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Reddit for iOS and Android

234 points by alexis 10y ago

skrowl 10y ago
The official Reddit app for Android is pretty feature poor so far. It only offers a default theme and a dark theme. It only offers a default layout and a compact layout. No customization beyond that. No option to always view links in external browser and Imgur links aren't opened in the Imgur app (etc for other sites). It's nice that they've finally released an official app, but to use this instead of Bacon Reader / Relay / Slide / Reddit is Fun / etc would be a large step back in functionality.
- greenspot 10y ago
  Not sure. Today, I was installing all your mentioned Reddit clients and deinstalling them right afterwards. While the first impression is good and they seem to offer lots of features they lack one important thing (at least the free versions)—to save a sub in a favorite list which is easy to access. Something which is essential and they don't offer it or hide it away in the paid version. Something btw which the Now Reddit client on Android does for free. I think another Reddit client is definitely no breaking news but that the existing ones are so much superior? Not really.
  - eitally 10y ago
    You should try Relay -- it's quite good, and even lets you manage multiple accounts.
  - spacehunt 10y ago
    I've never paid for Reddit is Fun, and I have easy access to subscribed subs and multireddits through the sidebar. Do these not do what you want?
  - Desustorm 10y ago
    Sync for reddit is very good! I have very few issues with it and it has the feature you mentioned out of the box.
  - petepete 10y ago
    Reddit Sync does this very well, it's accessible from the left sidebar. http://i.imgur.com/GK5xBcA.png http://i.imgur.com/GK5xBcA.png
CardenB 10y ago
Looks great on iOS, but the feature set is lacking. I'll probably stick to using Antenna for now. Good to see they haven't just been ignoring Alien Blue for no reason, though.
zamalek 10y ago
> This item isn't available in your country. It's an app for Reddit. Go figure. I'll be sticking with Sync (Android), which doesn't have this bewildering region restriction, has tons of features and faithfully follows Material.
- alexis 10y ago
  We're now available in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia. Launching apps in other countries requires a little bit more diligence than just making a website available globally. I'm sorry it's not available in your country -- we're planning on getting it out everywhere.
  - basch 10y ago
    what are the chances of getting a stripped down interface that just says "title, subreddit, comment count, upvotes" in one line (maybe 2)? No colors or upvote buttons, or toolbars. maybe a single button (not a hamburger, probably an arrow) that presents all the menu options. swipe to collapse comments is also a pretty crucial feature.
  - Mithaldu 10y ago
    Your failure here is not that you are not making it available, but that you failed to communicate this limit in ability. The flow for me was "hey neat", click link to reddit page, "ok, this looks good", click link to google play store, click green Install button, 'none of your devices are compatible', "what in the ever-loving ...?", go to hn comments, "oh goddamn, not again". That could've been MUCH shorter and MUCH less confusing if the title up here ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11447273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11447273 ) said: "Announcing Reddit for iOS and Android in NA/UK/AUS" and at the very least having a text below the appstore/playstore buttons stating this. Have some empathy please. Edit: Going "Hello World!" in the "What's New" section also doesn't help matters.
    - werid 10y ago
      https://twitter.com/reddit/status/718067681438539778 https://twitter.com/reddit/status/718067681438539778 "Reddit anywhere with our app for iPhone & Android" Replies are filled with people from countries where they can't get it.
greenspot 10y ago
Reddit is one of my most used website. I am preferring many subs over established forums, eg r/apple, r/ipad over Macrumors, sometimes r/programming over HN, very often r/javascript and so on. I welcome Reddit's new native clients. Who knows, maybe we see soon some more and significant innovations than just being another Reddit client which employs the standard API.
- alexis 10y ago
  Thank you, greenspot! The team has been working very hard on mobile and we're aiming for this to be the first of many updates. Meet some of the folks behind it and hear how we're thinking about it: https://youtu.be/6IWMbdAuy1M https://youtu.be/6IWMbdAuy1M
  - BobCat 10y ago
    https://youtu.be/6IWMbdAuy1M?t=198 https://youtu.be/6IWMbdAuy1M?t=198
ihuman 10y ago
With the purchase of AlienBlue over a year ago, I had high expectations for an official Reddit app. Seeing how hyped Jase (the developer behind AlienBlue) was about this app, I was expecting a less buggy version of AB with more features. Instead, what we got was a reddit app with less features. Here are my main issues with it: 1. No moderator support. With AlienBlue, we could read all of the Mod Mail, and remove posts, With Reddit.app, I can read some of my mod mail (some message chains are missing), and I can't remove anything. 2. No Comment flairs 3. Can't see which posts I've read already 4. The in-app browser isn't as good as the older AlienBlue one, and doesn't have an optimized view for imgur/direct links 5. No casual/favorite subreddit groups 6. Most of the settings in AlienBlue are not in Reddit.app 7. No swiping gestures except for swiping from the left edge to go back. Commenters in /r/AlienBlue found more issues with it than what I've found so far. While I have hope for the future of Reddit.app, I'll be sticking with AlienBlue for now.
