user and didn’t understand what the problem was (not that I should have had to)- the only thing I knew at the time was that other clients that I’d just learned about somehow didn’t have the same finicky version number problems as jerboa. It kind of wrecked my entire new-lemmy-user experience - especially since (as far as I know) Jerboa is kind of the semi-official client for Lemmy - it doesn’t need to have all the bells and whistles baked into more robust 3rd party clients - it just needs to be rock solid and run reliably as its only job, and it failed.
I have been using jerboa since 3 months ago when I found lemmy. It has worked fin for me!
When Jerboa was having their version number problems, all of Lemmy was having version numbering problems! I couldn’t access certain instances because the version number was incompatible with the version number of the instance I am on, Two-Factor broke on a version upgrade, it was a mess. Lemmy wasn’t really ready for the Reddit exodus, and neither was Jerboa.
When Jerboa was having their version number problems, all of Lemmy was having version numbering problems
Well, not really. This was JUST a problem for Jerboa. There were some other 3rd party apps available for Lemmy and they didn’t suffer from the same problems. In fact, it wasn’t even a technical limitation of Jerboa itself… if you had previously installed and configured Jerboa when the instance version and the jerboa version matched, and then upgraded your jerboa app when your instance didn’t upgrade their version, it magically worked. The problem was when you installed Jerboa fresh and tried connecting it to a slightly outdated instance version - or if you wrecked yourself by clearing your jerboa cache/data folder without realizing that it would behave like it was starting fresh and break. The problem was solely in over-aggressive version checking during Jerboa startup…a total rookie mistake.
That’s about the time that half of all Lemmy users suddenly learned about the availability of some competing apps that didn’t have the same problems.
I’m talking about other version numbering issues that all of Lemmy experienced at that same time. While the one you spoke about was Jerboa specific, I experienced the other issues on the web as well as on Sync. As you pointed out, Jerboa is developed in parallel with Lemmy and it seems like these issues were a blind spot for the developers.
Sync got me hyped for Lemmy, I used it for Reddit for more than a decade.
But, for Lemmy I started to use Connect, and while I was waiting for Sync, Connect became the Lemmy app for me.
Anything sync is missing?
Privacy. Sync includes Google trackers, whereas other apps for lemmy do not. I get it though, gotta make money somehow. Still, I’d rather use something else and donate to the dev on occasion.
The ad free version removes the trackers
Shouldn’t have to pay for something that’s free in every other Lemmy app
Out of a few thousand who responded*.
Well yeah, that’s generally how polls work.
Well it was more like 4-5k and it is most likely a fair representation of overall users, as it was asked in a general community which is one of the largest and the percentage stayed around the same the whole time
I don’t want to be a dick. All I’m saying is running such a poll is tricky as time of day as well as day of the week will impact the results drastically. Add to that the type of audience and then you’ve got massive skew.
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What general community on what instance?
There is no way this poll provides a realistic sentiment thats anything but a pulled out of thin air guess.
Does the poll verbiage differentiate if I have Sync but use Liftoff far more at the moment?
This poll was originally shared in !asklemmy@lemmy.ml then in !voyagerapp@lemmy.world. Given how one of them is one of the 3 largest communities on the Lemmy network and the other is a community for another app, I would say those communities probably aren’t biased. There wasn’t even a link to the poll on this post until seven hours after this post was created, which was after most of the engagement with this post.
The poll asks for which client(s) you mainly use and has the opportunity for multiple, so 25-30ish percent of 4.5k people (1.8k people) voted that Sync is one of their main clients. That doesn’t mean they don’t use multiple, but it does mean it is by far the largest client used by people in general, even if everyone uses multiple (which I do)
How about a link to the polls directly?
What time of day? how long was the poll up?
This is not a well done poll based on the (lack of) details about it. This is just an arbitrary survey of a small microcosm of users. Making statements like ‘25%’ of Lemmy users are using Sync based on this poll, true or not, is a false conclusion from a limited data set.
/waves poor statstical probabilities around like an old man cane
None of these even matter whatsoever but here you go
12pm UTC, it’s been up since Monday
The data set isn’t that limited given the poll was posted in !asklemmy@lemmy.ml, the second-largest community on the lemmy network (depending on where you look)
If you don’t like Sync than just say it, don’t just complain about a poll in a way that isn’t even true. All you’re doing is wasting your and my time instead of actually doing something productive with your life and time
Why would the time of day change what apps people are using? Same with how long the poll was up? Neither of those factors have any relevance to the topic of the poll.
me waiting for boost knowing it will probably never release until next year
Same, dev said end of August, but that didn’t happen. The guy isn’t very fast, but he is a solo dev and the end result is pretty good so it doesn’t bother me that much. I’m enjoying Sync in the meantime.
Sync dev is solo. Just sayin’.
