Hi, Between versions 319 and 343, the app has seen significant improvements in cross-platform federation support (aka PieFed), a more robust alert system, and enhanced link previews.

You can now watch for new content on Communities, Posts, and Persons. When there is a new Post or Comment you will get a notification.

On Piefed instances it will use the native API to get alerts, and on Lemmy instances we poll for updates in the background at the interval you set.

🌟 Big New Additions (319 to 343):

Community Alerts & Watching (v334): A major new feature under Settings > Alerts that allows you to "watch" specific communities, posts, or users to receive notifications. Enhanced Federation Support (PieFed/Mbin): PieFed: Added support for Community Topics, improved parent ID resolution, and better voting/profile handling. Mbin & Fediverse: Added specialized link preview tags for Mbin, Mastodon, and Bluesky to better identify content sources. Major Link Preview Overhaul (v324-v325): Link preview cards are now integrated directly into posts and comments. They now resolve internal links (Settings, Multicommunities) and display titles/icons for Lemmy/PieFed users and communities. List Banners (v341): Added new visual banners for the Inbox and Saved pages to improve navigation and consistent look and feel. Sticky Sorting (v320): You can now set and persist specific sort orders on a per-community basis. Sign-In Redesign (v333): The entire Sign-In screen was updated with a fresh, modern design.

Cheers!

MultiCommunities are here!

MultiCommunities are groupings of communities that can span multiple instances. They can be used to make custom views when you are only interested in a specific subset of communities but not the overall Local/Frontpage/All feed.

All of the existing Community Settings should also apply to MultiCommunities such as View Type, Sort, Mark as Read, and so on.

If you'd like to try it out please make sure you're updated to version 239 or above. Please let me know what you think and if there are any features you'd like to see added!

Sharing

All MultiCommunities are fully shareable. Here's the share link to my meme MultiCommunity above (this will only work on version >240): Multicommunity: memes . The format is essentially connect-multi://[multi name]/[community name @ instance]+....

Adding Communities

The overflow options now includes an 'Add to Multi' option. The community banner also has a plus button which will add the Community to a MultiCommunity. If that community already is added instead a minus option will appear here for removing that community.

Don't have Connect Installed? You can find it on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kuroneko.lemmy_connect

Cheers!

Kuro

Hi,

Test

it's been a while since I've done one of these so this will be changes between 150 and 171. I've been focused on resolving image and performance issues mainly in this time but I also added a couple new things too. Youtube links now open in-app (configurable in settings), there's an option to remove special characters from display names which also changes bubble letters into plain letters, search results are now sortable, and mentions now show up correctly in the inbox.

Added

• Tagged comments (person mentions) now show up in the inbox
• Option to control where Youtube links open
• Option to hide special characters in usernames (and transform bubble letters)
• Added sort options to search
• Youtube links now bypass the webview and open directly in app
• Added experimental setting to highlight new comments (defaulted OFF)
• Added back navigation inside web views
• Added scaled / controversial sort options
• Added initial support for Lemmy 0.19

Upgrades

• Upgraded various libraries
• Upgraded Fliutter 3.13 -> 3.16

Fixed

• User Profile comment links on foreign instances now resolve correctly
• Fixed an issue clicking on saved comments from foreign instances
• Fix a flash when expanding images in some scenarios (not in cache)
• Fix a minor flash on user avatars and community icons
• Video Player bar text is now always white
• Fixed an image flash when a cached image is no longer held in memory
• Fix an issue with how I'm calling the Pictrs API on Webp images
• Added a secondary image cache for avatars/icons
• videos now start smaller while loading instead of taking up full height
• Fixed an issue where images could fail to load when clicked
• Fixed comment notifications not showing the correct comment thread
• Smoothed out the image close animation a bit more
• Possibly fixed a bug with clicking comment replies from the inbox
• Fixed a bug with the link handler resolving post card clicks
• When link handler resolution fails now loads posts from the remote instance
• Fixed a comment display error with inline videos
• Fixed a link handler issue where it could fail on posts from different instances
• Fixed an issue with urls similar to Lemmy format being mistaken for a Lemmy instance
• Fixed a crash related to link handler finishing before its transition completed
• Fixed issue with vote actions not refreshing post cache
• Refreshing post list now scrolls to the top
• Fixed an animation flash when expanding images
• Fixed a login issue with instances on v0.19
• Video player now mixs with other audio instead of taking over
• Upgraded various libraries
• Fixed an issue with thumbnails apppearing blurry
• Fixed a bug where links without any protocol prefix would crash
• Increased the cache size from 100 objects to 200

Thank you everyone for all of the support and suggestions, please keep them coming and we'll continue to make Connect the best app for browsing Lemmy!

