I tried out Sync for Lemmy. Loved it, but I was not a fan of the tracking for ads and the price to get rid of that being $20. Anyone tried the free open source Lemmy apps? I used to use RedReader for Reddit, so I don't mind it being a bit worse than something like Sync.

Hey Reddit enthusiasts! Revanced has recently extended its support to some of the most popular Reddit apps out there. The list of supported apps now includes Boost, Infinity, rif is fun, Relay, and Sync.

For those who are new to Revanced, this means you can patch these existing apps with your own oauth-client-id, allowing you to continue enjoying them seamlessly.

Quick tutorial:

1. Go to https://www.reddit.com/prefs/apps in your web browser.
2. Create a new app by giving it a name of your choice.
3. Tick the "Installed App" option and fill in the redirect URI field. The specific URI depends on the app you're using. For example, for rif, the URI would be redditisfun://auth. You can find the required redirect URI in the app's corresponding section on GitHub.
4. Copy the client ID string that appears for the app you just created.
5. Create a text document named "reddit_client_id_revanced.txt" and place it in the root directory of your phone's storage (e.g., /storage/emulated/0/<file here>). Paste the client ID into this document.
6. Install the latest version of ReVanced Manager on your device.
7. Open the Patcher tab in ReVanced Manager and select your app.
8. In the Patches section, enable the "Change OAuth Client ID" patch.
9. Apply the patch and install the modified app (Note: If you already have the app installed, you may need to delete it first and then click Install once ReVanced finishes creating the new APK.)

Following these steps will help you navigate through the process of obtaining a private client ID and applying the necessary patches to enjoy Reddit using ReVanced.

Guides with screenshots:

1. https://gist.github.com/decipher3114/4423a2671dc3ce4401025b737d5c89f4

2. https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1wHvqQwCYdJrQg4BKlGIVDLksPN0KpOnJWniT6PbZSrI (Thanks to @kobew50 on Discord)

If you encounter any difficulties during the process,head over to ReVanced Discord server to seek assistance.

Reddit applications that have available patches or modified versions.

➡️ Platform: Android 🤖

➡️ Platform: iOS 🍎

*Shout-out to WefWef - a Lemmy client not only inspired by Apollo, but which is aiming for feature parity. (GitHub)

Hey Tildes, with the renewed interest in the site, it got me thinking that we should hold a fundraiser for the not-for-profit company—which currently consists of just one person—that runs Tildes. It's overdue.

Disclaimer: These are my words as a member of the community. I haven't run this message by the admin before posting. I may have gotten some details wrong.

Where to donate

• GitHub Sponsors: https://github.com/sponsors/Deimos
• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tildes

History

A bit of history: The site admin, @Deimos ran the first three years of the site working full-time on it, paid only by donations, plus a $5000 GitHub sponsor match one year, which I'm not even sure was fully achieved, or only just barely.

For that time period 2018-2020, a lowball salary as a software engineer with his experience would have been $100,000 USD per year not including benefits.

If he received $5000 in donations per year (almost certainly an overestimate for more recent years) plus the $5000 GitHub match for the first year—for the 5 years of Tildes' life, that's about $30,000.

The remaining opportunity cost of $270,000 was essentially paid out of pocket by himself, as a donation to the community. Plus remember there are server expenses, legal incorporation expenses, etc. And, y'know, rent.

In recent years he had to take a full-time job because the situation was, of course, unsustainable.

App?

I announced in April that a mobile app is under development. Originally, I was planning to take my time and release a first alpha by the end of 2023.

How about if we struck a deal: get the donation numbers up and I will devote more time to the app, as opposed to splitting my time between it and contract work and other projects.

What's the deal?

• 150 active donors combined on GitHub Sponsors and Patreon—I'll release an alpha by November.
  GOAL REACHED
• 300 active donors—I'll release an alpha by October.
  GOAL REACHED
• 500 active donors—I'll release an alpha by September.

The dollar amounts don't matter.

As of writing, we are at 46 active donors.

What's in it for you, though?

Feeling like I did a good deed, I guess? I'm not looking for a "slice of the pie," to be clear. In some sense I'd be matching your donations with my time, aka opportunity cost.

If I donate, can I bother the admin to work more on the site?

No.

Again, I haven't run this fundraiser by the admin. He will certainly keep his full-time employment for the foreseeable future, and will not magically have more hours in the day to devote to Tildes.

