
GitHub for Mobile - smoser
https://github.com/mobile
======
bla3
Make the mobile website work well instead. Diff view is unusable, as are many
other views. I'd much rather have a working web version than an app for GitHub
(and almost all other services). Their UI is all document retrieval and
matches the web model really well.

~~~
emiliovesprini
diff on mobile? you mean adapting a UI based on 80ish monospace characters to
a screen that fits in your pocket?

I don't think anything is impossible but it almost seems we would have to code
differently for that to be viable.

Out of curiosity I've checked out terminal apps for both Android and IOS
(Termux and ISH) and I like them quite a bit but would never use them for
anything serious. Try them out and how you feel about using them for real
stuff - for me, the enthusiasm dwindled and I felt like waiting until I had
access to a desktop.

There's lots of room for improvement but they should focus on the more social
aspects of Github like Issues and pull request discussion.

~~~
enobrev
Something as simple as simultaneous horizontal scrolling can go a long way
with a side-by-side diff and that should be pretty damned simple in a browser.

~~~
emiliovesprini
Yes. I remember I read a guy on Twitter say he was part of a Github team
focused on easy frontend wins and asking for suggestions. I'll let you know if
I find it.

------
simonw
I do a surprising amount of development on my phone these days. I was using
GitHub's mobile website for this but I've recently started using Working Copy
on iOS.

CI means I can even ship a change as a branch, open a pull request, wait for
the tests to run and merge the branch.

Not being tethered to my laptop in order to ship small, safe changes is really
nice.

~~~
throwGuardian
What kind of development is feasible on Mobile? I hope it's on hobby projects
though

~~~
pm90
You can certainly do reviews via mobile.

I kinda prefer to read code rather than twitter when staring at my screen in a
bar. This makes doing that easier. Me Gusta.

------
dbingham
I really wish they'd replace the commit feed with a PR comment feed. I
honestly don't care who committed what. I don't need to know about it until
I'm reviewing a PR. The unit of review is the PR, not the commit.

I need to know when there are new comments on PRs I'm participating in. I need
to know when a PR of mine fails the build. I need to know when a review is
posted.

I don't give a shit when someone else commits to the repo. It's noise, not
signal.

~~~
ldavison
Agreed. The closest I've found is using:

[https://github.com/pulls?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Apr+is%3Aopen+...](https://github.com/pulls?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Apr+is%3Aopen+user%3AYourOrg+sort%3Aupdated-
desc)

I just add "-repo:org/repo-name" for the repos in my org I want removed from
the results. Plus, it tells me what I need to review.

As long as you don't open email notifications about PR activity this page will
show a blue indicator so you know which ones have been updated since you last
viewed them.

------
windsurfer
How odd! GitHub Mobile used to exist, and was abandoned. PocketHub is the
continuation of that old project:
[https://github.com/pockethub/PocketHub](https://github.com/pockethub/PocketHub)

~~~
mavsman
Fully agreed. Weird that they dropped it then picked it back up again, though
I'm guessing it's because it was dropped pre-MS and picked up as a part of MS.
It'd be interesting to see an old link announcing it being dropped as context.

~~~
windsurfer
I found the old link from 2012 with their original release:
[https://github.blog/2012-07-09-github-android-app-
released/](https://github.blog/2012-07-09-github-android-app-released/)

------
satvikpendem
I've used Fasthub for Android before which was great. There is also a fully
libre / FLOSS version that has the paid features added in (which you can do
since the entire app is GPL). I remember a Github issue where the creator was
mad about it, but well, if you pick GPL you should know what you're getting
into.

[https://github.com/k0shk0sh/FastHub](https://github.com/k0shk0sh/FastHub)
[https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.fastaccess.github.libre/](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.fastaccess.github.libre/)

~~~
maple3142
I am using that too, but sadly it hasn't update their app for a long time, and
many things are broken now.

~~~
coolreader18
v5 is supposedly coming soon; it was supposed to be ready by the end of
October[0].

