Arctic

It's been several months since I released any updates for Arctic except for a single hot-fix released to address an issue with API changes. I've had a busy summer and have not had much time or energy to put towards development. In the last few weeks, I've finally gotten back into working on updates, and I couldn't be more excited. I'm currently recovering from back surgery, so I have some time off work for the next month at least. I plan to use this time to push out some updates for Arctic, and get back on a consistent release schedule.

The goal for this update was to have it ready before the last TestFlight build expired. Unfortunately, even though I managed to submit the update before the deadline, the review process took longer than usual, and the previous build expired before the update was released.

I've been working on this update for a couple of weeks now in my free time, and I had originally planned for it to just focus on some minor bug fixes. Well, I got a bit carried away and added a bunch of new features while I was at it. The feature I am most excited about in this update is support for embedding views in Markdown. Arctic can now load embedded images rather than appending them to the end of comments or posts. I've also added embedded Markdown tables, so I can add proper rendering for tables which were extremely basic in previous versions. Both of these features are still in an experimental phase and disabled by default in this release. If you'd like to try them out you can enable them in the Experimental section in settings.

Something else I'm super excited about is that Arctic is coming to MacOS soon. I've spent a lot of time during this update cycle working on refining the user experience on Mac. I've gotten nearly all the Mac specific bugs worked out, and now I'm working on refining the UI to better suit the desktop experience. With this, I am also working on the iPad layout and improving the UI on larger displays. I'm hoping that over the next month I can release a Mac build on TestFlight.

v0.4.2.0 Changelog

New Features

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• Added support for embedded markdown views:
  • Embedded images (experimental)
  • Embedded tables (experimental)
  • Embedded spoilers (stable)
• Added support for disabling markdown features (post feeds will now display using limited features)
• Added support for paragraphs in Markdown lists (note: this will not yet be rendered correctly in the markdown editor)
• Added Alternate Sources for links, Haptic touch on any link to open the link using an alternate source
• Added option for showing profile images in comment sections
• Added support for clearing push notifications when marking them as read in Arctic
• Added option to hide labels on the tab bar
• Added option to adjust the thumbnail size in compact layouts
• Added new filters to the profile tab, view liked or disliked posts and comments, as well as hidden posts
• Added a new trending communities section to the search tab (trends are based on Lemmy suggestions, and currently they are mostly just new communities)
• Added support for selecting multiple communities at once in the Multi-Community editor
• Added descriptions to the Multi-Community editor to explain its usage
• Added community icons to the Multi-Community editor
• Added support for filtering by NSFW in Lemmy Explorer
• Added support for tapping the search tab while it is open to focus the search bar
• Added a settings section for migrating Subreddit subscriptions from Reddit. (Thanks to Voyager for this idea)
• Added option to choose the default listing type in profile views
• Added pinned section to the left side of the markdown editor toolbar for undo and redo actions
• Added support for selection images for upload using Finder on Mac
• Added support for swipe actions using a trackpad
• Added option to disable swipe actions
• Added option to use full screen navigation gestures (not compatible with swipe actions)
• Added change log popup after updating Arctic

Bug Fixes

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• Fixed a missing close button in the community notification editor
• Fixed issue preventing a custom guest instance from being set
• Fixed issue causing Top sorting modes to show twice in sorting menus
• Fixed account and community settings editors not resizing text views while typing
• Fixed issue where media previews would be loaded from post bodies even if the post is not a media post
• Fixed issue allowing comment tags ("ME", "OP", "BOT", etc) to render incorrectly
• Fixed an issue where the activation threshold for swipe actions was too high resulting in false swipes while scrolling
• Fixed issue where images would fail to upload when using limited access mode for photos. (you will now be presented with an option to grant access to photos before selecting them for upload when using limited access mode. Note: For the best experience, it is recommended that you enable full access)
• Fixed issue where links would not open in private messages and profile bios
• Fixed authorization error when trying to delete images
• Fixed issue where cells in the Reports section would render markdown incorrectly
• Fixed issue that could cause crash alerts to show more than once
• Fixed an issue making it difficult to grab cells for reordering accounts
• Fixed highlighted cells in the subscriptions view on iPad and Mac
• Fixed issue causing the tab bar to permanently disappear in some cases while Hide Bars On Scroll was enabled
• Fixed positioning of labels in media previews on Mac
• Fixed media gallery views not resizing properly on wide displays
• Fixed issue where categories for the search tab may not show on some devices
• Fixed layout issue with the profile header view

Arctic Push Notifications

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• Rewrote networking to improve performance and error handling
• Improved logic to help prevent overlooking notifications, or sending duplicates
• Updated with the latest API support
• During these updates, you may have missed, or received duplicate notifications

Links

• Website: getarctic.app
• TestFlight: testflight.apple.com
• App Store: apps.apple.com
• Issues: github.com
• Community: !arctic@lemmy.world

Download Arctic on the AppStore!