With a sustainable budget, though, a lot can happen in the future. Contracting out work to others, for example.

But the point of this fundraiser is more to make a small dent in the past debt we owe the admin, not making any promises whatsoever on the future of the site and how it's run.

Let's go, my fellow Tilderinos!

• GitHub Sponsors: https://github.com/sponsors/Deimos
• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tildes

I appreciate Goodreads for its pretty extensive catalogue of books, the ability to see reviews from other readers, and the social aspect of following what my friends are reading. However, I find both the website and the app very slow and not very well designed. Plus, I liked to minimize my interactions with Amazon. Has anyone used or built any alternatives? While the features I listed above are nice, the only ones I would really want are:

• The ability to quickly look up and add a book to my "want to read", and to keep track of books I have read
• The ability to leave notes or reviews on books (not necessarily visible to others).

I've started to keep a reading log in Notion which satisfies the second point above, but there's no easy way to search through a data base of books and add a book to one of my lists. It would be nice to be able to do so on the fly as I browse books at the store. So Tildeños, what solutions have you all come up with to track your reading?

I'm looking for suggestions. The Internet has become very small over the last 11 years. My go-to for the moments of downtime was RIF. I was able to consume all the little spaces with it since it was an infinite feed - that's a bit harder now. All sorts of apps are welcome, but I'm not looking for things that require high effort or attention span (unless they are worth it). Games are fine, but other apps that fill your time are very good - preferably SFW and audio-off! I use Android, so I prefer those, but our Apple brethren are also welcome to share.

I've seen some tutorials that suggest installing the Amazon app store and then using a workaround to sideload apks. There's also emulators like Bluestacks. I'm curious as to what people prefer and what apps they've found useful.

I just got an email stating that Stitcher, the podcast app that I use, "decided to discontinue operation of the Stitcher app and website effective August 29, 2023."

Any good recommendations for another podcast app? ETA: I listen on my Android phone.

I'm finally ready to sacrifice my self esteem and faith in humanity at the altar of dating apps. My question for those of you with more experience with them is this - do different apps attract noticeably different pools of users? What have you noticed comparing the populations on different apps? Which wound up working best for you, if any of them did?

Any that had particular features that bothered you? I've been using Hinge for like a day and already discovered they have a separate queue for your best matches that they demand a premium currency to message :/

Mixed feelings about it all.

I think Reddit suffers from the same ‘1 discussion keeps you coming back for ten years in hope of a repeat’ that most if not all social media struggles with. It also has excellent dogs in hilarious situations and because of the amount of users, a constant refresh of what should be a tired genre but which just dosnt seem to die.

I have enough respect for r/pics for the John Oliver death march, that I cant go back.

A lot of people want to talk about Reddit and that will likely continue. This is a place to post minor news updates, so that Reddit topics don't fill up the front page of ~tech.

(Up to you what counts as "minor.")

For most of my life, I've been a hobbyist programmer. From Qbasic to Python and JavaScript. I've always wanted to create an Android app, really just for me, just to do it. It's a bucket list thing.

Can you give me a book or a website guide that is up to date and complete but not 100,000 pages long that could help me get it done? A book would be preferred! I just want to cross this off my list!

I am curious to see what other peoples experience has been with all of their apps?

I made the decision to switch to proton for mail, drive, calendar and vpn 7 months ago. I wanted to get away from having all my stuff tied to apple/google/microsoft. While it has been pretty solid for the most part, especially with android. The same cannot be said for their iOS/iPadOS apps at all. This will be my personal observation from my experience with iOS/iPadOS apps.

Mail - Pretty solid all around experience, timely notifications on incoming mail. I have 4 email addresses setup based on the type of account I used for them. I only get bothered by the emails that I would need to see and the rest get checked around once a day. Recently the whole app on both iPad and iPhone has just slowed down so much. Opening the app is frustratingly slow, while everything loads in. I will get a new email and click on the notification and the app will sometimes load the last email I viewed and not the one from the notification. I have cleared the cache and signed out and then back in and it still has this behavior.

