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this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Sync for Lemmy
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Sync is doing fine but I honestly don't understand the hype.
There is a dozen apps out there since the reddit migration with some having nearly the same features but without ads, without subscriptions and regular updates ever since.
Off the top of my head: Voyager, Summit, Connect, Thunder, Liftoff.
I keep hearing people mention all of these apps, and I've tried most of them (I'm on Android, and besides Sync, I currently have Liftoff, Connect and Thunder installed; I had Jerboa and the Voyager PWA, but removed the former due to bugs and the latter due to slow startup).
Honestly, none of them feel as polished as Sync. They do offer pretty much the same functionality, sometimes even better, but the UI and UX of Sync is just smoother.
Maybe it's just that I'm used to Sync after using it for reddit for many years, but in any case I thought I'd put this out there in case others were feeling puzzled as I was from all the mentions of other apps suggesting they can replace Sync without any quality loss. Sure, maybe not functionality-wise, but to me the user experience is just as important.
Edit: for reference, here's an album of screenshots comparing the same views in Sync, Liftoff, Connect and Thunder (yeah, I'm a fan of the compact list view): https://imgur.com/a/MvawTYm — there are pros and cons to all of these, but IMO the sync experience is the one with the best design and UX polish. Happy to hear your thoughts, though!
This x1000
I tried basically every app going on Android and they are all either buggy as fuck, unintuitive or janky in some other way. The user experience was just horrible.
I really do not understand all the people claiming Sync has an equivalent. It just does not right now in terms of a polished user experience.
Honestly it's just Linux vs Windows kinda situation to me. No matter how many nerds tell me Linux can do everything the same and is more customisable and better, it's just a worse user experience. Windows is far more intuitive and polished and there is a reason it has the market share it does.
Yeah, but I'm using Sync exactly because I'm using Linux lol. Much more convenient and polished, and there's no such thing as intuitive UI, there's only UI you got used to.
That's not true. Intuitive UI design is absolutely a thing, and something people spend a lot of time, effort and money researching and implementing...
Never seen an intuitive UI. Been on Linux since 2004, was working on company-provided Macbook and struggled with UI, was very happy to abandon it. I have Windows as a gaming OS, dual boot configuration with my Arch Linux, and let me tell you I game on Windows like twice a month, absurdity of this OS makes me not want to game.
For me the most intuitive UI is the one I built on Linux, with I3wm and a lot of custom scripts. This surely will not be intuitive for you.
Universally intuitive UI is a myth.
edit: UI designers, using right tools, definitely can and do make better UI, UI better suited for target audience, better working right out of the box. Keyword is "target audience". One can't say Windows UI is more intuitive, it's UI a lot of people got used to. "Intuitive" has very different meaning AFAIK.
Intuitive means it makes sense instinctively. Touchscreens with pinch to zoom are a good example of intuitive UI design. Children can pick up an iPad and learn to use it quickly with no instruction. That's intuitive design and of course it exists.
Is your custom script heavy system more efficient for your workflow? I'm sure, but picking it up out of the box it's going to be horrible for a new user, they will be slow on it, it'll be unenjoyable and annoying. That's my point really, every Lemmy app I tried was unenjoyable and annoying. Sync on the other hand I have never used before, but out of the box? It works, I'm happy browsing with zero issues or errors or struggles within minutes. That's intuitive design.
So Sync's UI is good for you, you have used applications that make you kinda got used to Sync. It's called anecdotal evidence I think, when you make conclusions based in single test case. I'm happy for you. I like Sync UI best of all too, I tried multiple Reddit clients and Sync was most convenient for me.
I mean I can't afford to fund a study to prove my point sure so it's anecdotal and speculation, but I really do think if you give a new user who is unfamiliar with any kind of app a choice of all apps available, they would get on immediately better with sync. It's a smoother experience, less likely to run into bugs or errors, and it has WAY better error handling if you do etc.
Funny comparison to make considering that these are Android apps, running on the Linux kernel.
The comparison serves only to highlight the importance of presentation and consistency. Those other apps might get there some day, but they're not focused on a polished experience from the outset. Thats sync and it's legacy. Experience and ease first. Honestly feels closer to an iOS app. And thats a very good thing.
