
Apollo: An iOS Reddit app built for power and speed - nvr219
https://apolloapp.io/
======
blackbrokkoli
In my opinion Apollo retains the biggest flaw of the reddit redesign, which is
sad:

By making the post body, and especially pictures, the first class citizen you
incentivize all the wrong things:

* It is inviting to mindlessly scroll

* Attracting karma is paramount: The game is "upvote this in the 2 seconds I am spending scrolling past it or not"

* This in turn incentivizes shallow posts, strong, polarizing messages with no depth

At the same time, the mechanisms why I use(d) reddit over all the other
escapism-in-a-bottle platforms are all discouraged:

* Reading comments, engaging in discussion. You don't even have to open the comment section anymore, so why would you? And if, you will only ever read one or two top comments, inviting the same lowest common denominator battle as with posts themselves.

* Building community, in-depth analysis, being exposed to alternating view points. Well, no place for that in the framework of rapid swiping and shouting in the void.

Good job on the Apollo team to at least include what they call "compact mode"
(showcased about a second in the promo video), but the problem with these
effects is that they are negatively affecting quality overall, whether or not
you as a individual choose to sidestep them.

I hope a new community aggregator like the old reddit will arise soon...

~~~
iamthatis
Yo, Apollo dev here. FWIW there's no team, just me.

To answer some of these, Apollo was created well before the Reddit redesign, I
started working on it back in 2014.

I'm not sure I 100% understand the criticism though. Inviting you to scroll
through an app is a pretty normal thing, isn't it? What's the alternative?

I'm gathering you'd prefer more of a comments-focused experience rather than
one focused around the posts themselves specifically? I've been on Reddit for
over a decade, as far as I remember the posts have always been paramount and
what attract people to the site, even though the discussions are great too.
They're just a tap away. As you mentioned you can go into compact mode, then
disable the thumbnails and you've basically got Hacker News, haha.

Your criticism seems like more of a comment on Reddit as a platform/community
rather than a specific app (though I'm not sure what you mean by "old Reddit",
Alien Blue?), but if I'm wrong about that I'm happy to hear any criticism.

~~~
mentos
Incredible work really oozes polish and intuitive design.

Have you been chipping away at this since 2014 or did something change in your
motivation recently where you decided to complete it?

What would your reaction be to someone suggesting a rewrite in Electron so you
could achieve crossplatform support?

~~~
morpheuskafka
I think what makes Apollo great is how closely it integrates with the iOS
interface and design language. Its value proposition is that it matches
expectations of iOS users and is fast and intuitive on that platform. If you
re-wrote it in Electron I think it would become "just another reddit client."

~~~
saagarjha
Apollo actually ditches native components in certain places and tries to
reimplement their behavior, getting it wrong in some places. It drives me
insane enough to use an entirely different app :(

~~~
iamthatis
Apollo dev here, like what?

~~~
saagarjha
Off the top of my head, Apollo's recreations of the action sheet, search bar,
and navigation controller have subtle bugs. The action sheet is missing
vibrancy and does not respond correctly to touch in/out events, nor does it
give any sort of indication of being scrollable (it also does the "oreo" thing
if you switch between appearances). The search bar does not animate correctly
when navigating between view controllers and while collapsing has incorrect
rounding and shading. It also fails to take user input or respond to touches
at all during animations. Your custom navigation controller does not animate
titles correctly, and its swipe handling is frustratingly divergent from the
system's: it accepts swipes starting almost a centimeter from the edge and is
far too sensitive to accidental flicks. Plus, stylistically, it should be
using large titles in certain places but does not.

These might seem like minor things, and they probably are for most people, but
as an heavy iOS user I have a very good sense for how system components look
and function, and it drives me up a wall when people reimplement them but
break or fail to support some of their behaviors (specifically: if your custom
component is supposed to look like a system control, it better act exactly
like one!). As an iOS engineer I also know that these parts of UIKit are the
somewhat problematic to deal with, but I appreciate apps that take the time to
get it right and I would have hoped that an app that prides itself on looking
at home on iOS would have put in the effort to care about this as I do. Hope
this helps.