- morley 10y ago
  This new app got released minutes ago. It's not going to be perfect out of the gate. Give it some time.
  - minimaxir 10y ago
    This app is not a one-week MVP of a side project released by a developer with zero resources. It is, however, an app with legitimate substitutes, so an incumbent must be equal or significantly greater.
    - apetresc 10y ago
      I hope there continue to be legitimate substitutes. I still remember when Twitter decided to add the key limit to their API shortly after releasing their official mobile clients, for the sake of "maintaining a consistent user experience" or something like that.
      - odinduty 10y ago
        >shortly after releasing their official mobile clients ???
minimaxir 10y ago
There's a good checklist of app features, per /r/AlienBlue: https://np.reddit.com/r/AlienBlue/comments/4dqajk/new_reddit_app_discussion_thread/ https://np.reddit.com/r/AlienBlue/comments/4dqajk/new_reddit... The big feature omission is no iPad support, which I am legitimately curious why they would leave that out. If you are looking for a iOS Reddit client, I strongly recommend Antenna, which is amazing on an iPad as well due to Split View.
- spdustin 10y ago
  Second this. Antenna is my go-to client on iPad
- samstave 10y ago
  Prolly due to having limited dev/qa resources? (complete guess)
  - allsystemsgo 10y ago
    Dev? I wouldn't think so. Autolayout and size classes handle most of that.
    - mlex 10y ago
      They do if you want an interface that's similar but scaled up. Alien Blue for iPad was different though in that you had multiple columns open at once, which probably did require more dev time to handle. I'm thinking they wanted a more tailored experience for iPad and didn't have time to design/implement it. Too bad though.
- shostack 10y ago
  How are 3rd party Reddit apps on the security front? If I login through Antenna, is there any way to guarantee that they don't have full access to my Reddit identity and credentials? Or is that the risk of going with them?
  - kuschku 10y ago
jcastro 10y ago
The last progressive web thread on HN mentioned this app for HN: https://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/ https://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/ and I love it. Does anyone know of something similar for Reddit?
- ihuman 10y ago
  If you're looking for a mobile webapp for reddit, they have https://m.reddit.com/ https://m.reddit.com/
  - mintplant 10y ago
    There's also https://i.reddit.com https://i.reddit.com. It sports an older look but I find it just works a lot better than the new mobile site.
- cheeaun 10y ago
  There's http://reedditapp.com/about/ http://reedditapp.com/about/
Slippery_John 10y ago
I thought the whole point of not doing mobile apps themselves was because it's a waste of engineering time since there's a massive community that will do the work for them. I would much rather see them focus on making the site better.
- BobCat 10y ago
  It's another case of "Not Invented Here" syndrome. It's a good indicator of bad management. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here
- kuschku 10y ago
  But with third party apps they can't do user tracking or showing ads everywhere.
woodhouse 10y ago
Instacrashes on my OnePlus One
asd 10y ago
I think I now know why Reddit was so generous with all of the Gold. The app, although very fast and responsive on iOS, lacks many of the features that Alien Blue had. I could find zero integrations with any third party services. The cool thing about Alien Blue is, if I was a stoplight and didn't have time to read a linked article, I'd just add it to Pinboard and get back to it later. Another major failing - there isn't an option to always open links in your browser of choice. At least use a Safari View Controller, for pete's sake. EDIT: It looks like I can choose to share a link with the ... menu option. I can then share to my Pinner "Quick Save" option to save to Pinboard. Not sure how I missed it.
- basch 10y ago
  would you prefer homebrew integration or standard ones through the ios share apis?
  - asd 10y ago
    Ideally, the iOS share apis. I use the Pinner app and they have two ways to save to pinboard via the share apis- a "quick pin" method where you click once and forget it (what I usually do) and the regular way, where you can add tags, etc.
    - basch 10y ago
      k good. i never really liked that alien blue was sort of half and half. and the save picture button was broken, but the ios share save picture worked.
- jscheel 10y ago
  I know Alien Blue is feature-packed, but I have always found it difficult to use.
  - spike021 10y ago
    I think the GUI wasn't that great, but the features were quite usable and helpful.
sschueller 10y ago
What I don't understand is why is reddit putting so much effort in their own apps now when there are very good 3rd party apps available? Is the end goal to take control of mobile and close down the API so they can shove ads down peoples throats? It didn't work out well for twitter...
- robwilliams 10y ago
  Well everyone is using the official Twitter app so I think it did. No one cares about API availability except a very small subset of developers.
- shostack 10y ago
  Most likely yes. This seems to be the Twitter approach all over again. Although you'd think the failings of that would be pretty obvious from a strategic standpoint, particularly for someone with as much business-savvy as Sam. So odds are they either have an idea for how to do it differently, or they think their platform is so much better and entrenched than Twitter that the same bad strategy could still be successful for them.
zeveb 10y ago
Would it have hurt them to include a single phone running Android in their announcement? I've no confidence that this won't be some sort of half-assed browser-based app which doesn't follow Android's conventions.
