
GitHub for mobile is now available - theBashShell
https://github.blog/2020-03-17-github-for-mobile-is-now-available/
======
dochtman
I've been using betas for the Android app, but in my experience there's still
a lot of paper cuts here.

For example, I do quite a few code reviews on my Pixel 2, but what drives me
crazy is that the lines in the diffs wrap! On top of that, the code font it
uses is pretty large, so wrapping happens often and makes reviewing much
harder.

The support for per-commit code review (which is only so-so in the desktop web
experience) is even harder to use on mobile.

The main activity feed from / is nowhere to be seen, even though this is
something I use daily on my laptops (long-standing pet peeve, since this is
also non-existent in the mobile web view).

If you follow a link to particular issue comment (for example, from the bottom
of a notification email), the Android app will just land you at the top of the
issue.

So, having the app is an improvement over the mobile web experience
(particularly since the PR review approval button was impossible to hit in the
mobile web view without zooming), but IMO there's still a lot to be done here,
and I hope they keep executing on it.

~~~
monkey_slap
Really good feedback, I feel you on the text wrapping. We're trying to find
creative ways to make this work better.

> The main activity feed from / is nowhere to be seen, even though this is
> something I use daily on my laptops

Can you tell me more about what you use this feed for? You're talking about
the one on the github.com home page?

Again thanks for the feedback, we have a lot of work to do still! Forwarding
this comment to the team.

~~~
bob1029
I feel for text wrapping, letting it simply flow off the device screen works
well in this UX scenario because all of these devices should be expected to be
multi-touch enabled. It is very intuitive for a mobile device user to swipe
left/right in order to scroll content that is obviously clipped by the screen
dimensions. Swiping left/right and pinching to zoom are the very first things
I tried when reviewing a PR. I feel if you could support some approach where
the text item is displayed at full scale always (no line break/wrapping), and
the user can basically treat the view like they would an image (pinch-to-
zoom/pan).

Additionally, perhaps the code review process on mobile could be somewhat
different from the desktop experience. Instead of trying to display the full
diff all at once for a file, perhaps you aggregate the diff regions, and then
display those one-at-a-time. Sort of like a tinder for code reviews. Swipe
left on a diff region for deeper review, swipe right for approval. Lots of
cool stuff you can do if you fully-leverage the mobile device environment and
related user knowledge.

BTW, I love the direction all of this is headed in. Keep up the great work.

~~~
richbradshaw
Tinder UI idea is very smart - that’s a great idea!

------
ilikehurdles
I wish their web experience was improved on mobile. I have no interest in
downloading apps of 90% of the websites I visit on my mobile browser. Right
now the rare times I need to use github on mobile, I almost always have to
switch to the desktop view because their mobile offering is so lacking in
critical features.

~~~
chatmasta
I wish they showed the full readme by default on mobile repository pages. If
I'm on my phone, there's a good chance I'm only there to look at the readme,
anyway. Just let the readme extend down without needing to expand it. Or at
least, don't make expanding it a new page load.

~~~
apple4ever
Agree with you there. Many times I have been frustrated that I have to find
and then click the readme button.

------
Quarrelsome
As someone that works for an organisation that develops almost 100% desktop
applications and desktop form-factor web applications, I've been somewhat
terrified of the new entrants into the workforce that started on phones as
opposed to computers. It seems like nobody is taking their existence and
eventual assumption of purchasing decision making powers seriously and I
figure we'll suffer in the long-term as an organisation because of this.

I had been trying to tell myself that people still "sit down at a desktop to
do work" to make myself feel better about our inaction over this it but that
github is spending on mobile form factor makes me feel like I'm lying to
myself about that.

What are people's general takes on this? I sway towards "in twenty years it
will start to be a massive deal" but I struggle to find a convincing platform
to soapbox on this to the organisation at large.

~~~
mscasts
My take is that most companies don't need a native app unless they're
specifically targeting mobile users and doesn't have a need for desktop users.

So you're better off generally to make the app a web app. If that doesn't work
yet, are you sure about that? With web assembly and some new browser apis it's
really very few apps left that actually need the native experience.

Sure if you build apps for cars, planes or something like that I understand
that you want the native experience. But there is also tons of "native with an
asterisk" tools like Xamarin and React Native for example.

