Three Cheers for Tildes: App updates and feedback (April 2025) — Version 1.4 adds a text size setting
This topic is for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app.
I'll summarize the major updates at the start of each similar topic, so people can read the updates and then hit Ignore if they don't care about more frequent updates and user feedback.
Recently:
[Android] Version 1.4.2 (Apr 11, 2025): Reduced highlighting when formatting markdown. Fixed minor text size bugs.
[iOS] Version 1.4.1 (Apr 11, 2025): Fixed a bunch of text size bugs reported through TestFlight, especially when rendering comments. Reduced highlighting when formatting markdown.
Version 1.4.0 (Apr 6, 2025):
- Added text size setting
- Fixed markdown formatting bar bugs
The text size setting for accessibility is long overdue. I've been feeling bad that some users couldn't even use the app because the text was too small.
This has been another large change where I had to go back and re-test screens throughout the entire app, and fix many layout bugs caused by the dynamic text size. It's been very tedious!
In fact, the iOS release is delayed because I found some last-minute bugs and have had to go back to figure out solutions. iOS is up on TestFlight!
Also I am aware that there are still bugs in some places when you set the text excessively large. It's not a priority for me to fix those, unless they make the app unusable.
Have been particularly busy so far this year and that will continue for a while, so I may be less responsive here, even though I likely will see your messages. Thanks for continuing to report issues; v1.4 fixes some bugs based on those reports.
Previous topic: February 2025
Where to get it
Android version on Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes
Or sideloadable APK at https://www.talklittle.com/three-cheers/
iOS version on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/three-cheers-for-tildes/id6470950557
Join TestFlight for iOS beta testing: https://testflight.apple.com/join/mpVk1qIy
Hi @talklittle, I've gotta extend my thanks to you for developing this, and investing your efforts into Tildes as a community in general. Do you have a Patreon or any other ways for users to support your efforts financially? I don't use the app but I'd be willing to donate to a coffee/beer fund towards app development. @Deimos won't take my donations towards Tildes itself. I'd be happy to throw ten or twenty bucks towards your efforts some time.
PS: Recently someone asked about hosting their own version of Tildes. I recall you were saying you were making work towards a Docker version. Any updates on that?
Thanks for the offer! The app has donation options through Google and Apple. I don't currently have donation options outside of the app. Could consider Stripe but I worry an open webpage with a Stripe form potentially facilitates credit card fraud—bots testing stolen numbers—so I'd have to deal with that. Could consider Patreon but I don't have enough to put on the marketing page for it right now so it'd feel sad. Oh well, thanks anyway.
Tildes has a Docker dev environment now. No updates on self-hosting as that has been halted in favor of work on the main site itself. But work on main site is also currently slow, as all the maintainers are very busy this year on non-Tildes things.
Hey talklittle! Thanks for all your hard work! No bugs to report in all the time I've used the app!
Three Cheers version 1.4.2 (Android) and 1.4.1 (iOS) are going out now. Fixes the markdown formatting highlighting issues reported by @Lapbunny and @DefinitelyNotAFae.
The iOS release v1.4.1 also fixes some major text size bugs reported on TestFlight—thanks to those users for reporting the bugs!
I have not noticed this since, but I haven't been doing as much link editing so I think we're good but I'll update if not!
Wow, way to totally miss saying "three cheers to those users" ;-)
Hey, I just wanted to highlight something - literally - that's been bugging me. Is there a use case for highlighting the current paragraph when hitting the quote button? Multiple times I've written a paragraph, accidentally tapped the quote button due to its proximity to the autocomplete bar, and ended up deleting my current paragraph. I'm not sure why people need it, or if anyone else does this by accident... Just a piece of feedback that I'd ask for that to, uh, not do that, but I don't know if it'd disrupt other people's flows.
Anyway - thanks as always, talklittle.
Thanks for bringing up the issue. I partially addressed some bad highlighting cases in v1.4 based on feedback from @DefinitelyNotAFae in the previous topic, but I should go further and reduce highlighting as much as possible. I can aim to improve it in the next bugfix update.
Appreciate it, it's my only real frustration with the app <3
I have not tested it to see if it's still happening in this update but I'll keep an eye out. Thank you for all the work!
Excellent. Thank you so much!
This also happens if I input a link and then try to type. It deletes the title of my link, even when I very intentionally try to tap away from the new link, but especially when I don't
Are you using a keyboard that has Undo? Gboard does, not sure what you're using.