- DDickson 10y ago
  It's not browser based, but they definitely used a loose interpretation of Google's Material Design. What stands out to me most is their Card design and use of icons in the drawer layout.
lelininkas 10y ago
HTC One M8 not eligible for install! What?
dang 10y ago
Reddit is penalized on HN (sorry for the shock), but this is obviously real news, so we've taken off the penalty and restored a few hours of clock time to this post.
- ilyanep 10y ago
  Interesting! Is that a hard-coded penalty or is there some sort of calculated weighted penalty per-domain based on some criteria? If the former, is it just due to mod experience of poor-quality/just link submissions?
  - dang 10y ago
    Not sure what you mean by hard-coded penalty but there are two classes of sites (called lightweight and midweight) whose submissions get penalized by default because of too many lightweight stories in the past. Not necessarily bad content, just content that doesn't fit the HN guidelines. Reddit's great of course—it's just that sometimes (well, usually maybe) HN isn't the best vessel for its greatness. Most major media websites are in one of these categories. Moderators take the penalties off when we see a solid submission, and there are other ways that the software interprets community input to mean that an article might be better than usual and lifts the penalty. We were nervous about making heavier use of this technique, but there were so many complaints about fluff articles making the front page that we had to do something, and banning major sites that sometimes produce excellent-for-HN articles wasn't an option. By now the current approach has been in place for a couple of years and it has worked out pretty well. Those complaints will never go away but they're at a more manageable level.
    - ilyanep 10y ago
      Thanks for the response! What I meant by "hard-coded" penalty, is there is a list of domains somewhere and "reddit.com" is on it. I was wondering if that was the case, or if these domains were discovered automatically somehow. Based on your description, it sounds like it's the former and then occasionally the penalty is negated automatically?
compumike 10y ago
I believe that if you look at this moment a year from now, it will be a major inflection point, bringing reddit to a much larger audience. We're all tech savvy on this site and may not mind monkeying with the previous third-party apps, but there's a much wider audience that will be willing to use a well-supported first-party app.
- ProAm 10y ago
  The problem is no one really uses apps anymore. Especially to view a website when you already have a mobile app that does that for you (your browser). This feature is 3 years too late in my mind to be a needle mover.
  - sn0v 10y ago
    > The problem is no one really uses apps anymore This might be a bit of a generalization. People tend to use apps for websites they visit very frequently (eg more than 2-3x a day). Even more so when the mobile version of the website is rife with bugs and/or limitations. Reddit's mobile site is passable but the third party apps blow it out of the water on both iOS and Android.
    - ProAm 10y ago
      Just basing it on research Ive seen [1][2][3] and my own personal use. If the reddit application is feature poor, there isnt a reason to not use the web version, maybe with an extension or two to make it awesome. [1] http://qz.com/253618/most-smartphone-users-download-zero-apps-per-month/ http://qz.com/253618/most-smartphone-users-download-zero-app... [2] http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/mobile/most-people-download-zero-apps-month-n186866 http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/mobile/most-people-download-zero... [3] http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/22/consumers-spend-85-of-time-on-smartphones-in-apps-but-only-5-apps-see-heavy-use/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/22/consumers-spend-85-of-time-...
    - freehunter 10y ago
      Supporting anecdote: my wife won't use Windows Phone or Windows tablets because the Pinterest app apparently sucks on those platforms. Counter anecdote: I refuse to use the Facebook app on iOS because it takes like 500mb and the website works about 90% the same.
rcarmo 10y ago
Hmm. Still can't see it in the Portuguese iOS App Store. This sort of thing happens time and again when someone fails to click the right options when publishing an app (typically in the US) :)
booop 10y ago
Wow, out for only a few hours and they're not pulling any punches with the criticism and suggestions in the comments. Maybe in a few months we'll end up with one damn fine app. On a sidenote, one obviously bad thing is the overuse of referral URLs and tracking redirects for every link.
shirro 10y ago
I am disappointed in the Android client so far. There are several very featureful alternatives such as Relay. I don't think it is a bad thing for Reddit to offer a free, bare minimum client. But after the Twitter experience I hope we don't see a gradual exclusion of the competition.
Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
In addition to the other problems raised, it's frustrating that while Reddit itself continues to be open source [1] with significant contributions from the open source community [2], neither of these new apps are (and with no signs of that changing). [1] https://github.com/reddit/reddit https://github.com/reddit/reddit [2] https://github.com/reddit/reddit/graphs/contributors https://github.com/reddit/reddit/graphs/contributors
- ilyanep 10y ago
  I'd honestly be happy enough with an open-sourced AB that the community took back on.
- ywecur 10y ago
  Indeed. An ugly move IMO.
- bsimpson 10y ago