------
srik
Apollo is honestly the only way to tolerate reddit on iOS (despite all the
shortcoming everyone has pointed out). But the most interesting thing about
Apollo is the dev's tight feedback loop with his users. Apollo's subreddit has
activity that most indie developers can only dream of, and it's well deserved
too; Christian goes the extra mile to interact with his users and constantly
takes their input into account.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp)

~~~
highmastdon
I’m still using Alien Blue. The reader mode for external websites and the
multireddit categories is what I’m missing most in other Reddit apps

~~~
iamthatis
Yo, Apollo dev here. Could you clarify a bit? There's a setting to make Apollo
always use reader mode for websites, and you can create/edit/view multireddits
in Apollo as well, I don't think Alien Blue even had multireddit support?
([https://www.reddit.com/r/AlienBlue/comments/2kd9yz/does_alie...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AlienBlue/comments/2kd9yz/does_alien_blue_support_multireddits/))

~~~
rlad
Alien Blue works better than Apollo in reader mode in several very significant
ways:

\- In AB dark mode there is no white flash! The screen stays black while the
page is loading. In Apollo the screen goes white until the page is finished
loading.

\- In AB the reader mode forces all sites into reader / minimal HTML mode
whether or not the website wants to allow reader mode

\- In AB the reader mode seems to get more images and other content which is
left out of reader mode by websites. It also seems to be less confused by some
websites that display something other than the main content when reader mode
is selected.

~~~
rladd
Disappointed that there was no reply to this from the developer. Apparently he
either doesn't care about these issues or finds them too difficult to correct!

------
ftio
Not only is Apollo the best Reddit app for iOS, it might be one of the best
3rd-party iOS apps out there, period.

It’s incredibly well-designed, very fast, and it’s updated very consistently.
Christian, the developer, is a former Apple guy, and it shows — the level of
attention and care he puts in is unparalleled.

I’d love a hand-curated (by someone with good taste) list of apps of this
quality. Anyone know of one?

~~~
bravura
Bear app for notes, and also see recommendations on thesweetsetup.com... my
only grip with bear is it’s iOS only, no web access even. I didn’t care until
my iOS and mac both died during travel and i couldn’t use bear from droid or
linux

~~~
asdff
If you want true cross platform, theres always a cloud service + plain text
files.

------
1123581321
This is possibly my most-uninstalled app because it makes reddit too addicting
for me to handle.

Its popularity is certainly a comment on the problems with overly JavaScript
heavy web apps.

Apollo’s biggest weakness is notifications. They don’t appear as quickly as
they should and, for me, chat notifications don’t come through at all. I don’t
prefer chat, but I’ve noticed an increasing number of users will open a chat
with you instead of messaging you now.

It also doesn’t support having multiple “tabs” open at once, although you can
sort of hack it by using the main tab and the search tab. Hoping multiple tabs
come to the eventual iPad-optimized release.

But again, great app. Possibly too great for people with limited self-control!

~~~
iamthatis
Thanks, apologies for your loss in productivity. :P Great criticism too, re:
notifications being a bit slow, that's something I'm working to improve; being
an iOS dev the backend web stuff isn't my strongest programming suit, so I'm
working to improve that or at least get someone who knows more to be able to
help me there.

Chat's a little trickier, I've talked to Reddit about that and they don't seem
particularly interested in granting access to third party devs for whatever
reason, even though they have an open API for basically everything else, and
they said a few years back they were looking into it.

~~~
markholmes
Is there or could there be a way to disable the Home and All buttons? I find
Reddit to be much less of a time suck if I’m going to specific subreddits and
reading interesting content, but I often just mindlessly browse All without
thinking. I had to remove Apollo from my phone (even though I paid for it!)
because I often find myself spending too much time doing nothing. My current
solution is bookmarking a bunch of i.reddit.com URLs in Safari, but the
experience is really poor.

Thanks for making an app that I used for far too many hours.

~~~
jaflo
I think it would be interesting to disable the infinite scroll and either
having a button to load the next page or disable loading the next page
entirely.

~~~
rekoil
Never thought about it before, but that makes a lot of sense. The act of
choosing to load another page might be enough for me to realise I should have
gone to sleep about 2 hours prior.

------
iamthatis
Hey, I made this! Cool to be on HN. :D Thanks for all the kind words.

~~~
jjcm
Heya Christian - huge fan of the app. I was wondering if you could share some
of your journey / early designs for the app? It’s one of the most well
designed mobile apps I’ve used and I’d be curious to see how it evolved in
your mind.