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I am thrilled to announce that Arctic is now available on the AppStore! Looking back, it's amazing to see how much progress Arctic has made in the last six months. Initially, I began working on Arctic as a personal project to fill the void after leaving Reddit during the API fiasco. I had no intention of releasing it publicly. Now, I have a fully-featured Lemmy client, a fantastic group of beta testers on TestFlight, and an official release on the AppStore.

However, the journey isn't over yet. I have many exciting plans for Arctic, and this is just a significant milestone. Going forward, I plan to release more targeted updates on TestFlight and create a public roadmap for AppStore releases.

I would like to thank everyone who was involved with Arctic's TestFlight for all the valuable feedback and suggestions that have helped shape Arctic!

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Links

• Website: getarctic.app
• TestFlight: testflight.apple.com
• AppStore: apps.apple.com
• Issues: github.com
• Community: !arctic@lemmy.world

Had to use an outside image service to post the screen shot of the error. And the image wasn’t too large, it was around 500kb. 🤔 Hopefully this helps fix the issue. Otherwise, great update so far! I can also see the Messages notifications aren’t wanting to play along on my server at the moment lol. 🥴

Thanks for. All the hard work which you’re putting into the app. It is my favorite!

I was greeted with a beta expired message today.

Should I just start using the AppStore version? Will I lose any settings if I install it over the beta?

Thanks in advance

The pinned post seems to be no longer visible: ! !

Also I have trouble visiting Arctic community in the TestFlight version: it just keep loading for me

It is going to be expired in 10 days

Recently if there is a new notification and if I don’t read it, it just won’t stop popping up for me

Arctic is a (much) better Lemmy client than any other out there for iOS at least but there are some nifty features for the most recommended app Voyager like the ability to disable side swipes altogether because Apollo’s (reddit) double-tap to upvote for example is much intuitive where side swipes are used to enter and exit communities, posts, comments, menus, settings… or whole app together on Android or Jailbroken devices.

This is my multireddit link after removing u/user which were included as r/_u/redditor from an existing bug to test this for Arctic which would fully enable me along with a lot of us to leave Voyager behind.

Other Lemmy clients such as Voyager and Mlem do this too. It’s a small thing but huge improvement for people who are using search a lot.

I just discovered that it was in Arctic and I love it. This app is my go to one for Lemmy browsing!

Hoping they can add a hide post gesture like they have the collapse comment gesture. Tried to submit it on GitHub and it kept trying to make it a bug report argh.

I would love to see certain statistics about my profile, Lemmy usage and participation. This could start with really basic stuff like how much I scrolled per day, in the last year or since using the app. But also things like:

• overall likes
• engagement generated by me
• graphs (?)
• how many comments have been written under my posts in total

I guess there could be even more things, that would be cool and interesting to see.

Hello. I am using the version 0.4.1.11 , my account is on lemmy.dbzer0.com.

I was surprised when I browsed my account directly from the web : around one quarter of the posts was not visible in the Arctic app. I tried with another app (Mlem) and the posts are there. It's always the same posts that are invisible, browsing on the "Subscribe/Home", or directly from the communities.

It looks like every posts I publish enters in this category : not showing in the Arctic app.

It would be great if we could select the language in which the posts has been written in.

This is already an option in the web UI I guess it would be good to see it in arctic as well.

If you revisit a post, there exists already an indicator that +n new comments have been added. But it isn’t easy to distinguish which of the comments are actually new ones. It would be cool to have an (optional) visual indicator at new comments to easier follow the conversation.

I see this error almost every time I open the comments on a post.

My server is lemm.ee. Does it not support the “mark as read” feature?

When you tap on a post that has a video link, it initially seems to show a Piped link, but it quickly changes to YouTube. I’m not sure if this is how it’s supposed to be but thought you might want to know.

I’ve noticed that links often contain duplicative text if you don’t have the compact link setting selected. The post title is usually the link headline, and then part of the link body is usually displayed right under the title. Then, on the link, the same exact headline and body are shown again on the link preview. See image for example. Not a huge deal, but could save some space to eliminate the duplicative text in the link preview.

!Sample of duplicative text on links

Awesome work on the multi-communities! I haven’t had a chance to extensively test it, but I set one up quickly. Liking it a lot so far!

This has been happening since the beginning, I just kept putting off posting. When I vote on a comment inside a post, the vote disappears if I fold the parent comment or if I scroll far enough that the voted comment goes offscreen. Sometimes the second attempt at voting sticks, today that isn’t working. The video shows the second attempt at voting on these comments.

I figured it must be just me since nobody else posted about it but maybe it’s not just me?

If you scroll back to old posts, the post where you stopped gets marked as read but it should only get marked read when you scroll past it, not when you can first see it. The current behavior makes it so you can't spot a particular post to know you've reached as far back as you want to go.

Can we get two seperate toggles for showing the full community/user names on posts please. E.g. memes@lemmy.world instead of just memes. Loving the changes so far!

Edge cases can be weird, so I thought I’d share one. We used a markdown table to create a bingo card here And it renders goofy due to word wrap. I’m not sure what the best solution is for this so it’s more of just an FYI. Maybe wrapping text in the cell could help? It also seems like it might be ignoring text justification settings in the table

Thanks a ton.

