& I’m doing pretty good! The wefwef app has done a great job of recreating the Apollo experience and has made it a lot easier to not want to go and download the Reddit app. The more active it gets here, the easier it’ll be. How are you guys doing so far? Have you found an App for Lemmy that you prefer the most yet?
I’d love to comment more but I’m still so confused. People keep talking about all these other apps and here I am just typing lemmy.world into my chrome browser on my phone. I’ve never felt more old. I’ve read every how-to I can find and I think I need to just come to terms with being old. 🥲
Lemmy also has an API that clients can get information/content from. The Web frontend (lemmy.world) is one of them. Apps like wefwef and Jerboa also ask the Lemmy API for content and display it in their own way.
Thank you! Would you be able to explain what element.io is? I’m going around trying all the buttons and when I click the button to PM someone I get a note saying it’s not secure and to make an account on element.io
That’s the second time this site or someone on it has prompted me to make another account somewhere else (the first was mastodon,) and I’m not really grasping why. I understand the “login for secure communications” part, but not how all these apps/websites work together and which ones I need. I signed up for Mastodon but it’s like a 3rd party app for Twitter and that has me extra confused.
Element is a client for Matrix, a decentralized chat protocol featuring end-to-end-encryption. Lemmy seems to support DMs over the Matrix Chat protocol. Matrix is federated, so [email protected] can talk to [email protected].
Some fediverse apps can work together seamlessly, some can’t, and support seems to be growing over time. E. g. Mastodon users can comment on PeerTube, but Lemmy users can’t (not that I know of), but it’s not impossible that will change in the future. But, kbin for example integrates seamlessly into Lemmy.
If the mobile website fine for you, you don’t need to get an app. I used the mobile website in my phone’s browser with no problem for a few days before I started trying out apps out of curiosity. So far, I’ve settled on the Liftoff app, but again having an app isn’t necessary because of how well the mobile website works. I’m not someone who needs an app for everything and I prefer it when mobile websites are useable. Reddit made me angry when they made their mobile website annoying to use by trying to force people onto their app. I used a 3rd-party app instead, but now that’s going away so here I am on Lemmy.
If you don’t want to bother with Lemmy apps, you can create a shortcut to Lemmy.world on your phone’s home screen which can make it faster to open up Lemmy as if you were using an app. Since you’re using Chrome, I’m assuming you’re on Android, so here are some instructions if you want to add the shortcut.
How to Add a Website to Your Android Home Screen
Hope that helps!
Edit: Also, if you do want to try out an app, Here’s a post with some Lemmy apps that are currently available. If you need any more help, just let us know!
Edit 2: I just found this well-curated app list from Lemdro.id that includes app descriptions: https://lemdro.id/post/4319
That’s all so helpful, thank you so much!
I edited my first comment with this Lemdro.id link that lists all available apps with descriptions if you’re interested in finding an app that works for you. If you want to vote and comment on that post with your lemmy.world account, I think this link will work for you https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected] From there just go to the topic. Hmm, my preview is showing that link as a lemm.ee link (my instance) rather than a lemmy.world link, so sorry if it doesn’t work for you. But I include it to show you how to make links on other instances accessible to your own account on a different instance for voting, subscribing, and commenting.
‘Your instance url/c/community name@community’s instance url’ does the trick. Took me a little while to figure that out, so I thought I’d give you a tip too. 🙂
The other way to do it is just to go to Communities at the top of your instance and use the search box to search for the community name. Make sure to select All under List of Communities so that the results include communities on other instances. When the community comes up in the results, you’ll be able to go to it and interact with it on your account. Just look to make sure it’s right instance as we do have some duplicate communities in the Fediverse across different instances. Like if you search Android in the Communities search box with All selected, we currently have 3 communities that are /c/Android but on 3 different instances: lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, and Lemdro.id. But if you search Lemdroid, there’s only one community and that’s on Lemdro.id.
Also I don’t know if you’ve seen this image which helped me understand more how Lemmy works: The Fediverse for Reddit Refugees. It goes over with pictures how to search for Lemmy communities.
same here, tbh. lemmy’s no-nonsense ui works great on a phone, and with modern ui design that’s actually expected behavior. so many sites intentionally break their mobile site to push people toward apps but that doesn’t mean the browser should be useless on mobile.
That’s so true! I guess I’ve kinda forgotten the days when I used reddit on my desktop browser. I used rif and other apps for so long, being back in my browser feels foreign again.