Sure the app may be a bit larger but do users really care? With those kind of
technologies you can build native for all platforms easily.

The choice really is up to the developers and there is lots of choices
nowadays, thankfully.

~~~
Quarrelsome
A lot of this is legacy which is why making the argument for change is one
about expense. Its about justifying the expense by selling the hot path of the
use-case of using technical applications on a phone. Everyone is sunk-cost
fallacy here over the potential of mobile use-cases, they're dismissed as a
use-case.

I vaguely bought into the idea for a while and now github are like:

> Review PRs and look at code on a mobile form factor

and now I'm like:

> oh, so that use-case is a thing?

I'm terrified some CTO in twenty years time of an org we want to sell it to
will instantly shitcan our offering because it doesn't support mobile use-
cases. Because mobile is their culture and the reason we don't value it today
is _only_ because mobile isn't the culture we grew up with.

~~~
cercatrova
Well, you gotta follow the market, right? If they want mobile, then you'll
have to give them mobile, lest they not buy from you. What is terrifying about
that, except for not wanting to change?

~~~
Quarrelsome
> What is terrifying about that

Being a dinosaur and seeing a big fiery thing in the sky. Thinking maybe it'd
be better to get a bit of a head start on that mammal business. But its hard
to make that business case, isn't it? Thankfully this news makes it easier I
guess.

~~~
paulryanrogers
Mobile apps are the mammals, i.e. the future?

~~~
Quarrelsome
ye, possibly. Perhaps when everyone starts out on phone/tablet then desktops
will be seen as old and archaic. I mean its a silly example but I never see
people in sci-fi sit down with a mouse and keyboard. Perhaps new generations
will force in new ergonomic standards?

------
veeralpatel979
I tried out the beta version of GitHub's iOS app. I didn't find a single bug
in it, and I really enjoyed using it for casually browsing code on my phone.

I would highly recommend downloading it if you sometimes take a look at GitHub
repos when on your phone, which I think is most programmers.

Unfortunately I didn't use it for about fourteen days or something so my beta
access was taken away :(

~~~
bullfightonmars
It's pretty nice, but is missing one of my favorite features, the
/commits/branch browser for a repo e.g.
[https://github.com/rails/rails/commits/master](https://github.com/rails/rails/commits/master)

I use this all the time for the repos I work with to review recent work by my
colleagues.

~~~
veeralpatel979
The killer GitHub feature for me is "browse files" at any commit in the past.

~~~
rurp
I love that feature too; I had to use BitBucket on a project a while back and
really missed it. Now I'm using GitLab at my day job and fortunately code
browsing from any commit works great from there as well.

------
nojvek
I don’t understand why this couldn’t be a mobile site. Usually native mobile
apps are a subset of the desktop site. Many lag in features and the apps get
abandoned since their teams get re-orged.

GitHub, you could have shown the world what a truly responsive and progressive
website GitHub is.

------
windthrown
I can't find the source code. Is this app not open-source and hosted on
Github?

~~~
sdan
I'm fairly sure a good chunk of Github isn't open sourced either, no?

~~~
windthrown
You appear to be correct. I had never even thought to check and just assumed
that it was!

------
brenden2
I'm not installing a stupid app so Microsoft can collect data on me. Please
just make the website continue to work properly in a mobile browser.

~~~
bionoid
> I'm not installing a stupid app so Microsoft can collect data on me.

This is going far off topic, but I am currently consulting with a client that
requested using Visual Studio Community Edition [2019] for the project. I was
a month into development, when all of a sudden one morning, it was no longer
possible to start Visual Studio. Why? Because I had not connected it to my
Microsoft account, of course... I wonder how people put up with this..

~~~
MuffinFlavored
> I wonder how people put up with this..