Sync is definitely my main, with Liftoff being my backup QB. Liftoff is last though?? Really? I don’t get that, I think it’s pretty great
There are a lot of results under this you can see at https://strawpoll.com/wby5A21R1yA, I just took a screenshot on my phone and that’s what fit and didn’t feel like doing a really long screenshot lol
Liftoff is pretty great though, I used it as my primary for a while and still use it occasionally
Liftoff still is my preferred option over sync. My only problem with liftoff is I don’t like the way it shows replies within longer comment chains. It’s too cluttered. Sync does a better job there
Sync seems great, but it has three Google trackers included, so I’m not using it. Jerboa, Connect and Voyager are great, but they all have some downsides. My keyboard is weird in Jerboa, Connect does not allow me to sort by subscribed and Voyager’s comment-upvote system is a bit clunky, being hidding behind another tap. Also, Voyager’s UI generally looks like it’s made for iPhone, which is not what I’m looking for. But for the moment I’ll stick with it.
Ad free version removes the trackers
I have the Duck Duck Go app for Android and it has a tracker blocker feature. It has to utilize a local VPN though , so if you use a VPN you can’t use that at the same time. But, the app blocks known trackers for all apps. I love it
Oh man I didn’t realize the problem of Google trackers, I guess it’s time to uninstall it then, even though it’s really slick.
Just downloaded Voyager to give it a try, and there’s an “Androud UI” toggle in the settings
You’re right!
I used Sync with Reddit, so it was a very natural transition for lemmy.
But I also noticed that between it, Connect, and Jerboa, it’s the only one that has smooth scrolling in the comments. Connect and Jerboa are really janky even scrolling comments.
Smooth scrolling makes me feel sick so that is more of a benefit when using Jerboa.
Where did you link the poll? Cause some communities might trend more towards certain apps (ones that migrated from reddit for example).
!asklemmy@lemmy.ml, which according to lemmyverse.net is the biggest community on Lemmy so it shouldn’t have too much bias
Edit: for some reason lemmyverse.net doesn’t show every instance, browse.feddit.de shows it as the third biggest which doesn’t change much but still
You are talking about instance and OP said he’s used the biggest(actually 3rd) community which does not require its users to be from lemmy.ml So I don’t see your point
You do know the difference between communities and instances, right? And you do know how federation works, right? Also, based on where you look, !asklemmy@lemmy.ml is either the largest or one of the three largest communities on lemmy, so I don’t think there’s much bias in there
I’ve got several of these installed and I keep finding myself using liftoff. It’s not perfect, but it let’s me combine my subscriptions from several accounts into one view. I like that a lot & don’t see that option in the other apps.
Oh I liked Liftoff and didn’t even know it had that! I’ll have to check that out!
Anything in particular you like about liftoff?
Seeing as you’re asking this all over the thread, I have a feature request: can we get poll embed? Assuming strawpoll has an API (or if it’s possible on the client side without an API or much of a performance hit)
It allows me to browse an everything feed from multiple accounts.
Therefore for example I could get my beehaw communities in my feed with this account’s too and when I open a post to comment it just pulls and submits from the appropriate account.
So for example if it was a submission from lemmy.world it would be pulled from my sh.itjust.works account and would submit my comments from there but a beehaw post would do the same from my Beehaw account without having to actually manually switch between accounts.
I’m not explaining it well. Just get an alt account that’s defederated from lemmy.world and try for yourself.
The combining of subscriptions i s exactly why I like liftoff as well. Used a couple other clients, but Liftoff seemed the most stable and easy for me.
It’s crazy to me how small the Jereboa usage is. It didn’t collect or share data and has a great interface. What are these other apps giving that makes you want to use them? Genuinely curious on what I’m missing out on.
Give sync a try
You seem biased, ha
^ It’s honestly amazing! (not to say others aren’t, just my personal favorite of the ones I’ve tried)
App seems nice and I have no complaints with it but it’s not FOSS and it has ads. It would be cool if there were easy ways to make revenue off of FOSS that dosen’t rely on donations so I understand why it would be proprietary.
I used Jerboa until Sync came out.
I liked it fine, no specific complaints I guess except that there was a lot of “jank” for lack of a better word. It just behaved weirdly sometimes, would be unstable, and had odd interfaces for certain tasks.
I would not actively recommend against it, but Sync came along and felt like someone refined Jerboa. It was an easy and natural switch.
Yes this is my main complaint too with Jerboa, scrolling just feels sluggy, I tried to look into the issue/source-code, but couldn’t find the source of it. When Sync came out, everything was buttery smooth and I was sold (though I’m not the biggest fan of the interface, maybe I’ll switch to an open-source client again, when there’s a more robust less sluggish client again).
I mostly use Sync but keep Jerboa installed and every so often play with it as well. They are very similar, but Sync feels more fluent and polished, Jerboa has this “Android 2.1” feel to it
Well, “great interface” is debatable. It is decent, but far from being comparable to Sync. It feels like an Android app that hasn’t received a UI update in quite a bunch of years.
I was using Jerboa can’t remember why I switched to liftoff but it is better I think.
I tried Jerboa and Connect after the Red exodus. They were both alright, but it was still too different from the RIF app that I used on Red. Sync really closed the gap, and feels almost indistinguishable from RIF now.
