Any third-party apps being developed?

I've heard there's an official kbin app in very early stages. I don't know who's working on that, but it's not in the 2023 roadmap that Ernest has shared in the sidebar - and it rightfully doesn't need to be a main focus at this early stage. I know most people reading this have probably just gotten here as well, but I wouldn't be surprised if a developer out there has already started. The PWA (web app) experience isn't bad on mobile. It's no native app though. Lemmy has that going for it, and I'd love for that experience here on kbin.

hariette,
hariette avatar

I'm working on one. They have API documentation but no public access yet... so in the meantime I cooked up a simple scrapper. Just to get the basic UI up and running.

Huge fan of Apollo so that's my inspo.

hariette,
hariette avatar

you got it, chief! I wrote some code for a project years ago that I can reuse :)

Zippythezigzag,

On the reddit app called Joey For Reddit they had a feature that quickly became a must have for me. It would automatically mark a post as "read" after you scrolled past it or clicked on it. The second part of this feature was a little button you could hit to hide all posts marked as "read". It constantly kept the frontpage fresh with posts I haven't seen yet. Please please please add that feature. It was the only reason Joey was the only app I could use.

Hyacathusarullistad,
Hyacathusarullistad avatar

Relay for Reddit did this as well, and I agree they're absolutely top tier quality of life features.

1984,
1984 avatar

One of the reasons I used and loved Relay.

CosmicCat,
CosmicCat avatar

A fellow Joey loyalist?! I think we're pretty rare. I'm going to greatly miss Joey if this all goes to shit.

I suggested to the dev making an app for kbin/Lemmy, so maybe he can bring those great ideas over here someday.

iThinkergoiMac,

Apollo also did this! Implementation was slightly different from your description, but the functionality was there.

Kata1yst,
Kata1yst avatar

There is no publicly available API for kbin yet, though it's intended. Once the lead developer has breathing room I'm sure that's still on the to-do list.

tal,
tal avatar

There is no publicly available API for kbin yet

Heh. That's a little ironic, given the context of the influx.

parrot-party,
parrot-party avatar

It's not the removal of the API, it's the pure greed that Reddit has in it's eyes now. Reddit has made a stand that they plan to monetize the fuck out of the userbase. One of the crowning features is Reddit was how clean the experience was, but they've declared those days are gone. So you'll be used and abused until you leave and Reddit dies.

thgs,

Not entirely sure but I think the influx is happening not because of the API perse but for the direction Reddit took.

I might be terribly wrong!

giddy,
giddy avatar

imgur has never had a viable 3rd party ecosystem but we aren't bagging them

Valdair,
Valdair avatar

API discussion was definitely the catalyst. But the doubling down and response of the admins to the community was what finally sealed it. Hopefully the mass exodus of users to federated servers makes the news cycle too. When communities reopen in a few days then I think there will be a lot more awareness raised for them and there'll be another wave. We won't get to Reddit's 15mil or whatever active users in a week but the fact that we could be even 5~10% of that is insane.

VerifiablyMrWonka,
VerifiablyMrWonka avatar

Might not have access to it yet via the necessary tokens and such but it's all documented and waiting

https://docs.kbin.pub/#introduction

Calcharger,
Calcharger avatar

Yeah, I'm sure there would be a way to make an app without an API but it would be prohibitively difficult

Micromot,

It would also put a lot of load on the servers because you would just "scrape" the content from the page by reading it with a normal account

onepinksheep,
onepinksheep avatar

Which just goes to show how extremely short-sighted Reddit is being by being so prohibitive with their API pricing. The existing 3rd party devs were perfectly willing to pay for API access, just not $20 million per year willing. And API or not, people will still try to access Reddit content outside of the official channels regardless, and if you essentially shut down API, some of them will go back to scraping.

OverfedRaccoon,
OverfedRaccoon avatar

That makes sense. I know this is all still technically a prototype - and technically speaking, a very good one. I know the explosive growth on the platform and instance(s) hasn't helped with said needed breathing room haha.

ScottyB,
ScottyB avatar

Would love a native app but more than anything I'd love for the biggest third party devs to reorient their products to use the Kbin API.

It'd be great to boot up Sync for Kbin. LJD make it happen

Amongog,
Amongog avatar

I'm here praying for Sync for Kbin

thegreekgeek,
thegreekgeek avatar

Saaaaaaaaaame. I keep trying to swipe to upvote things and I keep getting disappointed lol.