  Their new website is open-source and updated frequently: https://github.com/reddit/reddit-mobile https://github.com/reddit/reddit-mobile
  - devcpp 10y ago
    Promotion websites and server-side engines are nice (even though we know Reddit Inc runs a slightly modified version), but malicious client-side apps can be significantly more harmful by abusing permissions. That's why I'm very careful what I install on my phone: unlike Reddit posts, I have virtually no control over what the software does.
verganileonardo 10y ago
I use Relay For Reddit and it works really well. Better than The mobile website and newest mobile official app.
verganileonardo 10y ago
I use Relay For Reddit and it works really well. Better than The mobile website and newest mobile official app.
tma-1 10y ago
Narwhal is one of the most underrated Reddit apps, so much better than AB and obviously superior to this new app.
- norea-armozel 10y ago
  Yeah, after trying all the apps on iOS I prefer Narwhal the most. I'm not sure why. It's similar to Reddit is fun in terms of the subreddit list which why I guess I like it. The other apps seem to not make it easier to manage your multis or subreddits.
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balladeer 10y ago
I don't use Reddit actively anymore (just when a link leads me to the site) but the last time used it actively and even today when I have to access the site on mobile my favourite app is Reddit Is Fun.[1] Its free version[2] is as good. I just bought paid one[2] to support the fantastic app. They also have the source code of an old version[4] available online, though the app's current source is not open sourced I think. I like this app for its: - Simplicity - Speed - No nonsense approach to serving content [1] https://www.talklittle.com/reddit-is-fun/ https://www.talklittle.com/reddit-is-fun/ [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu.android.reddit&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu.... [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu.android.redditdonation https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu.... [4] https://github.com/talklittle/reddit-is-fun https://github.com/talklittle/reddit-is-fun
free2rhyme214 10y ago
Reddit for iOS sends shared links to the desktop version of Reddit instead of the mobile version ==
thanatropism 10y ago
Ah, reddit.
NamPNQ 10y ago
Anyone have apk file, it's not available in my country.
- anonova 10y ago
  https://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/?id=com.reddit.frontpage https://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/?id=com.reddit.frontpa...
xufi 10y ago
Finally. Horray. Knew when AB was being bought. They were doing something
sandebert 10y ago
Somewhat related: Does someone know what happened to the official AMA app for Android? It can't be found on the Play store anymore, but I still have it installed. I tried googling for info about it disappearing but came up empty. (It's a bit broken nowadays, questions and answers aren't loading. But I can still see the AMAs.)
raylus 10y ago
what's up with their site?
- raylus 10y ago
  http://imgur.com/a/Wtp5l http://imgur.com/a/Wtp5l
abvishek 10y ago
not available in India (:
- kgdinesh 10y ago
  i know, right?
edoloughlin 10y ago
"This item cannot be installed in your country". Wat?
kevindeasis 10y ago
That's a neat website. Is there any tutorial/documentation on how to design beautiful websites like that.Asides from looking at the source: https://www.reddit.com/mobile/site/style.css https://www.reddit.com/mobile/site/style.css
- mindstreamer 10y ago
  a beautiful broken website... the first animation completely obscures the text.
boyce 10y ago
No-one has mentioned it here but this app appears to me to be an important milestone for Reddit. They're now hosting content themselves. An announcement in /r/modnews tells mods to whitelist Reddit's new image hosting domain. This is probably not good news for imgur. https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/4drl3j/moderators_ireddituploadscom_is_legitimate_you/ https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/4drl3j/moderators_...
jedrek 10y ago
My favorite part of this app is how they only released it in three countries, because nothing says "front page of the internet more" than a good ol' geo-lock.
- quarterto 10y ago
  This was explained in the original announcement thread. It'd be easy for a bunch of countries to turn round to Apple/Google and say "we don't want this app in our country", especially given the... breadth of Reddit's content. They're rolling out slowly to reduce the amount of firefighting they have to do. https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4dqxgt/reddit_mobile_apps/d1th4uf https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4dqxgt/reddi...
  - NotOscarWilde 10y ago
    How often do EU countries do that? African countries? South American countries (except maybe Brazil)? As somebody from an excluded country (in the EU) that has zero history of app censorship, this rings quite hollow to me. In fact it is almost insulting, given that you bundle some freedom-loving countries in one bag with Russia and China.
modinfo 10y ago
Available only od US Store...
max_ 10y ago
what i the world were they waiting for?
BugsBunnySan 10y ago
since reddit works fine in smart phone's webbrowsers, why we even need an app?
datagramm 10y ago
that webpage makes me seasick
insulanian 10y ago
Why is this app not available in Germany? I can access reddit in the browser, but not install the app. WTF???
kevincox 10y ago
I just wish they would serve the mobile site on the same domain. It's way too much work to modify the URL to get to the mobile site. I don't want to need an app to read news.
pkstn 10y ago
Not available in my country (Finland) :'(

