As many of you know, the third party iPhone/iPad app Metatext is no longer being maintained as the lead developer had health issues. However, there is now a community-maintained version of the app called Feditext. You can follow the latest news about it at:
When someone asks about options for servers or clients I have a habit of tagging recommendations, and when there is not an account for the thing, I have to stop and search for a dev or find a website address to link to etc.
Feditext beta users: we're aware of the performance regression under the release version of iOS 17 and are tracking it in https://github.com/feditext/feditext/issues/253. we don't know the cause yet. if you're a heavy Fedi user and don't have a pressing need for iOS 17 features, it might be a good idea to stay on iOS 16 for a few more days.
short version: we have a small set of bugs to fix and chores to do before an App Store release, and quote post UI will come after that, in version 1.8.
Today I tried several 3rd party clients on iOS and MacOS: #Mammoth #Tusker #IceCubes #Metatext
But most likely I will stick with #PWA version of Mastodon. It doesn't need any updates and has all recent features.
Considering how #Metatext is in limbo right now, I am giving the official Mastodon app another trial. It is a bit faster and less sluggish than last time I tried but still not a fan of some UI choices.
Feditext beta testers: today's build 77 contains internal changes to the HTTP client and the API clients built on it, and shouldn't have any user-visible effects. there are no other changes, because the purpose of this release is to test those changes before building further on them. please let us know on the bug tracker if you see any new kinds of HTTP error.
update: build 77 has problems loading old home timeline posts. please stay on 76 for now; see downthread for how to revert to it.
for those familiar with Apple development: we've rewritten the clients to use Swift concurrency (aka async/await) instead of Combine, which is more readable and easier to reason about. this is the first step in replacing Combine in as many places as it makes sense, which we'll weave in with other work as we go.
prospective testers: we're working through a two-week message backlog, and will be sending invites out today.
we know it's been a bit since the last update. thanks for your patience.
Everyone says "don't use the official #MastodonApp", though I have no idea why.
Heard good things about #Metatext but I also heard it's no longer maintained?
So I tried #Ivory@ivory but I have to sign up for a subscription just to find out what benefits a subscription gives (aside from the ability to post). Nope, sorry.
App must: have no ads, obviously, and absolutely must handle posting & reading threads in a sane and sensible way (unlike the web)
Hi mastodonians, any recommendations for a #mastodon client for iPhone? I am using #metatext and it does the job, but I’d like to hear about others I should try. Merci!! :mstdneh:
I love #metatext but with it no longer being maintained it is starting to develop problems. Any other apps that are similar? All the others I’ve tried are too featured. I like basic. No swiping left or right for functions. I want the like and repost under the post where I can see them. #Feditips
Really IMO the solution for having everyone add #AltText to images is to fix it in the clients and protocol. Make adding alt-text the default, the easy route. Add tools to give an easy starting point for describing images.
#MetaText actually did a really good job with this in a lot of ways, though there's definitely room to improve still.
#MetaText app is no longer maintained. It looks like it's still available on the store and was still working.
If you're using the app I'd seriously consider moving to a new app and revoking access to MetaText given any future discovered vulnerabilities have no means to be reported or resolved.
In #Metatext, if I'm reading down through my timeline and it's been a few days, when I load from toot/post below, it goes way back, and I have to keep pressing that until it eventually gets to the post right below the one I was reading. Is there a quicker way around this? Load from toot below seems like the action I want, not above, unless that works differently than how I thought it does. Thanks!
@MonaApp is there a way to mimic #Metatext loading behaviour? I don't care about all posts made since I last opened the app. When I open the app it should load the latest 20 posts to my timeline.
Feditext beta users, today's TestFlight build 69 includes various fixes and workarounds for Firefish and Hajkey.
we will be working with server devs to get some of those fixed on the server side (for Hajkey's case, in Iceshrimp), so that future clients won't have to special-case anything.
known not to work in this release:
Hajkey's suggested accounts to follow: displays an error message
intermittent foreign key constraint error when browsing Firefish or Hajkey timelines: you don't need to report this one, we're already investigating
we've had a few questions about an Android version lately. for the record: there will never be an Android version.
Feditext is Apple tech from the ground up (Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit, and other iOS platform APIs) so porting it would be more work than writing a new client from scratch, and we'll leave Android to the Android professionals.
Feditext beta users: today's build 75 includes the first of several performance fixes resulting from our perf investigation. there's a lot still to do; we'll be alternating perf fixes and bug fixes for the next few beta builds, so non-perf problems don't sit for too long.
If I could have just one change made to the UI for #Mastodon, #Metatext, and #Calckey it would be that the “Posts” column only showed the user’s original posts. Boosts and replies would be separate.
I gave the #Mastodon iOS client another try. I still don’t like it. It is slower than #MetaText, and the UI remains a bloated and poorly thought out mess. I don’t understand why it needs to waste 2 whole lines for reblogs/favorites, why it is so bad at clearly displaying a replies feed, why it needs to remind me on top of every reply who it is for as a result, why there is no option for always displaying alt text and why so many important buttons are at the top of the screen instead of bottom