Hi there fellow Apple enthusiasts!

Yesterday I announced that my native iOS app for Lemmy called Avelon is finally ready for testing, and I figured some people here might also be interested in checking it out!

My focus for the app has been performance, design and ease of use. As you can probably tell I got a lot of inspiration from Apollo and other iOS-first apps - but I think I’ve added my own cool spin on both the design and functionality.

Here’s a couple screenshots of the app:

If you wanna try it out I’d greatly appreciate any feedback/suggestions so I know what to focus on next! I think the core experience is pretty solid already, but the app still lacks some important features such as adding new posts.

Download Avelon (Testflight)

Avelon is developed in Swift using almost enitrely SwiftUI. For those unfamiliar, SwiftUI is the newest UI library by Apple intended to replace things like UIKit over time. SwiftUI is cross platform, so Avelon also runs on macOS actually, though the UI is not tweaked to fit mac just yet. The tech is really great to work with, and it makes it super easy to fit right into iOS. I posted some more details about the project over on the community page for the app here if you wanna check it out.

Thanks, let me know what you think!

  • bdonvr@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    And here I thought nothing was going to pull me away from Voyager/WefWef

    This is damn good

    • Gond0r@lemmy.nzEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Voyager doesn’t have full screen gestures yet (swiping to get back to feed), so I’ve been looking around.

      Liftoff! has so far best matched my Apollo style lurk browsing habits. Although the feed is a little more busy looking.

  • Kronusdark@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Hey, one of the Mlem devs here, Welcome to the club. Be advised we are hitting issues getting on the AppStore, apparently Apple says that we are “exploiting the popularity of the Lemmy trademark”. You might have to deal with that once you submit… Good Luck, Your app is looking good. ❤️

      • wavebeam@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        The latest episode of ATP had a big rant about how fucking stupid app review is. It honestly seems like it’s being done by ChatGPT or something it’s so fucking stupid.

  • Mereo@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Oh my God! This is my favorite Lemmy app now. I’ve been looking for a good native app and this is it! So fluid, fast loading, it’s awesome!!!

    Keep up the good work, can’t wait for new updates.

  • keider@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Just downloaded it and the interface is stunning. The app is fluid and smooth, I’m surprised it’s so polished. Nice job!

  • Thaurin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    1 year ago

    So apparently Avelon doesn’t support iOS 15. So that’s a no go for me. If you aren’t specifically targeting iOS 16+ API’s consider targeting lower version of IOS. It’s why I’ll keep using Memmy.

    • evgiz@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      It should block NSFW by default, perhaps its your instance or account settings?

  • Belazor@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    This needs thumbnails on the left as well as marking post read on opening thumbnails, other than that it looks great!

    Onboarding looks great and the performance is perhaps the best I’ve ever experienced trying various Lemmy apps.

    • bosk@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Yep, an ability to switch thumbnails in compact mode to the left would be great. Agree with everyone else so far, really polished and super fast performance. Looking forward to seeing this mature.

    • Belazor@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Also, I can’t seem to work out how to tap someone’s name to access their profile. Since this app doesn’t handle links to other Lemmy instances internally (the “here” in your OP opens the browser rather than actually taking me to your post), I wanted to comment on your app’s community by finding it via your profile.

      Am I just not hitting the correct pixels? Or are there no profile pages just now?

      Also, the community icons are missing from the posts in the feed.

      • evgiz@lemm.eeOPEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Or are there no profile pages just now?

        No profile pages yet unfortunately. This + adding posts are probably the biggest features missing atm.

        Since this app doesn’t handle links to other Lemmy instances internally

        I’m planning to look at this, but it probably requires a bit of magic in the background to work properly.

  • Knasen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Looks and feels good so far! Would suggest settings for NSFW behavior. For example, As of now, posts are blurred and when clicked upon they are displayed. If you scroll past the image they are still visible if you go back. Avalon for example, "re blurs” it of you scroll past it, an behavior I like.

    • evgiz@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I don’t think this is allowed by Apple, think I heard some reddit devs talking about this a couple years ago. If Lemmy itself gets more finegrained NSFW-settings I could definitely look at integrating it tho

  • ChicagoCoder9@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    This is probably my favorite out of all the ones I’ve tried. Only one that comes close is Mlem.

    Would love to see some gestures in here but otherwise it is great for a first pass. Nice work! Excited to see where it goes

    • ChicagoCoder9@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Back for some more feedback.

      • Comment threads are a little overwhelming and need some spacing or distinction between each individual comment.

      • I also can’t figure out how to see my posts and go to them with ease (checking for replies and such)

      • No notification area…so I’m missing out on replies to my posts.

      Other than those things, it is so smooth and a pleasure to use.

  • Pea666@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Looks good so far. I’m really missing the swipe to up/downvote, reply, collaps, report options in compact mode. Any plans for something like that?

    • evgiz@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Definitely, I’ve implemented a few swipe actions already, but they’re still a bit buggy so I need to rework the gestures before it’s ready to release.

      Edit: The latest release now has customizable swipe gestures!

    • outdated_belated@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Collapse seems to work for me. Otherwise, agreed. It’s much snappier than Memmy (what I’ve been using mostly thus far), on the upside!

      Edit: also would like an option to see both upvote and downvote count