234 points by alexis 10y ago

The official Reddit app for Android is pretty feature poor so far. It only offers a default theme and a dark theme. It only offers a default layout and a compact layout. No customization beyond that. No option to always view links in external browser and Imgur links aren't opened in the Imgur app (etc for other sites). It's nice that they've finally released an official app, but to use this instead of Bacon Reader / Relay / Slide / Reddit is Fun / etc would be a large step back in functionality.

greenspot 10y ago
Not sure. Today, I was installing all your mentioned Reddit clients and deinstalling them right afterwards. While the first impression is good and they seem to offer lots of features they lack one important thing (at least the free versions)—to save a sub in a favorite list which is easy to access. Something which is essential and they don't offer it or hide it away in the paid version. Something btw which the Now Reddit client on Android does for free. I think another Reddit client is definitely no breaking news but that the existing ones are so much superior? Not really.
- eitally 10y ago
  You should try Relay -- it's quite good, and even lets you manage multiple accounts.
- spacehunt 10y ago
  I've never paid for Reddit is Fun, and I have easy access to subscribed subs and multireddits through the sidebar. Do these not do what you want?
- Desustorm 10y ago
  Sync for reddit is very good! I have very few issues with it and it has the feature you mentioned out of the box.
- petepete 10y ago
  Reddit Sync does this very well, it's accessible from the left sidebar. http://i.imgur.com/GK5xBcA.png http://i.imgur.com/GK5xBcA.png

CardenB 10y ago

Looks great on iOS, but the feature set is lacking. I'll probably stick to using Antenna for now. Good to see they haven't just been ignoring Alien Blue for no reason, though.

zamalek 10y ago

> This item isn't available in your country. It's an app for Reddit. Go figure. I'll be sticking with Sync (Android), which doesn't have this bewildering region restriction, has tons of features and faithfully follows Material.

alexis 10y ago
We're now available in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia. Launching apps in other countries requires a little bit more diligence than just making a website available globally. I'm sorry it's not available in your country -- we're planning on getting it out everywhere.
- basch 10y ago
  what are the chances of getting a stripped down interface that just says "title, subreddit, comment count, upvotes" in one line (maybe 2)? No colors or upvote buttons, or toolbars. maybe a single button (not a hamburger, probably an arrow) that presents all the menu options. swipe to collapse comments is also a pretty crucial feature.
- Mithaldu 10y ago
  Your failure here is not that you are not making it available, but that you failed to communicate this limit in ability. The flow for me was "hey neat", click link to reddit page, "ok, this looks good", click link to google play store, click green Install button, 'none of your devices are compatible', "what in the ever-loving ...?", go to hn comments, "oh goddamn, not again". That could've been MUCH shorter and MUCH less confusing if the title up here ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11447273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11447273 ) said: "Announcing Reddit for iOS and Android in NA/UK/AUS" and at the very least having a text below the appstore/playstore buttons stating this. Have some empathy please. Edit: Going "Hello World!" in the "What's New" section also doesn't help matters.
  - werid 10y ago
    https://twitter.com/reddit/status/718067681438539778 https://twitter.com/reddit/status/718067681438539778 "Reddit anywhere with our app for iPhone & Android" Replies are filled with people from countries where they can't get it.

greenspot 10y ago

Reddit is one of my most used website. I am preferring many subs over established forums, eg r/apple, r/ipad over Macrumors, sometimes r/programming over HN, very often r/javascript and so on. I welcome Reddit's new native clients. Who knows, maybe we see soon some more and significant innovations than just being another Reddit client which employs the standard API.

alexis 10y ago
Thank you, greenspot! The team has been working very hard on mobile and we're aiming for this to be the first of many updates. Meet some of the folks behind it and hear how we're thinking about it: https://youtu.be/6IWMbdAuy1M https://youtu.be/6IWMbdAuy1M
- BobCat 10y ago
  https://youtu.be/6IWMbdAuy1M?t=198 https://youtu.be/6IWMbdAuy1M?t=198

ihuman 10y ago

With the purchase of AlienBlue over a year ago, I had high expectations for an official Reddit app. Seeing how hyped Jase (the developer behind AlienBlue) was about this app, I was expecting a less buggy version of AB with more features. Instead, what we got was a reddit app with less features. Here are my main issues with it: 1. No moderator support. With AlienBlue, we could read all of the Mod Mail, and remove posts, With Reddit.app, I can read some of my mod mail (some message chains are missing), and I can't remove anything. 2. No Comment flairs 3. Can't see which posts I've read already 4. The in-app browser isn't as good as the older AlienBlue one, and doesn't have an optimized view for imgur/direct links 5. No casual/favorite subreddit groups 6. Most of the settings in AlienBlue are not in Reddit.app 7. No swiping gestures except for swiping from the left edge to go back. Commenters in /r/AlienBlue found more issues with it than what I've found so far. While I have hope for the future of Reddit.app, I'll be sticking with AlienBlue for now.