~~~
saagarjha
You might find some interesting stuff on the subreddit
([https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/);](https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/\);)
it was in TestFlight for quite a while even before being released.

------
qubex
I’ve been using it for (if memory serves) and I can confirm it’s by far the
best Reddit client I’ve ever used. The only (microscopic) downside is that
when one navigates to a Reddit link it isn’t offered as an option to open in.
But that‘a Reddit’s doing and not theirs. Thumbs up.

~~~
1123581321
Do you use the Opener app? It is a quick two taps to share reddit links with
it, and then it automatically kicks reddit links over to Apollo.

~~~
qubex
Never heard of _Opener_ before. Just purchased it on the App Store. Thanks!

~~~
pzumk
You could’ve always copied the URL and just opened Apollo. The app detects the
Reddit-Link ask you if you want to open the URL inside Apollo. But I’m using
Opener too, it’s a great app not only for Reddit links.

------
rhlsthrm
Apollo is cool, but I found myself going back to Narwhal after trying out both
for a while. I love the comments on top of the media view for Narwhal, and
Apollo hasn't matched that experience. The app looks awesome though, either
way they are both amazing apps.

~~~
rickharrison
Creator of narwhal here! Thanks for the kind words. We are working on an all
new version and hope to share something soon :)

~~~
TheFutureIsNear
Amazing to hear! Narwhal is my favourite reddit client as well. Any chance of
getting in on beta testing when it's ready?

------
hprotagonist
I don't use reddit any other way right now, honestly.

I miss the side-pane view that AlienBlue had for iPad, but everything else is
great.

~~~
iamthatis
I'm working on an iPad app that takes better advantage of what it can offer,
for sure. As it stands it's basically a blown up version of the iPhone app
with an extra day's work tacked on top, the new version I'm working on is a
ton better. :)

------
x__x
I have completely fazed out reddit from my daily browsing. Unless it is an
obscere sub on a niche topic, the posts on there are gamed and manipulated to
the front page.

That site has essentially turned into mainstream media with links curated by
big companies and special interest groups, with the illusion of community
curated content.

It's going to be a shit show this coming election with groups spending tens of
millions of dollars on gaming that site

------
emit_time
I was back on the /r/apolloapp sub before the app was released, and was in an
early public beta.

I had so many major gripes with all the other reddit apps for iOS, and I tried
all the major ones.

I remember using it and dealing with all the bugs, and seeing all the deadline
delays etc, never expecting to see it come to light.

Left for a while, and then it was actually released.

And I LOVE it.

Thank you so much iamthatis :)

------
slipheen
The biggest advantage for me over the official app is that it doesn't
automatically open why I try to load Reddit links in Safari.

Afaik, ios doesn't provide anyway to forcibly disable that behavior system-
wide.

That behavior is a deal breaker for me, so I can't have any official apps
installed.

~~~
saagarjha
I believe you can disable that behavior by long pressing on a link in Safari
and choosing "open in Safari" or whatever. After that it will continue to open
links in the browser. (Yeah, they got rid of the more convenient way to do
this…)

------
elm_
One of the best Reddit apps I've ever used, makes it far too easy to browse
Reddit! Plus updates usually come with pretty decent changes

------
krbzsq
I rate Apollo highly. Very well-designed, very fast and honestly I won't use
reddit in a web browser anymore, specifically because the experience doesn't
come close to Apollo. So my hats off to the developer.

That said, one really annoying bug that seems to have shown up since iOS 13,
is that on the odd occasion after being on another app and swiping back to
Apollo the swipe down to refresh feature just doesn't seem to appear or it
freezes when it does appear and forces me to restart the app.

Just curious if anyone else has had this issue?

------
berberous
Apollo is really well done, but there’s certain bugs that have been in it
since day 1 that are still not fixed (despite reporting them) that kill it for
me — namely that “load more” does not fetch the next set of comments in
chronological order when sorting by new.

I resorted to trying the official Reddit app and was pleasantly surprised. I
assumed it would be way worse, but it’s actually excellent. If you haven’t
tried it in a while, I’d recommend it.

------
mcatis
Apollo had my favourite feature from any Reddit browsing experience, which was
displaying the parent comment of the comment you are viewing if you used 3D
Touch. I found this incredibly useful while browsing through long discussions,
and it made the experience of reading through comments, which are often my
favourite part of using Reddit, so much more convenient than anywhere else.

After Apple removed 3D Touch from their new devices, I assumed that some kind
of workaround would be introduced into the app, even if it wouldn’t be as
convenient as the old method. But despite seeing it mentioned a bunch of times
on the Apollo subreddit, the usually very responsive developer has ignored
people asking about it, and no workaround has appeared. It’s still probably
the best Reddit app out there, but it’s a real shame to see such a useful
feature removed and users ignored.

------
niknetniko
People who want an app on Android with similar features can try Sync for
Reddit, which is my go-to app.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsync/](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsync/)

------
samcat116
By far the best Reddit experience I've used

------
geuis
Installed the app, removed it pretty much right away.

It makes the same poor design choices as the “new reddit” redesign.

For what it’s worth, I still exclusively use the old reddit desktop mode on
desktop and mobile. There’s an option towards the bottom of your account
settings to make this permanent.