The same way hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) use GitHub
Desktop connected to their GitHub accounts?

~~~
bionoid
Well in that case you are using a cloud-based service, it makes sense that you
have to authenticate. But I was writing and building C++ code just fine
locally, and I could have continued doing that if it wasn't for the dark
pattern.

------
yur3i__
For the free software crowd, fasthub-libre has been around on fdroid for a
while

~~~
RMPR
Interesting, didn't know about that one, how does it compare to Octodroid?

~~~
smichel17
I personally prefer Octodroid. When last I used Fasthub, it felt more
~~polished~~ _snazzy_ but in terms of actually use there was just way too much
navigation chrome on the screen. It didn't get out of my way and let me engage
with the content. That said, this was a couple years ago and it may have
changed.

------
AndyKelley
I can't recommend Octodroid enough. Been using it for years, and it already
does all this stuff. It's easily the most well designed and engineered app on
my phone.

I'm not even going to bother checking out this official app because Octodroid
is perfect.

~~~
RMPR
Not to mention that it's also open source and available on F-Droid, so not
bothering with managing apk manually for those who don't use Playstore.

------
open-paren
Maybe it's ironic, or maybe I am a poor searcher, but I can't find the source
code for the app anywhere.

~~~
Scarbutt
Where does it says it's open source?

~~~
choward
Why not open source it? It's code that runs on my phone, not on their servers.
I have no reason to download an app that could just be a well designed web
site. It being closed source makes me very suspicious of it. What does GitHub
have to hide? It's not like the app is some breakthrough innovation.

~~~
govg
...I mean that is true of a lot of apps on the App Store right now, I don't
think developers are under any impression that they have to make every app
open source.

~~~
choward
True. This is why I don't install any apps. And you would think a company
who's business model revolves around open source would be more likely to open
source their app.

~~~
frizkie
Does their business model revolve around open source? It seems to be the
opposite. I don't have to pay anything to host open-source repositories. We
get free repos now too, with caveats though.

~~~
rurp
I think an analogous questions would be, Does Google's ad business revolve
around search? I expect most would say yes. They don't make any direct money
off of organic links, but those are what drive millions of eyeballs to their
ads every day.

Being the go-to place for open source code is what leads a lot of
people/companies to GitHub's paid offerings.

------
Funes-
Could someone explain to me why would anyone use GitHub on their phones rather
than on a desktop computer? I can't seem to come up with a situation in which
I'd reasonably _need_ to interrupt anything I'm doing in order to check GitHub
on my phone.

~~~
thih9
> Could someone explain to me why would someone use GitHub on their phones
> rather than on a desktop computer?

I think I don't understand the question; how is github's app different than
e.g. airbnb's?

~~~
picozeta
How is it _not_ totally different?

People use Airbnb to rent apartments and people use GitHub to develop and
share source code for software.

~~~
thih9
Let me be more precise: "how is github's app [existence] different than e.g.
airbnb's?".

The grandparent asked a question, my point is that you could replace "github"
with any other company that keeps both a web app and a mobile app:

> > Could someone explain to me why would someone use GitHub on their phones
> rather than on a desktop computer?

------
sysashi
I'm really curious why would you need a special app to view text? Why browser
is not sufficient enough for that use?

~~~
ducaale
Viewing large files such as this one
[https://github.com/replit/play/blob/master/play/play.py](https://github.com/replit/play/blob/master/play/play.py)
crash my feeble galaxy note8. Viewing the same file on this app does not cause
issues so that is one use case I guess?

~~~
sysashi
Seems like that, yeah. But again, I believe your issue is related to some non-
optimized content for mobile. Perhaps the thing that crashes is syntax
highlighting script, whereas on mobile they have something native. (just a
guess..)

------
hprotagonist
[https://workingcopy.app](https://workingcopy.app) is my go-to here.

Strongly recommended. And the author responds to emails all the time.

------
sbr464
It let me sign in without 2factor, which is definitely enabled across our org.

-edit

It does use 2fa, I retried signing out of the browser and app, and then it
prompted. It was using the browser token.

~~~
aclelland
If you were already logged in through your default browser it'll use that to
authenticate you through oauth.

~~~
sbr464
Ok, that makes sense if true. It asked for my password, so wasn’t clear.

------
makecheck
Definitely recommend installing the app by clicking on the link in the blog.
The App Store’s search is so terrible that it’s basically impossible to find
this by searching for “GitHub”.

~~~
AgloeDreams
I think it is because it is cached, common on new releases. It will show nice
and high after a few hours.

------
thanksforfish
I'm trying this out for code review on public transit.

My use case is that I batch a few small code reviews for the end of the day,
and check on the status of some larger reviews that doing early reviews or
working through edits.