Drive - This one is the biggest pain point for me. On iPhone the app crashes when you try to watch a video in landscape mode. This is a pretty basic feature in 2023 if you ask me. I did report the bug, to which they said they are aware and have no timeline for when it will be fixed. The next biggest issue with drive on iOS/iPadOS is that you can only upload 1 file at a time. If you do multiple files if not all, almost all of them will fail to upload. You have to do it 1 file at a time. Reported this and was told the same thing I was about the landscape mode. Seems odd to not want to fix a core function of a cloud storage app as soon as possible.

VPN - I really enjoy this vpn and have paid for just the vpn in past. Now it constantly disconnects or gets stuck in connecting. I can’t use quick connect unless I manually pick a country connect then disconnect. After that I can use quick connect with out any issues. This happens without having secure core toggle on. This is happening on both my iPad and iPhone. Waiting on them to actually help trouble shoot this after sending them a bug report.

Calendar - Is the most useless app they have every put out. I was so excited to finally dial this calendar app in when I got my iPad. Only to find out that they don’t have an iPad version of their calendar. Which makes no sense because that is an app that can really shine on an iPad when do well. This whole app just feels like an after thought and they only have it just to say we have a calendar app too.

I feel that compared to when I started using all of their apps back in December. The quality and stability of the apps has really taken a hit. I understand that they probably have a focus on building their brand with an app suite based on privacy. I feel like the quality is really taking a hit especially with iOS/iPadOS versions of the apps. The obvious answer is to just switch back to android and save myself the headache of apple. The reason for apple is a whole post in its own and I want to keep this one on topic.

For clarification, I have been using the iOS versions since December. I was switching between pixel 7 pro and 14 pro max every few weeks. Having an eco system of apps not based on either platform was also why I chose proton everything.

I have lost my r/finch community, and am feeling curious to see if there are any folks here who also find apps can be helpful for their mental health.

I struggle with anxiety and am processing a lot of grief, and may or may not have ADHD (I am in the process of getting tested, but it takes a while). My experiences with therapy are a bit mixed, so I am currently going down the route of trying to DIY my wellness a little. Starting simple with things like, sleep more, try to focus on drinking enough, go out in nature, switching off podcasts and phones and reading more. It's actually helped me, bit by bit.

One of my 'tools' is an app called finch, a virtual pet that encourages you to set goals, check in how you are feeling, journal, do mindful breathing and such. I tried many things and this app is the one that stuck and actually works.

Just wanted to ask, do any others here use wellness apps? And have they worked for you? Which do you recommend?

Just to be clear, I mean apps that work as a stand alone solution, rather than apps like 'better help' which ultimately just connect you to a therapist. Although Better Help has its uses too!

My experience with the extensions below is solely from Firefox.

For livestream chat, I use Hyperchat mostly for the cpu usage reduction.

Youtube-shorts block (Firefox,Chrome) forces shorts to play in the regular video player, avoiding the horrid shorts UI.

I have never been a leader at a big company (or anywhere...), and honestly I am pretty ignorant when it comes to money and business, so maybe that's why I feel this way but... isn't this what for-profit companies ultimately are supposed to do? (make money?)

Reddit is blowing up today over his internal memo, and that's when I kind of started to feel bad for him. Wouldn't an internal memo be expected at a time right now? Wouldn't it say that kind of stuff? I'm just curious but for others, if you were in his position, what would you do right now? Is there a better move to be made? What should he have said in that memo? I kind of feel bad for him. At the end of the day he helped create reddit, and it must kind of suck to watch your own project devolve and people come to hate you.

The thing about this API decision that got to me is how abrupt it was - 30 days or thereabout. That doesn't seem like very long. But aren't these decisions usually made by multiple people? (not just a CEO?) I also think it sucks that reddit app hasn't been made accessible to vision impaired folks. So maybe he sucks as a leader, but is that a reason to hate him?

I'd love to better understand.

So, I’m moving to a new phone and revisiting a lot of accounts, apps, and settings.

When it comes to things like location history or ad personalization or whatever, is it even worthwhile to turn it off? Am I really supposed to believe that because I have some toggle off that Google suddenly doesn’t track where I drive on Maps? Like if they are going to be tracking me, which I assume they are, I might as well be able to see it to rather than have it exist in the aether somewhere where the info is attributed to me but not viewable in the UI.

Even with ads, I know shadow profiles are a thing, and that they definitely have data beyond what they show in the UI, so might as well opt in there too right? Plus, the non-targeted ads I get are basically porn-tier ads or stuff for gay men.

What should I do here? Move into the woods? Feels like I can’t win.