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi, this update is mostly focused on some performance updates to Image rendering and memory management. I stripped out the old plugin I had doing this and am now handling things a bit more manually. Hopefully this should improve the experience of long scrolling sessions. I did refactor a lot so if you see any bugs here please let me know! Large new additions in this release are URL domain filters, and video zoom. I'm starting work on settings import/export but it's not ready just yet.

Added

• Added URL Domain filters
• Added video zoom (double tap, pinch)
• Added a link icon to posts without thumbnails
• Added None as a comment long press action
• Better handling when proxied comment resolve fails

Fixed

• Fixed voting on posts refreshing the video player
• Fixed some issues with image heights not fitting correctly
• Minor hotfix to change the link icon on posts to be centered and not left aligned
• Improved the list of subscriptions for large lists
• Fixed an issue where images would sometimes not free from memory
• Fixed photo view not expanding
• Fixed a small screen flash on image expand
• improved performance of large images
• All Snackbars now last for 5 seconds
• Fixed markdown not loading in some cases when it should
• URL confirmation prompt now also applies to external links
• Fixed an issue with switching accounts when uing an email to log in
• Fixed an issue with Spoiler tag sometimes not appearing
• shouldInstanceBlockIncludeUsers no longer defaults to on
• Fixed reply swipe gesture
• Improved freeing of memory in some cases for preloaded images
• Fixed comment navigator when showing all comments
• Create comment screen no longer has discard prompt if drafts are enabled

Thank you everyone for all of the support and suggestions, please keep them coming and we'll continue to make Connect the best app for browsing Lemmy!

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi, I've just been responding to feedback and implementing suggestions and release 141 is just that. Large new features are in-app release notes, customization for comment long-press actions, and community filters. Alongside a dozen smaller fixes, additions, and optimizations.

Added

• Added hex input to colour pickers
• Added setting to change comment long press action
• Added option to hide nsfw in main feeds but not inside communities (note currently only applies to 'hide')
• Added sign up button on sign in page
• Added sticky sort (remembers changes to sort)
• Added community filters (filters posts from communities whose name matches a filter)
• Added setting to control notification time Interval (10S to 12H)
• Added share and hide to comment swipe actions
• Added release notes to app startup
• Added setting to control release notes

Fixed

• Fixed table markdown in some scenarios
• Fixed the exit confirmation not showing when the left drawer was disabled
• Fixed issue with jumping to parent comment being offset in comment navigator
• Fixed draft comments loading the wrong comment while editing when you have multiple comments
• Fixed 'View full post' modal not disappearing on click
• Fixed theme setting not persisting
• Some optimizations to how posts are laid out, scrolling should feel smoother
• Small logo tweak

Thank you everyone for all of the support and suggestions, please keep them coming and we'll continue to make Connect the best app for browsing Lemmy!

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi, I wanted to get more into theme and customization improvements but a lot of great feature requests came up and I ended up just implementing those instead. I might need a better system to compile release notes soon as in the past week there have been 11 beta releases and it's a bit tedious to go through each to compile the final release notes. Probably the biggest change in this release is the way back navigation works, hopefully it's now in a state that is more intuitive instead of back activating the drawer menu.

Thank you to everyone that has taken the time to provide feedback and suggestions, even if I haven't had the time to respond I've read them all. It's really appreciated!

Also Connect turns 2 months old on Tuesday. Kind of crazy how quickly that went and how much the app has changed in that short amount of time. Thank you again to everyone that has stuck with me these past 2 months, Connect is as much your app as it is mine.