I've previously been using the website on a mobile web browser, but it's not
mobile optimized so touch points are fiddly, views need to be adjusted, long
lines are hard to read, and I need to be wary about losing connection when
adding a comment. Complex reviews sometimes take review of code in other
files, jumping back and forth, so the mobile experience is lacking.

First impression is that the contrast for the red/green highlights seems a
little low. I may just not be used to the color scheme though.

------
maxk42
I'm having trouble understanding the use case here. If someone submits a pull
request, don't I have to review that in a dev environment? Same for
downloading / trying out a project. What is the utility of having access via
mobile?

~~~
robmccoll
For a small change set with CI that runs automatically against PRs for both
the branch and the result of the merge, I think this is a useful and safe
option to quickly review something. Similarly if you do a lot of your project
management through GitHub, having the ability to file and track issues from
your phone is nice.

------
frizkie
Anyone not seeing the app on the Apple app store? The link in the blog post
works, but I can't find it from search on my phone.

EDIT: I was able to open the app store link on my phone, and it worked then.
Apple's indexes not updated I guess?

~~~
nicwolff
It's under "Apps We Love Right Now" in the iPhone's App Store, but doesn't
appear in search results for "github" at all...

------
bnycum
My only wish is for multiple account support, figured that would be a feature.
I have a personal and work account.

------
bhairoxx
What's the tech? Fully native, React Native or something else?

~~~
noughtme
First line of the post: “At Universe, we announced GitHub for mobile as a
fully-native GitHub experience on iOS and Android.”

------
AgloeDreams
Really great, has push notifications all that.

I just wish I got a push notification...for when I'm assigned to review a PR.
Really annoying.

~~~
monkey_slap
Thanks for this feedback, giving people more options for push notifications is
on our roadmap! Including letting you set schedules for when you can receive
them.

~~~
AgloeDreams
That right there is killer. Thanks!

------
dstaley
The single biggest gripe I have with GitHub on Android is that when I click on
a GitHub link to a new repo, it asks if I want to open the repo in Chrome or
GitHub. This happens for every. single. repo. I think they messed up their URL
intent handler such that each repo counts as a different intent. It's super
annoying.

~~~
AlphaWeaver
Android recently rolled out a change which sometimes requires you to update
the preference to "Always open *.com links in this app" in the application
page in the system settings dialog. This might be what's causing this issue.

~~~
dstaley
Oh my god you're a life saver. Thank you so much for pointing that out!

------
rahimnathwani
I'm not able to log in on Android. This is what I did:

1\. click the install button in Google Play the app

2\. open chrome and continue browsing HN

3\. come across an HN post that's hosted on GitHub, and click on it

4\. When prompted, tell Android that I always want to open GitHub links in the
GitHub app

5\. When the app opens, tap the sign in button

Expected: a form to enter my username

Actual: app disappears and I'm back at the launcher

Tried this to fix it:

\- force quit the app

\- clear storage and cache

Didn't work.

What I guess is happening: GitHub app is trying to redirect me to the system
browser to log in, but Android intercepts the link as it's on the GitHub.com
domain, so should be opened by the GitHub app. But around that time, the
GitHub app decides it wants to background itself and wait to be reopened by an
intent, once the browser completes the auth process.

Just a guess.

~~~
gullevek
On iOS I have the same issue. When I click on the "Sign In" black button it
just reloads the app. I tried it on Wi-Fi and normal mobile network.

------
calpaterson
They previously had an app. It seems it was removed from app stores.

> At Universe [...]

What is universe?

~~~
XiZhao
Universe is GitHub's annual developer conference.
[https://githubuniverse.com/](https://githubuniverse.com/)

------
elpakal
Sweet! I was at universe when this was announced and have been using the iOS
Testflight releases. Good to see the progress and congrats to the team.

Now... any plans to open source these repos?!

------
cryptonector
I can't find it on the Apple app store among the see of other GitHub apps. I
had to visit HN, find this story, and click the link to the app.

~~~
rcarmo
Go to the post and click on the direct link, the catalogue front-ends aren't
synced yet.

------
m0zg
Needs multiple account support IMO. A lot of us have a separate "work" and
"personal" accounts.