[0]
[https://github.com/k0shk0sh/FastHub/pull/2599](https://github.com/k0shk0sh/FastHub/pull/2599)

~~~
dreamer_soul
I was invited by the dev to test v5 but for some reason he got busy with work
and slowed the development down.

------
nixpulvis
GitHub has one of the better implementations of a separate mobile website.

\- it's optimized for the smaller screen / touch interface \- it's provided
for the majority of github's features \- it allows easily getting to the
"full" desktop site

I'll probably continue to the website unless they stop development in favor of
the app. What features do you really need an app for here? Or will this allow
me to browse my repo offline?

~~~
Semaphor
I hate the GitHub mobile site. When I land there, I usually follow a link.
What I see is part of the readme, and none of the links I’m used to (and want)
from the desktop site. There is an option to always choose the desktop site,
but guess where I’m logged in: On the desktop.

~~~
giancarlostoro
I absolutely abhor it. Instead of having responsive CSS to restyle everything,
I have to go out of my way to request the desktop version where I can see
everything, _every_ single time.

The worst part is sometimes it doesn't render the full README. Some README's
aren't useful till halfway through.

~~~
tenryuu
Even worse is when the they have been pages adaptive. There are features
missing from pages solely based on your viewport width.

This is completely different from the mobile site, so if you leave the mobile
site and land on one of these pages, there's just not much you can do but
complain

------
guessmyname
I got an invitation to test the iOS app, but cannot use it because my account
was flagged as spam [1], which is weird because I have a long record of
reputable open-source contributions. The only suspicious thing I did in recent
days was reporting several spammers in a public Gist that contains
instructions on how to crack SublimeText which is clearly illegal. It seems
that GitHub’s anti-spam system mistakingly flagged my profile just because I
reported these accounts, and now I am unable to use my account for anything
relevant.

So much for being a good samaritan _(sigh)_.

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/ZdYiEuo.png](https://i.imgur.com/ZdYiEuo.png)

~~~
zrobotics
Why would you want to crack Sublime Text anyway? The only things it does is
shows (unregistered) in the title bar and pops up a nag dialog on saves (not
sure the timing, maybe 4th save after launching). I didn't pay for a separate
license for my lab pc, since I don't really tend to develop much at my
electronics bench and mostly just need to occasionally check code.

Why would anyone want to bother cracking it? I can understand a student not
being able to afford $70, but as-is there's no real loss of features. I just
don't get it.

(edit) I thought I'd add, the reason I know it's useful w/o registering is
that I got through school using ST. Bought a license with my first paycheck
out of school.

~~~
8fingerlouie
> I didn't pay for a separate license for my lab pc, since I don't really tend
> to develop much at my electronics bench and mostly just need to occasionally
> check code

If you have a "named user" license, that license is good for every computer
you use, including work and home, across Windows, Mac and Linux. There's AFAIK
no limit to how many computers you can install and license it on using the
same named user license.

------
polutropos
I’m assuming the iOS app is based heavily on GitHawk
([https://github.com/GitHawkApp/GitHawk](https://github.com/GitHawkApp/GitHawk))
as its developer, Ryan Nystrom, moved to Github last year. Looking forward to
getting in the beta!

~~~
monkey_slap
That's me! Lots of lessons influenced our decisions on GitHub for mobile.

~~~
jzelinskie
Are ya'll using SwiftUI?

~~~
monkey_slap
Nope, just vanilla UIKit for the iOS app.

------
SimplyUseless
Honestly, why wouldn't GitHub build a PWA version so the offline experience is
fantastic. In fact, that's how Linus built Git. The saga is building app after
app is getting ridiculous. It also frees developers to focus on building
server-side functionality rather than 3x client app effort (web, iOS,
android).

~~~
saagarjha
Because PWAs aren't great on iOS. And no, that's not just because you think
Safari breaks them.

~~~
symlinkk
> And no, that's not just because you think Safari breaks them

Why then? Safari straight up refuses to implement tons of PWA functionality.
It's Apple being greedy, plain and simple.

~~~
SimplyUseless
Apple does not have his shit together yet on PWA.