Changes

• Changed back button behaviour and a swipe gesture to show the menu.
• NSFW blur is now a real blur
• [Post card] Changed the comment icon to go to comments and added an optional 'reply' icon which preserves the older behaviour
• Added Search bar to settings since they are now a lot of settings
• Changing sort order in list views no longer changes your sort order setting
• Long pressing a setting will now copy its name
• Marking posts read on scroll should now be more reliable for long posts
• Added 'Undo Hide post' action when hiding a post
• Added some padding to user avatars
• Added setting to autohide comment replies
• Increased the hitbox for the comment button to include the number
• Added undo for the 'Hide Above' action
• Removed a small fade in for images so they now load immediately
• Added 'Subscribe' to the post action menu
• Added setting for sticky bottom bars or hiding on scroll
• Fixed an issue with the 'Saved' page now combining posts and comments correctly
• Added experimental option to remember scroll position in comment lists
• Added setting to hide markdown images
• Added "copy article url" to post action menu
• Added volume controls to video and saving so changes persist to future videos
• Added icon to flag bot accounts (robot)
• Improved 'Experimental post swipe navigation' to include a swipe to previous and if swipe gestures are turned off the entire page is a swipe target
• High refresh rate defaults to on
• Improved the 'Block' page, list of communities to block now shows all results instead of 1 page of results
• Fixed issue within the inbox where comments could sometimes be duplicated
• Fixed table markdown when combined with images
• Fixed an issue with .website instance names not loading correctly

More theme customization is coming!

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

-kuroneko

Hi, past couple days have seen a influx of new users so welcome everybody! This release is aimed at improving customization options and some requested improvements. The secondary buttons on post cards can now be customized, added a 'Hide above' option which will hide all posts above the selected post, and the upvote colour can now be customized (also applies to the new comment counter and swipe action background on upvote tiles).

Changes

• Upvote colour can now be customized
• Fixed a bug with the subscribe button not being in the correct state within About Community
• & symbol now renders correctly on posts and comments
• global setting moved up within the Settings page to make it more obvious
• filter terms now accept regex (should start and end with a "/" eg /foo/)
• spoiler tags should now work for multi-line spoilers
• Added a toggle to display comment debug information (shows id, children count, hot rank, upvotes, downvotes - probably only useful for debugging).
• Fixed an issue where 'View More' is showing when it shouldn't be

What would you like to see next: Tablet UI or more granular theme customizations?

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

&

-kuroneko

Hi, thank you everyone for the feedback. This release mostly is just added improvements that have been highly requested. 113 adds draft posts and comments as well as video playback for most video services. I've also added support for ::: spoiler tags ::: (although just a first iteration and I'm still playing with the styling), improved how communities and persons are fetched from remote instances (less API remote object not found errors) and some performance optimizations.

Changes

• Draft posts and comments
• inline video player (now muted and doesn't pause other audio sources)
• better post truncation (ends on a word end when possible)
• Inbox no longer limited to the first page, added infinite scroll
• Post list now displays a small page header every 20 posts (clicking jumps to the top)
• Enabling full usernames (@instance) now uses the username and not the display name
• Fixed an issue where some comments weren't showing up in large threads.
• post images now fade in (less flash)
• Fixed an issue where posting a comment would stay at the edit page

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

&

-kuroneko

Hi, apologies in the long delay on this release. It took a couple days for Google to approve it and it went through a number of beta rounds before the bugs were ironed out. This release brings swipe customization and a couple new settings. As always thank you everyone for your feedback!

Changes

• Swipe customizations
• Comment navigator now moves to where your previous comment was and not centered
• Image caching should be a bit smarter now and release memory when not in view
• volume navigation now defaults to OFF
• edge to edge display now defaults to OFF
• Image close gestures can now be controlled in settings
• Post card layout UI improvements
• Added setting for double tap to like posts
• Post card is now affected by the 'handedness' setting
• The list of moderated communities now shows up in the sidebar
• Adds list of Admins/Mods to the about instance and about community pages
• Current Sort title text is now in the tertiary theme colour to make it stand out a bit more, removed 'via ' text.
• Added option to see full upvote and downvote counts on post cards
• The top app bar should now appear sooner when scrolling up
• !community markdown now correctly links to a community
• Card view with height limited will crop the image versus displaying the image fitted to the container

Also I'm testing out a fix to some comments not appearing on 1.0.109 beta, let me know how that looks. Next on my list is either drafts or an improved video player.

Edit: 1.0.110 beta changelog

• Adds draft functionality for posts and comments
• Adds video player for most video types (still experimental, working out the bugs on this one)
• Fixed going into comments from the inbox not scrolling the view

Links:

• Google play
• you can support me here

::: Test :::

-kuroneko