Former Apple intern Christian Selig says he wasn’t glad about iOS apps’ choice for surfing Reddit, so he determined to build his own. This week, the developer released his very own Reddit purchaser, Apollo, which offers a very designed browsing revel for iPhone and iPad, in addition to customizable gestures, a media viewer, a complete Markdown writing editor, and different capabilities inspired by utilizing Reddit user feedback.
“Other Reddit apps for iOS don’t follow iOS design guidelines nicely, and look pretty out-of-area as a result, growing a strange revel in for customers that don’t mesh nicely with the rest of the iOS ecosystem,” explains Selig, approximately why he changed into encouraged to construct a brand new Reddit app. “They also don’t function as a full substitute for the computer website,” he introduced. With Apollo, he hopes to offer not only a higher cell version of Reddit but one that beats surfing the web page thru the web, too.
The first thing you’ll observe about Apollo is its appearance and experience, which does experience more in step with Apple’s design than many other Reddit customers today. It’s a stunning, easy, current app that is simple to navigate. The App includes five tabs: Posts, Inbox, Account, Search, and Settings, all accessible from the bottom of the screen.
You can browse the Reddit homepage from the main display screen (Posts) in accelerated or compact mode. The former is the default and is a better experience for viewing the imagery and motion pictures accompanying the posts; however, if you select a denser appearance, you could transfer over to compact mode from the “extra” button pinnacle right of the display screen.
From there, you could additionally type the feed by using what’s warm, favorite objects, conceal the posts you’ve read, and proportion gadgets. The App also consists of its personal integrated media viewer for viewing Reddit content and those from sources like Imgur, Gfycat, Imgflip, XKCD, Streamable, YouTube, Vimeo, and others, when connected to Reddit posts.
From the viewer, you could upvote or downvote the content, tap to view the feedback or get entry to extra capabilities, like saving the photograph or GIF for your device, starting the content material in Safari, sharing or holding the object, or tapping to view the person’s profile or the subreddit. Some of the little touches in the app talk about the thoughtfulness at the back of its layout. For example, while studying via comments, you’ll know each indent in a protracted thread. The road next to the word has a different color, making it less complicated to distinguish between the posts. When remarks encompass hyperlinks, they open in an internet viewer properly within the App instead of launching Safari. That way, you may view the hyperlink, then tap “Done” to quickly return to the discussion. The App makes good use of gestures properly.
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You can swipe on posts and comments to fall apart them, reply, upvote, downvote, and keep. However, inside the Settings section, you can completely customize these gestures to your liking, including those to your inbox, profile posts, and profile feedback. Beyond changing the motions, Apollo is also noticeably customizable in other regions. You can pick a light or dark topic and configure it to turn on based totally on display screen brightness or nearby sundown instances. (Or you can press and maintain at the navbar to toggle it anytime.)You can pick preferred subreddits in the App’s “Jump Bar” (navbar). You can head into Settings to configure extra controls, like filtered keywords, filtered subreddits, and blocked customers.
And you could add a couple of accounts to the App, which must appeal to folks who like to keep their identities separate. You can even change the default app icon from an expansion of more than a dozen. Because of Selig’s familiarity with Apple, he’s placed the present-day technologies to desirable use inside the App, in addition to being built in Swift four. Zero also uses three-D Touch significantly, and the Taptic Engine, Safari View Controller, and implements Apple’s clever invert added in iOS eleven.
“Fundamentally, even though it becomes constructed entirely with Apple generation to take complete benefit of the platform and honestly experience at domestic on it and right away acquainted to anyone who uses iOS,” Selig says. “In a nutshell, my aim becomes to make it sense like if Apple constructed a Reddit app, so I’d consider it an, in reality, fantastic first elegance citizen of iOS.”
While some of the functions and customizations will please heavy Reddit users (and so far, their comments are largely tremendous), the App additionally appeals to folks who aren’t a part of Reddit’s center base due to its attractive design, emphasis on media content material and simplicity of use. Apollo is a loose download but an in-app purchase of $2.Ninety-nine will unlock greater capabilities, including publishing posts using the Markdown editor (free customers can put up remarks with the editor), the Automatic Dark Mode, the potential to customize your gestures, exchange the app icon, and more.
Thankfully, the App isn’t cluttered through commercials, but there’s an in-app Tip Jar, a newly approved alternative for app builders. The App is simply an exertion of affection from someone who genuinely enjoys Reddit. And it’s been in the works for some time, as it turns out. Selig, who’s based in Halifax, Canada, says he’s been operating on Apollo considering that in September 2015, he graduated from Dalhousie University, wherein he had studied Computer Science. And he worked on it component-time the year before, after briefly interning with Apple as an iOS developer at the Enterprise iOS team. He plans to maintain working on Apollo complete-time but says he may also do some independent contracting on the facet if time permits.
