Wow is it that time again? Why yes it is, its time for another Thunder release! This release has a lot of minor tweaks and improvements to the overall Thunder experience. I’ll list out a summary of all the update points here, but if you’d like to see the full changes, check out the GitHub release page.
A reminder for anyone who didn’t catch the previous announcement, Thunder is now officially available on Google Play! You should also be able to search up Thunder on the Play Store to find it. For more details about the launch, see this post: https://lemmy.world/post/1631968
If you are using the Google Play version or TestFlight, please note that it may take a bit of time before you receive the update. As always, this is an alpha release, so do expect bugs to pop up here and there. Now onto the update notes. This update brings a few major features:
- You can now select custom accent colours! This will allow you to choose a splash of colour which will be applied consistently across the whole app. Please note that Material You has to be disabled for the accent colours to be applied properly
- You can now customize the look of the comment indicators. There are different options to choose from to suit your personal preferences
- There are even more settings for you to customize. You can hide the FABs, hide NSFW posts, show community icons and authors on posts, and even more!
- Improvements to link previews. With this, you should be seeing more link previews and it should create a more consistent experience
- You can now manage blocked communities and users. Simply go to your profile, and there should be a gear icon for you to remove any blocked communities and users.
- You can now access user and community sidebars. If you visit a community, or a user, you can tap in the info icon to bring up a sidebar filled with all the information you could possible want
- Overall improvements to performance. This update should feel smoother and there should hopefully be less stuttering happening overall
- Finally, there has been some under-the-hood changes to allow for localization and translations for the future. Look forward to this in a future update!
We have a Matrix space if you would like to join in on discussions: https://matrix.to/#/#thunderapp:matrix.org
If you find any issues or would like to suggest features, please open up a new issue! As always, contributions are always welcomed here.
I would also like to acknowledge all the following contributors that have worked on this latest release! (in no particular order): @machinaeZER0, @CTalvio, @micahmo, @njshockey, @sant0s12, @ajsosa, @vbh
As always, I would just like to thank everyone so far for the amazing support so far. Thunder is still a project that I can only work on the side, and it has been incredible so far. A lot of my time has been taken up to work on improvements to Thunder, and to maintain active and meaningful conversations to improve the overall experience for Thunder.
If you would like to show a token of appreciation, you can buy me a coffee! The donations will help support some of the development overhead costs (e.g., apple developer program for TestFlight builds) and other costs!
Thanks again for everything so far, and I hope you enjoy this update! Here’s some canned beans for you for reaching the end of this post 🥫🫘
Link previews in compact view, hurrah!
Great update. 😁
Edit: I like how clicking a comment takes you directly to that comment too. Easier to keep track if there’s a fair few replies to a particular comment.
Hello, comment context was my contribution :) Just a quick note, there are still some rough edges when interacting with comments from that context view. I have some fixes for them but they didn’t make the cut off unfortunately. So that will definitely be improved in the next release.
Nice work though!
I’ve not tried interacting with comments from that just yet, but even just having this feature at all is a big QoL improvement.
Not mentioned above, but an oft requested feature I implemented is also in this update.
You will now be able to tap-slide with one finger to zoom images.
The sidebar also enables blocking users.
Bang up job as always. This is the best “Alpha” WIP app i have ever seen. Normally when i hear “alpha” i think “buggy”, “unstable”, “missing features”, etc.
This app is my daily driver. It gives me that RIF experience. The comments colors are actually a nice way to remember what part of the tree I’m in.
If you are like me, and want the pre-release updates. Use Obtainium to pull directly from the github.
It’s been fascinating watch all the people contribute to build an app from the ground up. Random contributors using their unique skill sets to add to the usability and interface.
PS. Tablet mode is awesome on the S8 ultra.
Do let us know if you encounter any unique issues on tablet! I don’t think it has gotten nearly as much testing.