I never said Linux isn't capable of being the smoothest and most intuitive experience. Just that its not
I really wanted to stick with voyager, but just switching between inbox and posts was just a crap shoot. Sometimes it would switch, sometimes it was acting as a back button... Then you'd lose your scroll position in posts... Just very alpha feeling
That said I hope they keep going! Competition is always good!
It may be the 11 years of using it on Reddit, but Sync already works how I expect it to. Just things like hitting the preview takes you to the link instead of the comments, or how tapping the community name on a link takes you to the community. Every other app just doesn't behave as intuitively or efficiently.
Thanks for this, it's really helpful. Confirms that the Sync interface just feels right to me.
Some of us have been using Sync for 10+ years, we're not exactly looking for something new
This is the case for me. I've seen more comments and posts than ever in Lemmy because of Sync
For real. Sync works incredibly well. The developer is responsive to the community. I know how to use it. I don't want to learn a new app.
Honestly because IMO no other app compares to it in terms of polish, UX and smoothness; that's not just out of lemmy apps either that's phone apps in general.
And tbh that shouldn't be too surprising, It's got 10 years of development behind it and the dev works on it full time—no other lemmy app has that currently
The Wikipedia app comes dangerously close believe it or not.
You know what, I'll definitely agree with that
Sync is already the most visually and ergonomically polished by far. That's not all that matters, but it's very important for me and many others.
Every single one of those apps except Summit and Voyager has janky scrolling, which is easy to notice on a 90Hz screen.
Sync has not dropped a single frame since my install on all my devices.
And every one of them has just one tiny annoyance I can't let go.
E.g.
Connect: only left hand voting. I use my phone almost always in one hand and it's my right hand.
Liftoff: no auto-hide the bottom (quite big) bar.
Summit: post actions only available when in the post. (Like save or share.)
So stuff like this. They are not the end of the world, but y'know: better without them.
And the stutter on most of them. Annoying as hell.
Interestingly I quit using Voyager because the scrolling wasn't high frame rate, but maybe that was because I was using it on Firefox? Thunder is smooth for me.
Yeah that's a Firefox issue, you need to enforce 90Hz on Firefox using adb to make it work
For me it's the force of habit. I'm already used to the UI, I know where everything is, what to expect, I can navigate it very quickly and set it exactly how I want.
All the features I'm used to like comment drafts or the comment navigation bar (jump between top-level comments easily) are right where I'm used to. Doing the Android "back" gesture from the left works like it should, I don't have to confirm exit with a button, all these small things.
It's also very polished, for example I encountered two issues with Connect:
it didn't handle internet dropping out (e.g. temporary loss of mobile signal) well - it just kept failing on the retry button even after connectivity was restored, had to restart it
the search in the sidebar didn't show all the matching communities, this seems to have improved recently
It's just how many of us are used to things. Particularly the collapsed comments along with rainbow colors depending on the nested comments. I'm sure one of those has it, but Sync has all my patterns. And it was as simple as importing my sync for reddit config to get all my options as they were. Worthwhile wait, and I don't mind supporting a Dev. Especially when there is a one time ad-free payment option, which is all I need.
It didn't even occur to me that the Sync for Reddit settings would import to Sync for Lemmy. That's awesome! Thank you.
In terms of smoothness- 90hz screen only voyager and summit has that
Came here to say, memmy is crazy good and the developer is dropping revs faster than people can post bugs.
I like Thunder best
Connect for me
thunder is better than sync idk what everyone likes about sync just seems like a copy of all the other apps except they have to groundwork for ads and monetization
how revolutionary
Sync for Reddit was around for a long time, about 10 years. It came out before the official Reddit app, which on release had a design that was heavily influenced by Sync at the time, and still to this day has some design elements it took from Sync.
Sync for Lemmy may be a "new" app, but it inherited almost everything from Sync for Reddit. If anything, others are copying Sync, not the other way around. What you see in sync for Lemmy is the result of about 10 years of development and refinement from the reddit days being ported over to work with Lemmy.
My problem with Thunder is how inconsistent the Slide to go back vs. using the back button is. There's a lot of inconsistency in the UI decisions.