------
hiram112
I'm not all that interested in being able to use Git itself on my phone or
even tablet. It's not practical, and there already exists several decent apps
for doing so.

I'd much rather have Github provide an app that shows me trends and analytics
that only they have access to. There are (or were) a few sites and apps that
provided a way to see most starred repos by various criteria like all-time vs
last week, language, company, search term, etc., but they're hit or miss, and
often die when Github changes their API.

Not only is it very helpful for my career, but I also personally enjoy seeing
what is becoming very popular out there, and what I might be able to use on
future projects.

I think Github is missing out on some money if they don't end up monetizing
their knowledge of what projects are most popular (beyond just stars and
forks) - any project lead or architect who is still using sales teams,
marketing, etc. to decide on what tools and frameworks to use is going to be
left in the dust by the ones who keep up to date on what's trending at Github,
especially for higher level projects related to Kubernetes, clustering, DB
scaling, etc.

~~~
saagarjha
The GitHub app doesn't let you use Git from your mobile device; it's more
about providing access to the service's "social" features.

------
msh
Hmm does not really seem to be a git client, more the social fluff.

I guess working copy is still the best git client for ios.

~~~
robenkleene
I find GitHub's app strategy incredibly bizarre: On the desktop, where there
are _tons_ of git clients already (not to mention the command line) GitHub's
app is just another git client. Here I'd expect them to emphasize their social
features because that's what would differentiate it from other git clients,
and it's what differentiates their entire product from other git hosts.

Then on mobile, where there's very little git client competition, pretty much
just Working Copy, they don't make a git client, and instead emphasize the
social features...

~~~
cormacrelf
Sounds right to me? You wouldn’t edit code on your phone. Git client on an
iPad is barely usable to edit anything, just give up and use ssh. On a
desktop, the browser already has the social features, and it would be a waste
of your employees to constantly replicate work to the desktop client.

GitHub isn’t competing against Working Copy, or SourceTree. It’s competing
against GitLab etc. So on desktop, they aimed to make an oversimplified
beginner’s git client, to encourage beginners to use GitHub over alternatives.
On mobile I suspect it was just too hard to build what people needed as a web
app. Some people want push, which iOS web apps can’t do. May as well have it
do a bunch of other things people like to do from their phone, and beat web
with native controls.

~~~
robenkleene
Your point about why the GitHub is about the social features on mobile is spot
on to me.

But the point about the desktop client I don't really follow, and that's my
issue with GitHub's app product strategy: I think both apps should be about
the social features.

I don't understand why a beginner's git client is important (is that really
what GitHub Desktop is supposed to be?). And I'm not sure what this means: "it
would be a waste of your employees to constantly replicate work to the desktop
client"?

I want a social GitHub Desktop client because I want the better integration
with my desktop, e.g., I want notifications for PR reviews and comments on
issues, and I want to be able to jump immediately to the actual source code
file being commented on in my local copy of the source. It seems like these
are similar benefits to why Slack has a desktop app for example. And these are
the types of integrations that would further differentiate GitHub from other
git hosts.

~~~
cormacrelf
Key is that zero development effort need be poured into making a native
version of the github website, because it already works. The web is good
enough on desktop. You want notifications, it could do them! You want to jump
to an editor, no reason why the web couldn't do that (although you might have
to switch branches!). Slack is different because when you're chatting, you
don't really need tabs, but on GH I will usually have 10-15 open from a few
different repos that stay mixed in with other pages for context. You're
throwing away all the good things about browsers if you make it all native.
And then you remember that every social feature comes at the cost of executing
a git client really well. I'm personally very happy with GitUp.app not being
clogged up with GitHub API calls to fetch comments, and showing alerts that
when clicked will pull me away from the commit diff I was viewing. It works
exactly as Git does offline.

If you address all those things, congrats, you've still barely reached par,
and what do you have to show for it? Maybe a cool new look? This is why it's a
waste, and an ongoing cost as GitHub.com evolves.

~~~
robenkleene
> Key is that zero development effort need be poured into making a native
> version of the github website, because it already works.

This is true of every web app that also has a desktop app, e.g., Slack,
Trello, Notion, and Figma. So yes, that trade off always exists. I'd just
prefer GitHub make the decision differently, like those apps I listed do, and
choose to have a desktop app.

