evgiz

Hi everyone,

For the past weeks I've been working hard on a push notification service for Avelon that is finally ready for open beta! This feature involves a completely new cloud service that automatically notifies you whenever someone replies to your posts/comments, and it simultaneously supports multiple accounts you might have. Although the app itself doesn't change much with this new Testflight build, there's a lot of stuff happening in the background to make push notifications happen.

My goal with the open beta is to test the service with many more users to see how it scales under heavier load. I'm not sure how powerful of a server it'll need - and as many of you might know cloud compute isn't exactly cheap. The service isn't quite done yet, so while I keep working on it you should expect downtime and occasionally delayed notifications.

How to join

• Download the latest 1.0.8 testflight build
• Open Avelon and go to Settings/Notifications
• Enable notifications for the accounts you wanna use

When you're testing, I'm especially interested in verifying that you're not getting any duplicate notifications and that you're receiving notifications for all the accounts you've enabled. Also, please share any bugs you might find or thoughts about how to improve things!

Notifications should still work if you go back to the App Store version without deleting the app, but notifications won't open the post and the notification badge will probably not behave properly. This is just a result of the previous version not supporting notifications yet, and will ofc be resolved with the official release!

Technical stuff for those interested

The push notification service is written in Rust, which is a pretty awesome language. This is my first time using it for a complete solution, but I must say I'm already sold on the features the language offers. Ensuring performance and security was a breeze compared to many other languages I've used. For those unaware, Lemmy itself is also written in Rust.

I've prioritized making sure the service scales well with many users, whilst not being heavier than necessary on the Lemmy servers. All traffic from the Avelon service is properly tagged to make it easy for instance owners to verify that the traffic is legit, and not some kind of DOS attack. If the traffic turns out to be a bit heavy for any instance owners, please don't hesitate to contact me to discuss how I can tweak the service to be less demanding on your server.

With the addition of push notifications I'll also update the privacy badge on the App Store to include (opt-in) collection of device identifiers. This is just a practical necessity to know which device to send notifications to. Apple continuously shuffles these random IDs, and they are the only ones who know who each one belongs to. The Avelon service simply sends a notification with the ID to Apple, and they figure out which device to forward it to. And of course, if you disable push notifications in the app all your info is immediately deleted from the notification server.

Thanks for reading & helping me test!

Hi everyone,

First of all, thanks so much for everyone using Avelon and everyone who've decided to support the development by upgrading, it really means a lot! All the feedback in the post following the release of pro was definitely insightful. If you're unaware, I recommend reading the post as well as my reply here.

I've decided to push towards a 1.0.7 release a bit earlier than planned to address everyone's feedback. My goal with these changes is to provide a wider range of features in a more basic free variant, whilst offering more extensive customization options and an even better experience as an optional upgrade. This way everyone gets to try out more stuff for free, and if you want the full capabilities you can feel confident that the features work as you'd expect. This setup is more in line with other apps as well as the feedback from all of you.

In addition to tweaks to the free tier, the update contains a new text selection tool, a new dark theme, the ability to lock the app with FaceID, more filtering options + lots of QOL improvements and bug fixes.

Full Changelog

Adjustments to the free/pro tiers

• Added a basic jump button to the free version
  • The smart jump button with extra settings and customisation remains pro
• Everyone now has access to a limited number of custom filters for free
  • The pro version includes unlimited filters and new filtering options
• The maximum number of profiles in the free tier is now three (guest + 2 custom accounts)
  • This change does not affect any accounts you've already added
  • The pro version has unlimited accounts
• Added a free 7 day trial option to enable everyone test out the pro features
• Added various descriptions to pro settings to more clearly explain what they do
• Replaced the groups “pro” tag in subscriptions with a link to a more details about the feature

New pro features

• Added ability to lock the app with FaceID
• Added new dark theme ‘Hacker man’
• Added option to place the smart jump button anywhere, not just around the edges
• Added ability to filter independently on either the post title or post body

New features, QOL improvements and bug fixes

• Added tool to select text from comments & posts
• Added ability to delete your own posts
• Added share option to links and comments
• Improved prioritizations for swipe gestures
  • This should prevent accidental downvotes when you’re trying to swipe back!
• Fixed issue where editing markdown links would sometimes show weird characters and symbols
• Limited the maximum number of smart link previews in posts
  • This should keep “link aggregation” posts from being unnecessarily long
• Fixed issue where adding accounts would sometimes fail
• Fixed issue where swipe-to-go-forward could sometimes break after tapping the navbar to go back
• Removed option to report/block yourself
• Lots of minor bug fixes and improvements

Hey everyone! For more than a month now I've been working hard on the biggest update to Avelon so far. Today I'm really excited to announce that it's finally out on the App Store! The update includes a whole bunch of cool new features for people who want that little extra and QOL improvements all-around.