~~~
repeek
Have you tried changing the view to Compact Mode?

~~~
geuis
Yep. Still not a fan.

------
skizm
I wish someone would re-make i.reddit.com a bit better. They stopped
supporting it and bugs are slowly creeping in. Most notably the infinite
scrolling doesn't work very well (for me at least) and my position gets reset
when I go back after clicking a link.

~~~
thekingshorses
Try this [https://reddit.premii.com/](https://reddit.premii.com/)

------
megablast
Apollo might be awful, but it can't be worse than reddit on the iOS browser,
which they deliberately hobble by constantly asking you to switch to app, and
logging you out.

Now, if this app removed duplicates of stories and pics that I had seen, that
would be great.

------
StephanTLavavej
Dark mode is still incompatible with monospace code regions, as reported
several times in the ApolloApp subreddit; I tried using Apollo yesterday but
couldn’t get past this bug (as I read a lot of code on reddit). Please fix
this and I’ll buy the app!

------
futhey
Loved Apollo. Great app. Lately, it's gotten stuck re-loading the app on every
re-launch for me, after upgrading to premium, making it near unusable (or at
least incredibly frustrating) on the iPhone.

------
huhtenberg
Does it show ads?

~~~
procinct
It shows it’s own ads, not Reddit’s. you can pay a one-time fee to remove them
as well.

~~~
hombre_fatal
I've always thought that kind of business model was a bit questionable. You
build a client and show ads on top of someone else's content?

We consider it pretty ridiculous if a browser were to inject its own ads. Yet
if you build a client that pulls free content from
[https://librivox.org/](https://librivox.org/) or podcast RSS and serve it
from their servers, nobody bats an eye if you inject ads into it.

Though I'm pretty sure I haven't noticed ads on Apollo off the top of my head.
I thought their biz model was to just paywall pro features.

~~~
iamthatis
Apollo doesn't have any ads or do this, not sure what that person is talking
about. (Apollo dev)

~~~
flocial
I'm guessing he means the upgrade call to action or release notes (lots of
updates to the app so some might consider it an annoyance who knows). BTW,
thanks for the app. After Alien Blue died a slow painful death I was lost for
a decent client.

Please change the swipe sensitivity for collapsing comments or sending replies
or maybe change single tap to collapse. I always trigger replies when I want
to collapse.

Edit: found the setting and changed both to collapse (I'm pretty sure it
wasn't there before. This app's constantly being polished up)

------
askafriend
Incredibly well design and executed Reddit app.

If Reddit had any sense, they'd throw a pile of money at this guy to get him
on-board.

------
tuananh
antenna is still my favorite reddit client.

the ui is simple and fast. gestures are intuitive.

[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/antenna-client-for-
reddit/id57...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/antenna-client-for-
reddit/id572391252)

------
bestnameever
I wish this app had basic notification support. I don't care for push
notifications.

------
lawnchair_larry
Does this use any third party analytics libraries, facebook sdk, etc?

------
teknover
Reading the comments, I thought I’d jump in to try Apollo again. I recalled it
being stifling and yep sure enough, it hasn’t changed:

Basic navigational functionality such as swiping through content from one post
to another is not available by default, instead it is behind a paywall.

Look, I totally get if there’s premium functionality such as notifications,
better posting functions that you need to charge for it.

But as it exists it has less functionality than the default reddit app in
which you can navigate. If you’ve already broken user trust by degrading a
basic service I will not trust to pay you for the rest.

