Hey everyone, I just wanted to provide a big announcement that Thunder is now available on Google Play Store!
The direct link to the Google Play Store listing is here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hjiangsu.thunder
As far as general releases go, I’ll try to keep all the different versions in sync (GitHub, Google Play, TestFlight) to minimize the amount of confusion.
I would like to give a big thanks to @CTalvio for helping with the graphics and screenshots that you see on the listing page, and others for contributing to the overall project! This would not be possible without all their help. Thunder is a community-driven project, and all your contributions towards the project help shape the way it is. If you are interested in contributing to Thunder in any way, feel free to reach out!
If you would like to join in on the conversation for Thunder, we have a Matrix page here: https://matrix.to/#/#thunderapp:matrix.org
If you would like to check out the GitHub page, it is linked here: https://github.com/thunder-app/thunder
By far the best Lemmy app. Really reminiscent of Relay for Reddit, which coincidentally was by far the best Reddit app IMHO.
Keep up the awesome work!
Also a former Relay user, I was really bummed it wasn’t among the apps making a jump over to Lemmy. A lot less bummed now because I legitimately picked up app development just so I could help turn Thunder into my next Relay. Look forward to doubletap slide to zoom in the image viewer, sliding items away completely to reveal buttons, comment context view when opening a link to a certain one, and more stuff that Relay demonstrated as must have’s for me.
Agreed on all those features! Would be awesome to get in-app video playing like Relay had too
I came from Relay too. Thunder and Jerboa are similar to relay in my opinion. Thunder just needs a few more features it will be perfect.
Just downloaded Thunder and I definitely agree with the Relay comparison.
I think it will be my go-to Lemmy app because of that.
Just installed. Love to have a hide feature that could be implemented with gesture/swiping as well.
Thunder had been my favorite Lemmy app for a while now. I’ve tried others and some have a lot of potential, but Thunder is the app that does most things the way I like it. Congrats on the launch!
This and Connect seems to be the best ones currently for Android from the limited amount of time I’ve been using them…
At first glance, the design overall is more Material You in Thunder, however it lacks support of high refresh rate
I’m @CTalvio
This is how my recent weeks have been:
Is there a reason why in so many apps (this was the case on many Reddit apps as well) the thumbnails never fill out the entire actual available space in compact mode? Why do they have to be so extra tiny when there’s so much empty space left?
It’s compact mode. The images are compact.
The images don’t have to be more compact than the minimum available space of the rows. That’s stupid.
I read your comment wrong
Edit: I just checked and the images are tiny, i’d file a bug report
Brilliant news. Will it be getting an fdroid release?
Brilliant news. Will it be getting a lemmy version?
(t’was on fdroid the entire time)
Is this sarcastic? I’m confused.
Yes, though I just noticed it is on the IzzyOnDroid repo, the “fast track” fdroid repo. You may not have it enabled if you didn’t see it in fdroid
It really is on F-Droid. Has been for a while. Sync and search.
Great work, really thank you guys! I’d been keeping an eye on this app because it looked very promising in beta. It’s one of the best Lemmy clients I’ve ever tried and I love it being open source. I hope I could contribute, but I have a quite limited Flutter knowledge.
You dont have to know code to contribute. Answer questions when you see them, report issues, etc. I am a screen reader user and make it my goal to find anything that makes using a screen reader in the app more difficult and reporting it. I suspect thunder is one of the most accessible lemmy apps because of all my reports and the devs fixing them.
For some reason bitwarden will not auto fill for my accounts.
It’s a bit weird. Try backing out after unlocking instead of picking an account, and then auto-fill from the keyboard.
This is what I eventually got to for it to fill.
I really like this app. Still missing some much needed features and more optimizations, but very nice.
If I originally downloaded and installed from GitHub, do I need to install the Google Play instance for Thunder to automatically update?
You would have to uninstall and reinstall it if you want to switch between the GitHub and Play Store versions!
Thank you! I will do that, only because I like the automatic updates vs pulling it from GitHub for each new version
Yay! This is hands down the best lemmy app so far.
Thunder might be better now with updates but when I sampled all the apps I settled on Liftoff as the best one.
I like Connect :)
I am using connect right now so they’ll beg to tell me what’s better about thunder
Thunder is picking up momentum. We’re not quite approaching feature parity, but there’s more and more progress being shown off in the dev chat.
I think Thunder has the best design of all of the Android apps that I’ve tried. The only feature that is missing now that I’ve identified as personally wanting is being able to search Lemmy posts and comments (rather than just communities). I’m cool with being patient as more features are added, because overall, Thunder is so enjoyable to use.
Better search is on my list, so I’ll eventually get to that unless someone else on the team does first. Working on sidebars atm.
I mean… It’s like the second app for android, I think? Competition is not that fierce.
I count at least four: Thunder, Connect, Jerboa, Liftoff. Five, if you count Voyager (PWA).
There’s also Slide, which is a fork of the old Reddit app. But, that’s not very active. There’s quite a few actually. There was a thread with a bunch linked but I don’t remember where it was posted.
Edit: Found it!
And Summit
Voyager is straight up the best one rn imo
Just wish it were a native app, it lags a bit on my low end phone sometimes
Pinned Megathread here about all the apps that exist and are in developement !lemmyapps@lemmy.world
Awesome! Will the beta chanel still be through GitHub or are you also setting up beta testing through play store?
For now, beta/pre-release stuff will be on GitHub until I figure out how to do it through Play Store as well. My thoughts:
GitHub:
- Will always be here for those who don’t want to use Google Play Services/TestFlight for preference reasons
Google Play:
- General releases in parity with the general releases on GitHub/TestFlight
- Beta stream for the pre-releases, in parity with pre-releases on GitHub
TestFlight:
- For now, it’ll only be for general releases since there’s no way to easily create “streams” for people who want to be in the beta stream
- Eventually, if possible, get it on the App Store for general releases, and then TestFlight will be for beta pre-releases
I’m an iOS only user but I have to say I just love the amount of solid Lemmy apps that we already have available!
Excellent looking app!
Thunder is on testflight.
@darklightxi is an iOS user himself.
Oh nice, I figured this was Android only!
He has said that he’d like to eventually publish to the app store as well, it’s just tha the play store is just so much easier to get an app onto.
It’s not showing up on the Play Store when I search for “lemmy”, “thunder”, “thunder lemmy”, or even “thunder for lemmy.”
I wonder if there’s some metadata you can add to help with search visibility? Or does it just take time for their search to index the app?
Hmm, that’s weird because it’s now not showing up for me either, even though I installed it that way an hour ago. 🤔
Did you install it via a direct link like posted above though?
No, I searched for “thunder for lemmy” and it was the first result.