You know, you are making it quite difficult to find accessibility bugs in your app. What the heck am i supposed to contribute when they are all gone? /s
Nice. The only feature i miss is swipe to go back 😄
You know what I would LOVE to see at some point? A separate font size control for comments and post content on post pages (as opposed to the feed).
- Font size - Post Title
- Font size - Post & Comment Details (feed text, comment user, etc…the current content setting)
- Font size - Post Content (post page)
- Font size - Comment Text
But aside from that, I’ve been quite liking the app lately. Keep up the good work!
That is definitely something that we can consider adding in the future!
If you don’t mind, could you open up a GitHub issue on this so that we can keep track of it? Thanks :D
Sorry that took me a few days to get to.
Thunder is awesome.
Is there a way to quickly go to a subscribed community, either from a list or directly by name?
The top left hamburger icon will open a side drawer that has a list of your subscriptions. You can scroll through that and click the one you want. Hope that helps!
Would be nice to be able to mark some as “favourites” so they come up on top.
Also putting several communities in the same feed, like a multireddit, e.g. all the meme communities from different instances in one feed, that would be a killer feature. Those multicommunities would then also benefit from.being favourites or not, for easy access.
I really like the idea of custom feeds made up of selected subscription groupings. Can’t speak to if or when such a feature would get implemented. But regardless, if you have the time to open an enhancement issue on GitHub, we would greatly appreciate it!
Thanks! It turns out I was still on an older version and I think that wasn’t working as intended. I’ve reinstalled the latest one and it’s great!
This is super exciting. I’ll make sure to check out this update as soon as it hits me, I really like the development I’ve been seeing to Thunder and I think the app’s been moving in a positive direction.
I just pulled it from github and so far so good
Oh yeah, this is great. Everything is more snappy and they added the focused comment view I’ve been wanting. This is an excellent update!
thanks for the work, the app looks beautiful! i get a exception when i want to look at the community of a post (lemmy api exception, cpuld not get posts) , also is there a post button in the app somewhere?
Are you still having issues viewing community pages? If so, is it happening with all community pages? If the instance you’re connected to is experiencing down time or having issues, it can cause that to happen.
Regarding posting, there should be a floating plus sign button on the bottom right of the screen when viewing a community. Alternatively there is a post button you can press when viewing community info accessible by the info button on the right side of the community banner. Hope that made sense!
hey thanks i found the plus button on the community pages. the button on the bottom right isn’t there for me, I’m on android and said error happens with roughly 50% chance on community’s of the same instance
Hmm, would you be able to open up a new GitHub issue on this so that we can track it down further?
Taking some screenshots and providing some further information that we can use to reproduce the issue would be greatly appreciated!
I know this is a bit late, but I’m very impressed with how far along this app has come! It is starting to become reminiscent of the Reddit app I was using before the APIcalypse, ReddPlanet (iOS).
Thanks for the feedback 😄If you have any feature requests, or anything you feel like is missing, feel free to check out the GitHub page and create a new issue for it!
Epic release, but a small issue in most of the releases is that the +x at the end isn’t on the version number in settings which screws up obtainium
This might be a difficult issue to solve at the current moment without introducing a long delay in the release process unfortunately (especially TestFlight)
If I’m not mistaken, Obtainium is still able to pull the latest nightly releases right? I have personally not yet played around with Obtainium, but if that is the case, then this shouldn’t be too big of an issue hopefully 😅
It can pull prereleses. Also, I wasn’t saying it needed to be fixed soon anyway as i am fine with it, was just telling you it was bugged lol
My account keeps getting removed even after multiple logins. Is this is a known issue?
Hmm, I don’t think this is an issue we have encountered yet. Could you open up a GitHub issue on this with more information about your problem so that we can take a look at it?
Thanks!
Sure, will open up an issue. Issue created : https://github.com/thunder-app/thunder/issues/493
Can we get picture embeds like Jerboa?
Could you clarify a bit more on this? If it’s a feature that is not currently available, feel free to open up a new GitHub issue and provide more details/screenshots!