> You want notifications, it could do them!

Notifications are worse in the browser. E.g., they cannot provide a badge on
the app icon, and I cannot easily switch to the app that's the source of the
notification like I can with a desktop app. I want the same communication
workflow that I use with email and Slack, i.e., I get a notification that
someone has commented on my code, and a badge icon as a reminder to address
it. Then I can click the app icon when I'm ready to address it (and open the
relevant source files directly in my editor if I need to).

> You want to jump to an editor, no reason why the web couldn't do that
> (although you might have to switch branches!).

Can you walk me through how a web app would implement that feature? E.g., the
browsers sandboxing model prohibits access to the file system? And how would a
website even know where the repo was checked out?

> Slack is different because when you're chatting, you don't really need tabs,
> but on GH I will usually have 10-15 open from a few different repos that
> stay mixed in with other pages for context. You're throwing away all the
> good things about browsers if you make it all native.

Again, all of that is true of every app that has a desktop app and a web app.
Also many desktop apps also support tabs? E.g., VS Code. In fact, tabs are
built-in at the window manager level on macOS. And you wouldn't have to choose
between the desktop app and the web, just like with those other apps you could
use the solution that best fits the situation.

> And then you remember that every social feature comes at the cost of
> executing a git client really well. I'm personally very happy with GitUp.app
> not being clogged up with GitHub API calls to fetch comments, and showing
> alerts that when clicked will pull me away from the commit diff I was
> viewing. It works exactly as Git does offline. If you address all those
> things, congrats, you've still barely reached par, and what do you have to
> show for it? Maybe a cool new look? This is why it's a waste, and an ongoing
> cost as GitHub.com evolves.

I'm not really following this paragraph, e.g., "showing alerts that when
clicked", what's the referring to? But let me give a counter perspective: The
GitHub client I'm envisioning would not be a git client, it would be GitHub
client. E.g., you would not be able to stage commits in it. In my experience,
the number of developers that use a GUI git client is vanishingly small
(personally I think GUI git clients are great, but anecdotally they're very
rare among my colleagues). Therefore, I think making a git client is a silly
market for a company of GitHub's size to be involved in. Whereas as their
social features, and the level of integration they could do between a checked
out repo and comments/issues, those would be true differentiating features
that would keep developers from switching to other hosts like GitLab.

~~~
cormacrelf
> Can you walk me through how a web app would implement that feature?

Same way you open a URL in the App Store? Not hard to let VSCode manage repo
URL => workspace path mappings.

> Also many desktop apps also support tabs

Read again: "10-15 open from a few different repos that stay mixed in with
other pages for context". Can't do that. You need a pretty huge value
proposition for me to be willing to drop contextual tabbing to switch to your
native app.

> I'm not really following this paragraph, e.g. "showing alerts that when
> clicked"

That's on you man, you brought up notifications. You also clearly understood
when you replied on-point, no need for dramatically hand-waving an entire
paragraph as incomprehensible.

> In my experience, the number of developers that use a GUI git client is
> vanishingly small

This tells me that GitHub.com is doing the everything-except-staging-commits
job just fine for most people. AFAIK you add little value extending GH's
analysis to live checkouts, and to gain what little there is, you'd have to
bring some of that analysis online, compiled into the app, instead of cloud
job queues. Pretty obvious why they wouldn't want to do that!

------
luisehk
I understand some folks may find this helpful but I'd rather not normalize
working from my phone.

------
niedzielski
Interesting! I was thinking that GitHub had moved away from native mobile
apps. Source code for the old GitHub Android native app:
[https://github.com/github/android](https://github.com/github/android)

------
tophattom
I'm not able to log in on Android. Clicking "Sign in" opens browser (Firefox
Preview in my case) where I get the standard GitHub login flow with 2FA. But
after logging in it goes back to app and the Sign in button is still there and
nothing happens.

------
roflchoppa
Finally can do reviews on the loo.

------
pixel_fcker
Installed it on iOS to try it out. Soon after, browsing HN on Safari I click
on a link to an interesting-looking repo, which switches me to the GitHub app
and shows me the raw text of the readme.md. Uninstalled it straight away.