Hello. I just discovered this app. What a nice app! I would love one feature, the ability to set a filter: hide posts that I have downvoted. It is a nice hidden option in Reddit. It allows you to stay active in communities where bots or people with an agenda are trying to push ideas without being angry. Just downvote it and keep going.

I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm noticing on the latest beta, that some posts (haven't found a pattern) will open to a completely unrelated post.

Actually... usually it's related to !TenForward@lemmy.world, I'm not sure why (I could be wrong too). It's something I've noticed maybe 5-6 times in the last couple of weeks?

I've linked to a screen recording, hopefully it's obvious to you @CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world

I saw this comment which included a link to a crosspost in a different community. When I open that link, I see the post and the top of the view has the community name with menu. But I seem to be able to do everything (subscribe, favourite, block, read the sidebar) except just ‘open’ the community to see other posts. Am I missing the right place to click / menu entry?

Don’t know if this is from the most recent update but I just saw this post and it doesn’t show the image in the feed—just a grey placeholder box. Opening the post shows the image.

https://feddit.uk/post/11005731

On a user’s cake day, the slice of cake icon appears next to their username like in the other place. I know Apollo reflected this, is it possible in Arctic?

I got a reply to a comment in what’s become quite a bit post (≈150 comments). Clicking the message in the inbox goes to the post comments but not to the reply. It seems to go to a slightly different place each time I open it.

I saved the original comment I’d replied to, and navigating from my ‘saved comments’ does go to the right place.

This is an assumption on my part, and may have other explanations. I’ve noticed sometimes the feed ‘jumps’ down a post while scrolling, and I’m assuming this is due to a background feed update combined with a sort order that puts a new item anove where I was currently scrolled to. If that’s the case, having an option for manual refresh only would be great.

If that’s not it, there might be a bug somewhere but it’ll be hard to find I guess, as it happens quite rarely.

I find the high contrast cards in the main feed a bit hard on my eyes. I’d like to reverse the back card background and the grey page background, and maybe also dial down the text colour a bit. It would be fab to have RGB colour pickers for those kinds of elements.

Sorry, can’t quite remember if you’d mentioned this already, but it resets to Hot if you force quit and restart the app.

Hi there, thanks for the great software. Currently on 0.4.1 (4), but I’ve noticed the bug on a few previous versions.

When viewing saved comments under the user profile, everything appears fine. However, if you try to scroll it instantly crashes back to the springboard. I have a suspicion that it is something to do with the fact that I have saved many comments which include YouTube links. Has anyone else noticed this?

Edit: switched to another account to play around, and I could replicate the crash just by saving a comment which contained an embedded picture.

Direct messages in the inbox tab always show as ‘unread’ and there doesn’t seem to be a way to clear that. They also don’t show the name of the other person you’re messaging (seems to show my id instead). It would also be great to link to their profile so you can find their posts / comments easily.

Not sure if I’ve got the right expectations here, but for me, changing the sort ordering on All or in a community seems to have no effect. I also just turned off ‘Hide Read Posts’ and yet refreshing the feed still hides those I’ve read.

Sometimes quitting and restarting does seem to change the sort order, but I’ve also seen it come back still showing the previous ordering.

Are there known problems with sorting / hiding, or is this news?

First, please let me know if you’d rather these be elsewhere—new to Arctic but really liking it.

I’m on a quest to find the perfect Apollo replacement since leaving ‘that place’. Arctic is so nice and close I know this is nit-picking now. But the image view was practically perfect in Apollo and just a couple of tweaks if they’re possible would bring that joy back.

First off, hiding the phone status bar and action buttons on first open—just the image, scaled to fit.

For zooming, double tap to zoom in is great, but Apollo had single tap to zoom out again which combined with swipe to dismiss made getting back to the feed almost a single action—effectively a double tap with drag on the second tap. It was so slick.

The action buttons don’t currently show / hide on single tap when zoomed in so I don’t think that change would break any existing functionality.

Currently there is a filter list under settings that shows keyword filters, but I have not been able to find any way to view and edit community/instance filters that have been created by blocking a community or instance.

Using TestFlight v0.4.1.2 on 12 pro max

Opening a post and saving it using the middle ‘save’ button, then returning to the feed still shows the swipe left action as ‘Save’ (rather than ‘Unsave’).

Likewise if you save via swipe then open the post and ‘unsave’, the swipe action does not flip and still shows ‘unsave’.

Also just noticed that the very top post in a feed goes ‘dim’ as if it’s marked as read when scrolled off the top of the view, but then pull to refresh reloads it as unread. Opening the post to mark as read and then refreshing hides it as expected (I have hide read enabled).

At least, I consider this a bug… :). It seems the scroll out of view trigger fires no matter which direction you scroll, and I think it should be only when scrolling posts ‘up’ off the top of the view.

For example, scroll a post until you can just see the first line of its title then scroll it off the bottom again. It will be marked as read when in fact you’ve only seen a few pixels of it.