OverfedRaccoon,
OverfedRaccoon avatar

I used baconreader for years and switched to Sync sometime in, I guess, 2018/2019 (purchase for Pro in 2019 in my receipts). I would love to see Sync for kbin!

Valdair,
Valdair avatar

I think one of the big 3rd party developers throwing their weight behind Kbin or Lemmy right now could get a lot of attention in this news cycle. I think they've all expressed they'd rather work on other things than just shift their app to a competitor though. Which is a shame, I'm really going to miss the polish of Apollo.

da_doomer,

I wish for RedReader to migrate to kbin. So good.

vrojak,
vrojak avatar

I'm working on an app right now, but between having a job and only having address to some outdated API reference that might change completely, don't expect Apollo and don't expect it soon.

Bobbert,

I wanted to install it as a PWA but there isn't an install option in chrome. Oh well, I'm not in a rush.

papalonian,

It was really finicky to get it to show up for me. The option came up right away but I accidentally tapped out of it, then after refreshing and opening a few pages it came back. I'm still just using the mobile browser version though, the PWA didn't follow my phone's locked rotation setting so I couldn't use it while laying in bed, haha

Baertorv,

The rotation problem on phone is real annoying.

papalonian,

Yeah, I just pulled up the PWA for the second time before seeing this notification and it rotated before it even finished loading. I didn't see anything in settings to lock it either. The mobile browser seems to be more or less the exact same thing, and it doesn't rotate, so I'll keep using that for now..

bazpoint,

You can make it into a web app on Android using Hermit. It's not perfect by any means but it's workable for now (I'm using it right now!)

OverfedRaccoon, (edited )
OverfedRaccoon avatar

I'd never heard of Hermit, but I'm checking it out now. Thanks!

EDIT: Wow. With some minor tweaking of settings on the app and in the kbin session, this is honestly better than I ever expected. Thanks again!

thegreekgeek,
thegreekgeek avatar

I also would appreciate it if you could share the tweaks you made, I'm having issues with it myself.

major_malarkey,

mind sharing what settings you changed

onepinksheep,
onepinksheep avatar

Wouldn't mind knowing that either. Tweaked mine a bit and it seems to work fine, but there's been some lag where a tap wouldn't seem to register at first, but then the page would change a few seconds later, meaning that that earlier tap had indeed been detected. Though that might just be kbin experiencing growing pains for now. Annoying, but not a deal breaker so far.

OverfedRaccoon, (edited )
OverfedRaccoon avatar

Click your username, Settings, change anything you see on the way through Appearance, and when you see the Delete Account button, stop and look for the little cog on the right, just under it. Sticky the top bar and turn on infinite scrolling.

In the Hermit app - I'm new to it, so forgive me - go to the settings for the kbin profile you created. I don't recall the defaults, but set it to full screen, frameless, and pull down to refresh. I don't think I changed anything else major, but that got rid of the address bar and made the site completely full screen.

So now you've got the full screen site and the top bar stuck to the top for easier navigation, which I know is a matter of preference. Either way, check out those settings on kbin itself to adjust them to your liking. Some people find the defaults a little odd, but you can easily change enough of it to suit your liking.

There's still some general slowness and stuff, but at this point, I think that's more an issue with kbin at the moment. My PWA acts the same way right now.

Foximus,
Foximus avatar

Nice one! Just set that up also - looks good so far 👍

rebul,

I prefer PWA to native apps, but I suppose I am in the minority.

OverfedRaccoon,
OverfedRaccoon avatar

I had made a long ramble about how it's not saving between sessions, likely because of my own privacy settings, but then I realized I was making an argument for changing my privacy settings if I'm okay with an app staying signed in. I guess maybe I just prefer the self-containment aspect?

BaroqueInMind,
BaroqueInMind avatar

The self-awareness is so refreshing to read here, holy shit.

NotTheOnlyGamer,
NotTheOnlyGamer avatar

The only thing I would want is to have kbin to get included as a platform that Fedilab supports.

gpage,

There are some small things like that which I would like to see; the profile linking (e.g. on Mastodon if you put the referral link in your profile, it will add the verified checkmark in your account). What exists now works and is fine (especially the ability to combine federated groups into your general subscriptions), but the protocol offers a lot of options that I think are currently underutilized.

OverfedRaccoon,
OverfedRaccoon avatar

Yeah, it could be as simple as that. I already have my Mastodon and Pixelfed accounts there. I just don't really use either of them regularly enough. So if they added kbin and/or Lemmy support, I'd definitely be using it a lot more.

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