morley 10y ago
This new app got released minutes ago. It's not going to be perfect out of the gate. Give it some time.
- minimaxir 10y ago
  This app is not a one-week MVP of a side project released by a developer with zero resources. It is, however, an app with legitimate substitutes, so an incumbent must be equal or significantly greater.
  - apetresc 10y ago
    I hope there continue to be legitimate substitutes. I still remember when Twitter decided to add the key limit to their API shortly after releasing their official mobile clients, for the sake of "maintaining a consistent user experience" or something like that.
    - odinduty 10y ago
      >shortly after releasing their official mobile clients ???

minimaxir 10y ago

There's a good checklist of app features, per /r/AlienBlue: https://np.reddit.com/r/AlienBlue/comments/4dqajk/new_reddit_app_discussion_thread/ https://np.reddit.com/r/AlienBlue/comments/4dqajk/new_reddit... The big feature omission is no iPad support, which I am legitimately curious why they would leave that out. If you are looking for a iOS Reddit client, I strongly recommend Antenna, which is amazing on an iPad as well due to Split View.

spdustin 10y ago
Second this. Antenna is my go-to client on iPad
samstave 10y ago
Prolly due to having limited dev/qa resources? (complete guess)
- allsystemsgo 10y ago
  Dev? I wouldn't think so. Autolayout and size classes handle most of that.
  - mlex 10y ago
    They do if you want an interface that's similar but scaled up. Alien Blue for iPad was different though in that you had multiple columns open at once, which probably did require more dev time to handle. I'm thinking they wanted a more tailored experience for iPad and didn't have time to design/implement it. Too bad though.
shostack 10y ago
How are 3rd party Reddit apps on the security front? If I login through Antenna, is there any way to guarantee that they don't have full access to my Reddit identity and credentials? Or is that the risk of going with them?
- kuschku 10y ago

jcastro 10y ago

The last progressive web thread on HN mentioned this app for HN: https://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/ https://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/ and I love it. Does anyone know of something similar for Reddit?

ihuman 10y ago
If you're looking for a mobile webapp for reddit, they have https://m.reddit.com/ https://m.reddit.com/
- mintplant 10y ago
  There's also https://i.reddit.com https://i.reddit.com. It sports an older look but I find it just works a lot better than the new mobile site.
cheeaun 10y ago
There's http://reedditapp.com/about/ http://reedditapp.com/about/

Slippery_John 10y ago

I thought the whole point of not doing mobile apps themselves was because it's a waste of engineering time since there's a massive community that will do the work for them. I would much rather see them focus on making the site better.

BobCat 10y ago
It's another case of "Not Invented Here" syndrome. It's a good indicator of bad management. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here
kuschku 10y ago
But with third party apps they can't do user tracking or showing ads everywhere.

woodhouse 10y ago

Instacrashes on my OnePlus One

asd 10y ago

I think I now know why Reddit was so generous with all of the Gold. The app, although very fast and responsive on iOS, lacks many of the features that Alien Blue had. I could find zero integrations with any third party services. The cool thing about Alien Blue is, if I was a stoplight and didn't have time to read a linked article, I'd just add it to Pinboard and get back to it later. Another major failing - there isn't an option to always open links in your browser of choice. At least use a Safari View Controller, for pete's sake. EDIT: It looks like I can choose to share a link with the ... menu option. I can then share to my Pinner "Quick Save" option to save to Pinboard. Not sure how I missed it.

basch 10y ago
would you prefer homebrew integration or standard ones through the ios share apis?
- asd 10y ago
  Ideally, the iOS share apis. I use the Pinner app and they have two ways to save to pinboard via the share apis- a "quick pin" method where you click once and forget it (what I usually do) and the regular way, where you can add tags, etc.
  - basch 10y ago
    k good. i never really liked that alien blue was sort of half and half. and the save picture button was broken, but the ios share save picture worked.
jscheel 10y ago
I know Alien Blue is feature-packed, but I have always found it difficult to use.
- spike021 10y ago
  I think the GUI wasn't that great, but the features were quite usable and helpful.

sschueller 10y ago

What I don't understand is why is reddit putting so much effort in their own apps now when there are very good 3rd party apps available? Is the end goal to take control of mobile and close down the API so they can shove ads down peoples throats? It didn't work out well for twitter...

robwilliams 10y ago
Well everyone is using the official Twitter app so I think it did. No one cares about API availability except a very small subset of developers.
shostack 10y ago
Most likely yes. This seems to be the Twitter approach all over again. Although you'd think the failings of that would be pretty obvious from a strategic standpoint, particularly for someone with as much business-savvy as Sam. So odds are they either have an idea for how to do it differently, or they think their platform is so much better and entrenched than Twitter that the same bad strategy could still be successful for them.

zeveb 10y ago

Would it have hurt them to include a single phone running Android in their announcement? I've no confidence that this won't be some sort of half-assed browser-based app which doesn't follow Android's conventions.