Some of the highlights of this update include:

• Community groups
• App themes
• Right-edge swipe-to-go-forward gesture
• Custom app icons
• GIF/video scrubbing
• Advanced filtering tools, including keywords & instances
• Fixes to a bunch of iOS 17 related issues
• New markdown editor tools
• Smart comment jump button
• Ability to manage and clear app cache
• Support for Lemmy 0.19RC
• Lots of bug fixes & improvements all around

I really appreciate everyone who has helped with beta testing during the 1.0.6 cycle, you guys are honestly great!! It's super motivating to hear so many people enjoying the app, and as always I'm open to suggestions and feedback. I hope you find the Pro-model I've landed on a fair/decent way to run the app. I've tried my best to consider all factors like affordability, development, as well as the quality & quantity of what Pro offers - and I hope I've found a good middle ground.

As for the future: for 1.0.7 I'm thinking I'm gonna focus primarily on performance, stability & bug fixes, but I'll probably throw in some more QOL features as well. Just let me know if you're missing anything or if you find any pesky bugs or nuisances. Hope you enjoy the update!

~~Edit: Seems to be a slight issue with upgrading to pro, working on it 😅~~

Edit: Fixed!

It's about time to get some custom icons for Avelon, so I'm hosting this chill little competition to pick the very first one!

To join, simply reply to this post with your icon suggestion. The highest upvoted image by the end of this week will be added to the app as the very first community icon. Anyone can join - no need for artistic skills!

To keep the competition fair (and Apple-compliant), there's just a feeew rules:

Icon Competition Rules

• One image per comment
  • If you have multiple suggestions, post each in a separate comment
  • Max 3 suggestions per person
• No NSFW/questionable content
  • If the icon is rejected by Apple I'll try the next most upvoted one
• Icons must be original works
  • No brand lookalikes etc. as I don't wanna get in trouble. I need the rights to use it for the app!
• No comment-edits
  • The images people vote on must remain the same from the time you post it

Remember that icons must be squares with no transparency or "drawn" rounded corners. I'll also need a 1024x1024 resolution version if you win!

The competition ends this Sunday (September 24th) at 21:00 UTC (5PM ET)!

Naming Competition

I recommend joining even if you're not a great artist, but if you can't draw and still wanna join there's also a naming competition.

• Reply to any icon with a name suggestion to join
  • No profane/nsfw names or names longer than a few words
• The highest upvoted name suggestion for the winner will appear underneath the icon in the App!
• The creator of an icon can't also suggest a name - that'd be no fun

Looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with! Good luck!

Hey guys!

Another week and another Avelon update!

The biggest feature in this version is posting (so you can finally post in this community without using the webui!) and a better native GIF player! The feed should also be even more buttery smooth (unless you doomscroll for 2 hours straight, or so I've heard).

Changelog

• Added posting! - Supports link posts, image posts and text posts - Automatic uploading of images to Imgur! - (No way to edit posts just yet)
• Much nicer GIF video player - GIFs can now be paused - GIFs show progress just like videos
• Added pull to refresh inside posts
• Videos with audio now play nicer with background music
• Improved autoplay behavior for videos and GIFs
• Inline images with a name/alias now show the name as well as the image itself
• Improved layout on small devices with large fonts
• Performance improvements (should be even smoother now!)
• Squashed some pesky bugs

If you enjoy the app, consider leaving a review on the app store as it helps out a lot! And tell all your friends plz

Hope you enjoy the update & let me know what you think!

(Posted from Avelon)

Hi everyone!

A new update for Avelon is now out on the app store! This update adds a lot of requested features, including new search functionality, a brand new in-app browser with reader mode, a better video player, user/community instances & lots more. It also fixes all the major bugs reported.

Let me know what you think!

Full Changelog

• Added search!
  • Find posts, users, communities, comments...
  • Supports both filtering & sorting
  • Support for searching inside communities
• Brand new in-app browser
  • Reader-mode support
  • Swipe to dismiss
• Better video player
  • Fixed bug where videos would immediately pause background audio
  • Videos now keep track of where you were if you open a post
  • Hidden mute buttons for videos without sound
  • No more black bars around videos (unless they are too tall to fit on screen!)
• Added option to show community/user instances
• Added bio to profile pages
• Added option to disable haptic feedback
• Added swipe to dismiss for in-app notifications
• Improved quicksearch performance and design (the one shown when tapping the feed title)
• Compact posts now use the same font size as large posts
  • If you preferred the old look, there's a new setting to reduce the compact font size
• The account switcher now shows instances if you have multiple accounts with the same name
• Fixed bug where battery could sometimes drain in the background
• Fixed bug where posts/comments would sometimes get stuck mid-swipe-gesture when you scroll
• Fixed bug where thumbnail position setting wouldn't be saved
• Fixed bug where subscriptions page could sometimes get stuck loading
• Fixed bug where comments would sometimes be at the wrong depth after tapping "show parent comment"
• Fixed bug with image cache where it could grow indefinitely
• Cleaned up context menus a bit
• Improved & cleaned up settings a bit
• Other minor bug fixes & improvements

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/4709002

Hi everyone!