Unfortunately no, SwiftKey doesn't. This actually prompted me to try a couple a couple different keyboards and nothing really works as well for me...
Oh, thank you, thank you. The ability to make text larger makes the app so much easier for me to use.
I can't tell you how grateful I am for the text scaling, thank you!
I've used Three Cheers for quite a while already, but it was the only app I use regularly where I had trouble reading. Today that's been fixed and I'm so happy.
Thanks for doing this! As a visually impaired user it really helps being able to bump up the font size. And I especially appreciate you actually hunting down layout issues at larger sizes, it's really frustrating to increase the font size just to run into weird bugs.
I have a small bit of feedback in this otherwise great app: when I click into the comments of a YouTube link, I can no longer see the duration of the video.
When I’m on the main feed, there is a nice little duration next to the YouTube channel name. When I click into the comments to see if I want to watch the video, there is no longer any duration that I can see to help me also decide if I have time to watch right now and it bugs me to have to back out to find it.
Very minor nitpick. Thank you for all your hard work!
Does anyone have an iPhone Pro Max and seen this crash or similar? I've received a few crash reports for Three Cheers, apparently when rotating the Pro Max from portrait to landscape, after having opened a web link in the app possibly. I can't get it to crash in the simulator; it changes between single and dual pane successfully. If anyone's seeing the crash, please help me out with detailed steps on how you can get it to crash. Thanks!
I don’t know if this is helpful or not since I’m still on 1.3.1, but I have an iPhone 15 Pro Max.
I just tested most of the current front page links with WebView on, as well as some on-site discussion topics. I jumped between starting them in portrait and then flipping to landscape, and then starting some in landscape and flipping to portrait.
I wasn’t able to reproduce a crash. All actions worked as intended.
Once 1.4 hits the App Store for me I’m happy to re-run the tests.
Also if you ever need help testing stuff in general, just ask! I can’t code, so testing is one way I feel like I can help contribute to tech projects I love.
Wow thank you for taking the time to test that out! Taking a closer look, it looks like iPhone 15 Pro Max does have at least one report of this crash. Otherwise it's mostly from iPhone 16 Pro Max. iOS 18.1.1 and 18.3.2 at least are affected. And it has been around in the app since app version 1.2 at least, including 1.3.1.
Based on how hard it is to artificially reproduce the bug, I'm thinking it may possibly be an app resumption bug. As in when the app hasn't been opened in a long time, and the system clears some of its memory, then next time opening the app might be buggy, and I need to handle that better.
My app updated to 1.4.1 this morning, so I re-ran the tests trying to replicate the crash. No dice. Everything is still working as intended for me.
Is it only the Pro Max that this is happening on, and not also the Pro? Weird if so. :/
AFAIK the Pro Max goes into tablet mode when in landscape, whereas the Pro doesn't. But it's been inconsistent across different iPhone model generations so that might not always be true. The reports I've gotten are from 15 and 16 Pro Max.
Ah, I didn't know that about the Pro Max. It makes sense that it might be the only model effected then, if that's the case. Thanks for the insight.
So switched phones temporarily, so am using the app for the first time again in a year. I have a few bugs/thoughts/feature requests:
It seems like the votes on posts and comments are not working on my device. When I press the button to vote, it shows as light grey, signifying that it has registered the vote, but then it appears to never register the vote. I am using my mom's old phone which appears to be bugs in other apps, so I would not spend time on this unless others are having the same issue.
I have filtered out some topics, but I have no indication if I am getting my filtered feed or not (I suspect I am getting a filtered feed, but since my filters are minimal there is not a big difference). On the website there is an indicator at the top of my feed to switch between a filtered/unfiltered feed. Is it possible to add that to the app roadmap?
CSS themes that Tildes uses on the app?
I love the grey indicator for new comments when it is less than 10% new comments. It has thrown me off before that this is an exclusive Three Cheers feature, as it feels like a part of Tildes philosophy and I have tried applying it on desktop before. Since you are a maintainer for Tildes now, is this something to consider adding in to Tildes?
Overall, fantastic app. I have enjoyed seeing all the improvements that have been done in the past year since I have used it last.
Another thing I have noticed is the use of color as the only differentiator of new comments in threads. I am running dark mode, but also have my screen set to grayscale (to reduce phone usage). The orange line to indicate new comments is not perceptible to me. I am fine with it personally, since I am trying to taper off my phone usage. However, it might be worth looking into for accessibility with color blindness