Android

The moment I tried Sync for Lemmy I have this feeling of closure, like I finally can make peace with the fact that I'm leaving Reddit behind for good after using it for 13 years (8 years of those on Sync). The only thing that top this is the first time I saw federation in action where people from various lemmy, kbin and mastodon instances talk to each other in the same thread and deciding to jump ship on the spot.

Sync is extremely polished. The rest have had their issues for a while.

I am using Sync, and I paid for a year of it. A year from now, I'll evaluate and maybe pick something else. Do I care if it costs a tiny bit of $ for a solid app experience that performs better than the rest, because it has dedicated development resources? Nope. Having read the details on what data is collected, do I have privacy concerns? Nope. Do I think folks have gone a little over the top about certain things? Yes. Bad enough having to leave reddit without making it even more complicated.

I was using Jerboa for the first month. It's good, functional. However, with all due respect to the penguin people, it felt like working on Linux. Just a bit too utilitarian and function focused.

Yesterday I installed Sync and it was like switching to Windows/OSX. So much more polish, much more pleasant experience.

On Reddit I was using BaconReader - and had no idea Sync looked (and felt) this good. Great UX, though still has some ways to go. The comment font size when typing is super tiny!

I found all of the prior Lemmy apps to either be missing something, clunky, or buggy. The one I liked most was Voyager/Wefwef, but even then it was missing stuff.

Now Sync is in beta and has bugs, but thanks to past development from Reddit it's already so much more polished than all the others, my Lemmy usage has gone up considerably, I've barely touched Reddit today. It does have ads, but they aren't visible when using DNS Adblocking.

I've tried Connect, Liftoff, Thunder, Voyager, and Infinity. It's just bugs galore. The back button will take you to the wrong activity, comments won't post (due to the app not the instance), some instances or accounts won't load, and a laundry list of UI or functionality bugs. Liftoff gave me the fewest issues of all of them, apart from using Lemmy in the browser.

But Sync really is polished, and the experience is night and day. I'm a big FOSS proponent, but I don't think it's wrong for a developer to want to make money when their income source suddenly disappears and they need to pay bills (and region-specific pricing is coming soon). The level of customizability, spit and polish in the other apps doesn't even come close. I'm sure they'll get there eventually, but I think it's a mistake to drive away passionate developers who want to help Lemmy succeed.

I've given pretty much every app or browser front-end a fair shake at this point, and I'm gladly choosing Sync for now.

Sync has always been a superior UI/UX to anything else.

And I'm happy to pay $20 for the developers work. Ads would barely pay him anything anyway.

I feel like all you lemmings are getting way too hung up on the whole ads = spyware thing. It's not the app that's the issue, it's the ad platforms - and those platforms are how he makes money. Don't like it? Pay $20 for a lifetime without ads.

Sync is good because it's a full time job for the Dev. That means the guy needs money to survive. I'm more than happy to help towards that, so I can have a better experience.

I used sync for Reddit for a loooong time, $20 is nothing compared to the value I've gotten out of it.

I prefer Connect.

Sync is far superior to the other apps so far, even with some features missing in the beta. I was using Liftoff, which is good, but not even close to the polish of sync.

Been using sync for years now and it's just a great app.

It runs so smooth, very clean looking, easy to read, highly customizable, tablet mode, dev is always updating and adding in requested features from the users.

Small features that make the app stand out like sharing a setting from the settings menu that will take you straight to it:

Settings shortcut: Comment options > Display navigation bar

Used connect and liftoff before and on Reddit RiF but for me sync is just the best.

Infinity, because it's the best FOSS option in my opinion

Infinity is AWESOME although I'm not quite sure how to get automatic updates for it yet.

I'm using Jerboba until things shake out more.

My favourite client is Curl.

#archbtw

Using Jerboa, feels a lot like RIF.

Connect or Liftoff

I'm using Sync, while waiting for Boost.

Jerboa is open source and has been working perfectly fine for me.

Voyager.

Infinity because it is free and open-source

I'm using Infinity :D

I love me some sync... the app is so high quality, and it's the first release, in reddit it was constantly updated and fresh. ljd is a legend

I will stick with infinity for 99% but im going to check our voyager when it finally comes as a native app

I use Sync because it's just what I'm used to. I've been using it for more than 3 years, but I've also used Jerboa, Thunder, Liftoff, Lemotiff, Connect and Voyager.

Here's what I think about those:

Jerboa is good, maybe a bit laggy and things take a bit to load, but overall good. Nothing that stands out.

Thunder is very good, but I've been unable to reply DMs and comments from my notifications, I'd have to go to the browser or use another app to reply. I'm almost sure it'll get fixed in the future.

Connect is very, very good, but, and it's a huge BUT for me, every time I'm commenting and I want to change part of my comment, I click on the part I want to add or erase more text but instead of doing that it selects the text from where I was to where I clicked, and it happens with every comment and DM, to fix it I have to copy the whole thing, go back to the post, paste the comment again and keep on writing. I stopped using it.

Liftoff is very good, but I don't like that when I collapse a comment it says "comment collapsed, tap to expand" (that's it, it's just nit picking, everything else is good), I still sometimes use the app.

Lemotiff I can't log in but the idea/design is good.

Voyager is one of the best but sometimes it jumps to random parts of the timeline, I also prefer having an app not a PAW (or was it PWA? I don't remember the correct term)

Lemmur says my instance doesn't exist so I can't even try it.

Haven't used infinity or Boost yet, just downloaded Sync and it just works perfectly.

Infinity, the king is reclaiming its thrown, and huge thanks to the fevelopper who forked it.

Sync, I know there's some people complaining about the prices. But I rooted my phone and use a system adblocker.

I bounce between all the ad free apps, but please don't forget to donate to your instance admins if they have a link set up. Especially if you paid to remove ads. Y'all got them deep pockets, show some love.

Connect :D

Sync > Thunder > Jeroba

Edit: I'm keeping the spelling lol

I'm using connect, it's simple and just works. It was rough when I first came over but had been fine for a while now. I'm assuming they worked out some of the bugs they had at the beginning.

Sync is more polished, but Infinity has a much better layout on the Galaxy Fold. I'm using Infinity for now, but hoping it improves quickly.

Neither is as good as Reddit Is Fun for foldables, unfortunately. That had a perfect interface IMO. Much better than Apollo too.

One thing that really bothers me on Infinity is that I see no way to show the parent of a comment that I am looking at. It only times you the option to show all other comments, but not the parent specifically.