It's been quite the journey, but Avelon is finally on the App Store!

Click here to download!

The app is includes a lot of awesome features requested by the community, including:

• Sleek design that fits right in on iOS & iPadOS
• Highly customizable look & behavior
• Mark read on scroll & hide read posts
• Customizable swipe gestures
• Multiple account support
• Smart link previews in posts and comments
• Support for videos, gifs, photos & other media
• Custom font support
• Write replies with markdown highlighting
• Privacy focused - the app has no tracking of any kind
• Gallery mode + hide bars on scroll = full immersion ... and a lot more!

Screenshots

Here's some cool app store screenshots of the app:

Developing this app has been one of the best development experiences I've had, and I feel very privileged and happy to have been able to contribute to Lemmy in this way. Nothing is more motivating than seeing so many people already enjoying the app and providing suggestions and feedback.

I really hope you enjoy Avelon, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about what everyone thinks. Keep the feedback coming!

Thank you, Sigve Rokenes

Hi everyone!

It's been quite the journey, but Avelon is finally on the App Store!

Click here to download!

The app is includes a lot of awesome features requested by the community, including:

• Sleek design that fits right in on iOS & iPadOS
• Highly customizable look & behavior
• Mark read on scroll & hide read posts
• Customizable swipe gestures
• Multiple account support
• Smart link previews in posts and comments
• Support for videos, gifs, photos & other media
• Custom font support
• Write replies with markdown highlighting
• Privacy focused - the app has no tracking of any kind
• Gallery mode + hide bars on scroll = full immersion ... and a lot more!

Screenshots

Here's some cool app store screenshots of the app:

Developing this app has been one of the best development experiences I've had, and I feel very privileged and happy to have been able to contribute to Lemmy in this way. Nothing is more motivating than seeing so many people already enjoying the app and providing suggestions and feedback.

I really hope you enjoy Avelon, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about what everyone thinks. Keep the feedback coming!

Thank you, Sigve Rokenes

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/4073656

Heyo everyone,

This update brings a few cool new features, most notably:

• Smart link previews
  • Now shown in comments and posts
  • Previews for communities, users and regular links
• Image carousels
  • For posts with lots of images!
• iPad support
• Layout/ui tweaks
• Bug fixes and other improvements

Download on Testflight

Check out this image gallery in the latest build to see how it works:

(just scroll through it!)

I figured (like some other devs) that some iPad support is better than none. Though the layout is not built from the ground up for iPad, it now fills the whole screen and pushes in some content. This is similar to how other apps like Apollo did it, and it looks much nicer than than a scaled up phone app. I haven't had time to test this version much, so please let me know if you discover any weird stuff.

The update also introduces a custom markdown rendering system that enables me to add things like link previews and image carousels. Seems to work pretty well now, but could definitely be some bugs with it for certain posts - if you find any, let me know!

Hope you enjoy the update!

Heyo everyone,

This update brings a few cool new features, most notably:

• Smart link previews
  • Now shown in comments and posts
  • Previews for communities, users and regular links
• Image carousels
  • For posts with lots of images!
• iPad support
• Layout/ui tweaks
• Bug fixes and other improvements

Check out this image gallery in the latest build to see how it works:

(just scroll through it!)

I figured (like some other devs) that some iPad support is better than none. Though the layout is not built from the ground up for iPad, it now fills the whole screen and pushes in some content. This is similar to how other apps like Apollo did it, and it looks much nicer than than a scaled up phone app. I haven't had time to test this version much, so please let me know if you discover any weird stuff.

The update also introduces a custom markdown rendering system that enables me to add things like link previews and image carousels. Seems to work pretty well now, but could definitely be some bugs with it for certain posts - if you find any, let me know!

Hope you enjoy the update!

Hi guys! This update (version 1.0.2 build 12) brings more sweet features, including:

• Custom font support
  • Text size fully customizable!
• Hide read posts
  • Customizable per-feed or you can manually toggle it
• Mark posts read on scroll
• More swipe gestures:
  • Collapse comment thread
  • Mark post as read
• Unfinished replies are now saved as drafts
• Option to delete your embarassing comments
• Body preview for text posts
• More customization options:
  • Community icons & user avatars
  • Large vote buttons
  • Account avatar in bottom tab
  • Hide tab labels (super clean!)
  • Number of lines to show for text posts
• Download/share buttons in the image viewer
• Ellipsis buttons for posts & comments
  • Easily access common options
• Reworked thread rendering system
• Edited comments now has an edited icon
• Profile pages now have avatar images
• Aaaand of course a bunch of various UI improvements & bug fixes

Wanna check it out? Here's the link:

Download on Testflight

For you seasoned testers out there, I'd really like some feedback on any bugs you might find, especially for the mark-read-on-scroll and hide-read-posts feature, but of course everything else as well. Some of these systems were a bit tricky to get right, so I might have introduced a few new bugs here and there.

Hope you enjoy the update, and let me know what you think!