[https://medium.com/@firt/pwas-on-ios-12-2-beta-the-good-
the-...](https://medium.com/@firt/pwas-on-ios-12-2-beta-the-good-the-bad-and-
the-not-sure-yet-if-good-a37b6fa6afbf)

------
izend
I'm loving Working Copy and found it from a recommendation on HN
([https://workingcopyapp.com/](https://workingcopyapp.com/) not affiliated in
anyway)

------
jackbrookes
More info, videos:

[https://twitter.com/github/status/1194675248047616000](https://twitter.com/github/status/1194675248047616000)

[https://twitter.com/github/status/1194676541243813888](https://twitter.com/github/status/1194676541243813888)

------
siruncledrew
I've been waiting years for a mobile version of Github. I'm still on the beta
waitlist to judge how good the working-version actually is, but at least the
company is finally doing something to improve the mobile side.

So far, my go-to way of accessing Github on mobile is just Requesting Desktop
Site from a mobile browser and dealing with it that way. I've tried a few of
the third-party Github "mobile-version" apps, but they still don't beat just
being able to go to "github.com" in Chrome/Safari on mobile and have what I
want available to me directly from the source.

------
xrd
If you want to edit Jekyll blogs stored as repos in GitHub from your Android
phone, you can use my app:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.EditorHyde...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.EditorHyde.app)

It's the equivalent of the Wordpress app, but for Jekyll blogs.

------
mikewhy
(slightly off topic)

Strange that /mobile is a landing page for the mobile app, but /desktop is the
desktop org, and desktop.github.com is the landing page.

I guess that means no one can make an org called "mobile" (pretty ok with
this), but does it also mean this won't be open source?

------
minimaxir
I'm curious what the feature scope is here. From the screenshot it seems like
it has Issues, Notification, and Feed support?

I can't imagine this would be used for code reviews/PRs.

~~~
monkey_slap
You can leave a comment-only review on the iOS beta that we released today,
but we are committed to adding line-by-line commenting for Pull Request
reviews before we launch broadly. I originally didn't think that it would work
until our engineers built a prototype and changed my mind.

And since review comments are saved to the server as pending, you can even
start a review on your phone, then finish on your computer (and vice versa).

------
jason_slack
My hope is this can help me with issues and PRs while on the go.

~~~
josteink
There were numerous third party Github clients for Android which helped me
with exactly this.

I’ve really been missing it since moving to iOS.

------
app4soft
The only really usable "GitHub for Mobile" is _FastHub-Libre_ [0]

[0]
[https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/com.fastaccess.gith...](https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/com.fastaccess.github.libre?repo=main)

------
evanwalsh
I wonder if the apps are native or if they're using some cross-platform
framework. I would assume Xamarin, but I could also see them using React
Native because their desktop app is Electron and React.

~~~
jbigelow76
There is some grousing[1] that a cross platform technology, including
Microsoft's own Xamarin, wasn't used and that fully platform native
development is a waste. Was it mentioned somewhere specifically (maybe during
GH the keynote that I didn't watch) that SwiftUI was used? That would be the
only way to square the tweeter's statement that only 20% of mobile users would
be able to use it, he must mean only those on iOS 13, but not totally sure.
Hightlighting Dark Mode and a good iPad version would play into SwiftUI's
narrative but the framework still seems a bit new for an app of this caliber.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/ThomasBurkhartB/status/11946837811956736...](https://twitter.com/ThomasBurkhartB/status/1194683781195673602)

~~~
mnem
iOS 13 adoption is much higher than 20%.

------
lifeisstillgood
Just a shout out to "Working Copy" app on which I have two nearly finished
books and a coupe of websites

------
saagarjha
Signed up for the iOS beta. I wonder when invites are going to be sent out?

~~~
tomschlick
I just got mine, so relatively quickly for only signing up an hour ago.

~~~
saagarjha
Yup, just got mine as well.

------
bassman9000
I assume main reason for this is MS wanting to datamine the succulent mobile
market via app.

------
benburleson
Eek -- this seems to be a step in the wrong direction from work/life balance.

~~~
paulie_a
Don't use it after hours. You can also ignore slack if it's after 5. (or
whatever your expected hours are)

~~~
benburleson
That's easy to say.

The reality is for most of us, when we're tagged on some issue, our reaction
is to at least check it out and assess the priority, etc.

~~~
peruvian
Then turn notifications off. Depends on your workplace culture, but I receive
no work-related notifications or emails after work hours and it's fine.

------
rcarndrums
Did ICE ask for this?

------
The_rationalist
I hope they'll use a cordova framework such as IONIC instead of reinventing
their code.

~~~
wilg
That's a first!

