Thunder is now on Google Play Store
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
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hjiangsu.thunderOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
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.
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 am using connect right now so they'll beg to tell me what's better about thunder
I agree. Love it and get serious RedReader vibes from it
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 ![email protected]
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
That's definitely something I want, too, but is likely a lot more work than images.
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.
I'm @CTalvio
This is how my recent weeks have been:
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!
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.
You definitely don’t need Flutter knowledge to help out! Providing general feedback on UI/UX, or ways to improve the overall experience is just as valuable as helping implement the features!
I started out having very limited Flutter knowledge, and have been using this experience to learn about Flutter. That’s the main reason why I even started on this app 😅
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
Here I go downloading another Lemmy app!
Let's see if this one beats my current go-to, Liftoff.
I just have them all downloaded and bounce between them when they get a new update lol
I bounce between my several installed Lemmy apps whenever one of them locks up :)
You can edit your comment by swiping from left to right on it. Cant delete it yet though
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:
Google Play:
TestFlight:
Looking good, very much reminds me of Relay for Reddit! Hopefully there will be options to hide the top and bottom bars while scrolling in the future :)
On the way: https://github.com/thunder-app/thunder/pull/257
For some reason bitwarden will not auto fill for my accounts.
I use BitWarden personally and have not encountered this. I would suggest creating an issue on GitHub so that we can track it down!
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.
Keepassdx is the same way
I can't find it weird, maybe not compatible with my device? I'm on Android 13 lineageOS, nonrooted.
EDIT: I was able to get to it by direct URL but for some reason couldn't find by searching
It should be compatible with Android 13, but it may take some time to propagate through the app store since it was published not too long ago! Does tapping on the direct link take you to a valid page? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hjiangsu.thunder
I had the same issue. It hasn't propagated into the search corpus. The direct link works.
You have to restart your device to get the Play Store to seed properly. Otherwise it can take a week+
Just installed. Love to have a hide feature that could be implemented with gesture/swiping as well.
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.
Wow this app is amazing!
This one is my app of choice!
What is the difference with Connect? Genuinely just curious.
For one, Connect is not FOSS (as of writing), while Thunder is. But that's a question with a hundred answers. Check it out and find out for yourself.
Excellent news, although the app is kinda broken to me since like the last version I guess.
It sticks within the menus and it is slow on average, I clean installed the PlayStore version to start clean but still have the same experience.
Hmm, could you open up an issue on GitHub regarding this? In general, I think Thunder should be fairly well optimized for most devices
If you could provide some more details about your device and OS version, we might be able to trace down the issue!
Very nice first impression, thank you. Could we get more font size options? I'd like to increase the size even more.
This is really good news! Congratulations, Thunder and Voyager are my two favorite Lemmy apps and it's great to see you get your Google Play offering for your app!
Anything that doesn't have a github issue yet? I have list of stuff I want to add, but once I'm satisfied, I wont mind adding things to meet the preferences of others.
A lot of these are already being worked on. Some not.
For themes, Thunder is already using a system that would support adding more themes by defining new color palettes. That's definitely planned to eventually be a thing.
But, generally, there's a good few of us now, picking up things from the list of issues and getting them done. We do stuff in the order of what each of us is interested in doing so the fastest way to make a change will always be to do it yourself, but sometimes you want something an existing contributor wants, too, and sometimes you just plain hand out a good idea no-one had thought of yet.
You can report bugs and request features here: https://github.com/thunder-app/thunder/issues
You can also check if something you want is already being worked on, and add your voice to the issue.
Hopefully ios will get a final release soon too. I love how quick Thunder is on my iPhone utilizing 120hz.
Great work!
I like it! Just needs, mark read after scrolled past a post.
This and a FAB or a quick way to hide read posts.
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
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
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?
I think it just takes some time to index the app - I think I’ve added most of the metadata needed, but I’ll double check!
I am trying to find it on Google Play, and still can't find it. Not sure if it is because of location restrictions? I am using a Pixel 6, using a VPN as I am on assignment in China (behind the Great Firewall).
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.
I think this is the best Lemmy client on Android so far, but the font kinda throws me away. I wish I could have the OS font instead of a different one.
Great for me so far, except I'm not liking the last comment in a thread being cut off.
The box for typing comments is also a bit weird, as is attaching photos to posts.
How do I delete my comment?
Is there a difference between the two?
The store appears simpler than manually finding, downloading and installing from gut.
There shouldn’t be any functional difference between the two! The only thing right now is that pre-releases/nightly builds are only available through GitHub
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
Congrats on the Play Store release! Thunder is a fantastic Lemmy app, and is progressing along blazingly fast!
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