DDickson 10y ago
It's not browser based, but they definitely used a loose interpretation of Google's Material Design. What stands out to me most is their Card design and use of icons in the drawer layout.

lelininkas 10y ago

HTC One M8 not eligible for install! What?

dang 10y ago

Reddit is penalized on HN (sorry for the shock), but this is obviously real news, so we've taken off the penalty and restored a few hours of clock time to this post.

ilyanep 10y ago
Interesting! Is that a hard-coded penalty or is there some sort of calculated weighted penalty per-domain based on some criteria? If the former, is it just due to mod experience of poor-quality/just link submissions?
- dang 10y ago
  Not sure what you mean by hard-coded penalty but there are two classes of sites (called lightweight and midweight) whose submissions get penalized by default because of too many lightweight stories in the past. Not necessarily bad content, just content that doesn't fit the HN guidelines. Reddit's great of course—it's just that sometimes (well, usually maybe) HN isn't the best vessel for its greatness. Most major media websites are in one of these categories. Moderators take the penalties off when we see a solid submission, and there are other ways that the software interprets community input to mean that an article might be better than usual and lifts the penalty. We were nervous about making heavier use of this technique, but there were so many complaints about fluff articles making the front page that we had to do something, and banning major sites that sometimes produce excellent-for-HN articles wasn't an option. By now the current approach has been in place for a couple of years and it has worked out pretty well. Those complaints will never go away but they're at a more manageable level.
  - ilyanep 10y ago
    Thanks for the response! What I meant by "hard-coded" penalty, is there is a list of domains somewhere and "reddit.com" is on it. I was wondering if that was the case, or if these domains were discovered automatically somehow. Based on your description, it sounds like it's the former and then occasionally the penalty is negated automatically?

compumike 10y ago

I believe that if you look at this moment a year from now, it will be a major inflection point, bringing reddit to a much larger audience. We're all tech savvy on this site and may not mind monkeying with the previous third-party apps, but there's a much wider audience that will be willing to use a well-supported first-party app.

ProAm 10y ago
The problem is no one really uses apps anymore. Especially to view a website when you already have a mobile app that does that for you (your browser). This feature is 3 years too late in my mind to be a needle mover.
- sn0v 10y ago
  > The problem is no one really uses apps anymore This might be a bit of a generalization. People tend to use apps for websites they visit very frequently (eg more than 2-3x a day). Even more so when the mobile version of the website is rife with bugs and/or limitations. Reddit's mobile site is passable but the third party apps blow it out of the water on both iOS and Android.
  - ProAm 10y ago
    Just basing it on research Ive seen [1][2][3] and my own personal use. If the reddit application is feature poor, there isnt a reason to not use the web version, maybe with an extension or two to make it awesome. [1] http://qz.com/253618/most-smartphone-users-download-zero-apps-per-month/ http://qz.com/253618/most-smartphone-users-download-zero-app... [2] http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/mobile/most-people-download-zero-apps-month-n186866 http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/mobile/most-people-download-zero... [3] http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/22/consumers-spend-85-of-time-on-smartphones-in-apps-but-only-5-apps-see-heavy-use/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/22/consumers-spend-85-of-time-...
  - freehunter 10y ago
    Supporting anecdote: my wife won't use Windows Phone or Windows tablets because the Pinterest app apparently sucks on those platforms. Counter anecdote: I refuse to use the Facebook app on iOS because it takes like 500mb and the website works about 90% the same.

rcarmo 10y ago

Hmm. Still can't see it in the Portuguese iOS App Store. This sort of thing happens time and again when someone fails to click the right options when publishing an app (typically in the US) :)

booop 10y ago

Wow, out for only a few hours and they're not pulling any punches with the criticism and suggestions in the comments. Maybe in a few months we'll end up with one damn fine app. On a sidenote, one obviously bad thing is the overuse of referral URLs and tracking redirects for every link.

shirro 10y ago

I am disappointed in the Android client so far. There are several very featureful alternatives such as Relay. I don't think it is a bad thing for Reddit to offer a free, bare minimum client. But after the Twitter experience I hope we don't see a gradual exclusion of the competition.

Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago

In addition to the other problems raised, it's frustrating that while Reddit itself continues to be open source [1] with significant contributions from the open source community [2], neither of these new apps are (and with no signs of that changing). [1] https://github.com/reddit/reddit https://github.com/reddit/reddit [2] https://github.com/reddit/reddit/graphs/contributors https://github.com/reddit/reddit/graphs/contributors

ilyanep 10y ago
I'd honestly be happy enough with an open-sourced AB that the community took back on.
ywecur 10y ago
Indeed. An ugly move IMO.
bsimpson 10y ago
Their new website is open-source and updated frequently: https://github.com/reddit/reddit-mobile https://github.com/reddit/reddit-mobile
- devcpp 10y ago
  Promotion websites and server-side engines are nice (even though we know Reddit Inc runs a slightly modified version), but malicious client-side apps can be significantly more harmful by abusing permissions. That's why I'm very careful what I install on my phone: unlike Reddit posts, I have virtually no control over what the software does.

verganileonardo 10y ago

I use Relay For Reddit and it works really well. Better than The mobile website and newest mobile official app.

verganileonardo 10y ago

I use Relay For Reddit and it works really well. Better than The mobile website and newest mobile official app.

tma-1 10y ago

Narwhal is one of the most underrated Reddit apps, so much better than AB and obviously superior to this new app.

norea-armozel 10y ago
Yeah, after trying all the apps on iOS I prefer Narwhal the most. I'm not sure why. It's similar to Reddit is fun in terms of the subreddit list which why I guess I like it. The other apps seem to not make it easier to manage your multis or subreddits.

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balladeer 10y ago

I don't use Reddit actively anymore (just when a link leads me to the site) but the last time used it actively and even today when I have to access the site on mobile my favourite app is Reddit Is Fun.[1] Its free version[2] is as good. I just bought paid one[2] to support the fantastic app. They also have the source code of an old version[4] available online, though the app's current source is not open sourced I think. I like this app for its: - Simplicity - Speed - No nonsense approach to serving content [1] https://www.talklittle.com/reddit-is-fun/ https://www.talklittle.com/reddit-is-fun/ [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu.android.reddit&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu.... [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu.android.redditdonation https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewshu.... [4] https://github.com/talklittle/reddit-is-fun https://github.com/talklittle/reddit-is-fun

free2rhyme214 10y ago

Reddit for iOS sends shared links to the desktop version of Reddit instead of the mobile version ==

thanatropism 10y ago

Ah, reddit.

NamPNQ 10y ago

Anyone have apk file, it's not available in my country.

anonova 10y ago
https://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/?id=com.reddit.frontpage https://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/?id=com.reddit.frontpa...

xufi 10y ago

Finally. Horray. Knew when AB was being bought. They were doing something

sandebert 10y ago

Somewhat related: Does someone know what happened to the official AMA app for Android? It can't be found on the Play store anymore, but I still have it installed. I tried googling for info about it disappearing but came up empty. (It's a bit broken nowadays, questions and answers aren't loading. But I can still see the AMAs.)

raylus 10y ago

what's up with their site?

raylus 10y ago
http://imgur.com/a/Wtp5l http://imgur.com/a/Wtp5l

abvishek 10y ago

not available in India (:

kgdinesh 10y ago
i know, right?

edoloughlin 10y ago

"This item cannot be installed in your country". Wat?

kevindeasis 10y ago

That's a neat website. Is there any tutorial/documentation on how to design beautiful websites like that.Asides from looking at the source: https://www.reddit.com/mobile/site/style.css https://www.reddit.com/mobile/site/style.css

mindstreamer 10y ago
a beautiful broken website... the first animation completely obscures the text.

boyce 10y ago

No-one has mentioned it here but this app appears to me to be an important milestone for Reddit. They're now hosting content themselves. An announcement in /r/modnews tells mods to whitelist Reddit's new image hosting domain. This is probably not good news for imgur. https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/4drl3j/moderators_ireddituploadscom_is_legitimate_you/ https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/4drl3j/moderators_...

jedrek 10y ago

My favorite part of this app is how they only released it in three countries, because nothing says "front page of the internet more" than a good ol' geo-lock.

quarterto 10y ago
This was explained in the original announcement thread. It'd be easy for a bunch of countries to turn round to Apple/Google and say "we don't want this app in our country", especially given the... breadth of Reddit's content. They're rolling out slowly to reduce the amount of firefighting they have to do. https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4dqxgt/reddit_mobile_apps/d1th4uf https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4dqxgt/reddi...
- NotOscarWilde 10y ago
  How often do EU countries do that? African countries? South American countries (except maybe Brazil)? As somebody from an excluded country (in the EU) that has zero history of app censorship, this rings quite hollow to me. In fact it is almost insulting, given that you bundle some freedom-loving countries in one bag with Russia and China.

modinfo 10y ago

Available only od US Store...

max_ 10y ago

what i the world were they waiting for?

BugsBunnySan 10y ago

since reddit works fine in smart phone's webbrowsers, why we even need an app?

datagramm 10y ago

that webpage makes me seasick

insulanian 10y ago

Why is this app not available in Germany? I can access reddit in the browser, but not install the app. WTF???

kevincox 10y ago

I just wish they would serve the mobile site on the same domain. It's way too much work to modify the URL to get to the mobile site. I don't want to need an app to read news.

pkstn 10y ago

Not available in my country (Finland) :'(