~~~
bitten
What's the problem with that, or what do you expect? GitHub mobile web
truncates the README so you'd have to click twice (which always annoyed me
about GitHub mobile web!).

Is there not a way to configure the deep links?

~~~
pixel_fcker
I would expect it to show me the readme rendered, same as visiting it in a
browser does. There didn’t appear to be a way to show it rendered at all
either. Which is a massive problem if it’s going to hijack my browser so I
cannot see it rendered at all from my mobile.

------
z3t4
I use the main site on mobile. My browser, Opera, automatically makes the site
"responsive" when I zoom in. The main Github repo view is very well designed.

------
laacz
The thing is. I was not able to find the app in Appstore when searching for
"github". Had to linked page on device, then click on link there.

------
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21527268](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21527268)

------
rcarmo
Nice. At least in a first glance, and on the iPad.

------
stoksc
Trying to follow a link on a readme or something to another file within the
github repo always results in “something went wrong” (iOS).

~~~
monkey_slap
This is probably links within the readme (like #installation in a table of
contents). Known problem that we didn't get to fixing, but we're going to fix
this soon. Thanks for the report.

------
ozten
Will the mobile web view be improved I noticed that switch to desktop link was
broken a few hours ago, perhaps a deployment glitch?

------
genieyclo
Thanks! Any plans for GitHub Enterprise support?

~~~
monkey_slap
The app supports Enterprise Cloud today, and Enterprise Server is on the
roadmap!

~~~
genieyclo
can’t wait

------
branon
I use FastHub[0] (also the fork called FastHub-Libre[1]) and don't intend to
switch away anytime soon.

Is Microsoft's new app for GitHub free software, or even open-source software?
If not, this is laughably ironic.

[0] [https://github.com/k0shk0sh/FastHub](https://github.com/k0shk0sh/FastHub)

[1] [https://github.com/thermatk/FastHub-
Libre](https://github.com/thermatk/FastHub-Libre)

~~~
tracker1
Not really ironic in either way... Github's features themselves are not open-
source, and not sure if their desktop apps are open either.

I try not to do too much on my phone regarding Github, I feel like anything
with lots of what should be preformatted text on a phone is just horrible in
general.

------
peterallport
Been looking forward to this day for a long time! Congrats to the GitHub iOS
team on a job well done on this first release!

------
apatheticonion
Great work but I would have much rather this been a progressive web
application (installable web application).

------
AzzieElbab
Very cool. Android browsers been freezing/hanging with code and markdown pages

------
gdevenyi
Compared to octodroid this is missing my follow feed projects and people I
follow.

------
rvz
It appears that Facebook for programmers now has an official app which has
finally surfaced on the App Stores.

However, this may be terrible news for other third-party apps since Apple,
Microsoft and Github can work together to forcibly shut down any unauthorised
clients with legal action due to this release.

~~~
saagarjha
How?

~~~
rvz
Well, I see no third party apps for having a full client for Snapchat,
Instagram, Facebook or Discord at least on the iOS App Store due to this rule
[0], but I certainly won't be surprised if they do the same for Google Play if
they succeed on the App Store with Apple.

GitHub can easily file a complaint and Apple will happily remove any
infringing app off of the App Store.

[0] [https://developer.apple.com/app-
store/review/guidelines/#int...](https://developer.apple.com/app-
store/review/guidelines/#intellectual-property)

~~~
saagarjha
> If your app uses, accesses, monetizes access to, or displays content from a
> third-party service, ensure that you are specifically permitted to do so
> under the service’s terms of use.

GitHub provides an API to access all of these things.

~~~
rvz
True, but the same was said for Instagram and Twitter. They both still have a
public API for developers and then cracked down on the third-party apps and
clients on the App Store with a policy change. Sure, developers can still use
these public APIs as long as they don't release an app that is a full clone of
their official apps.

If Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Discord can draw the line on third-party
clones, with the release of the official GitHub apps, they can also do this
too.

------
pdeuchler
Crazy to me that they've released this without a way for organizations to
disable using it with private repos... in no way shape or form do I want
engineers using this app to access company IP on their personal phones.

~~~
jkirsteins
Why are you against them using an app for something they are authorized doing
in a browser?

------
techntoke
GitLab needs an official app now too

