Sorry for such a delay in posting release notes, I’ve been very busy the last few weeks, and almost all of my free time has been spent working on updates. Since my last release post, I’ve released v0.3.0, v0.3.1, v0.3.2.
Arctic gained quite a few new features in these releases. I’ll list off some of the most notable changes, and as alway you can find the full list of changes below.
v0.3.0 was primarily focused on markdown rendering improvements. I added support for Lemmy spoilers, subscript, superscript, highlights, and syntax highlighting. Code and blocks are now rendered with a styled background for better distinction.
v0.3.1 added an all new private messages view. Messages are now sorted into conversations, and displayed in a iMesages style feed. You can now edit, delete, and report private messages. This release also included forward navigation. If you swipe back in the navigation stack, you can swipe back forward and pickup where you left off. There is also a new action to quickly switch the post layout while viewing a feed.
v0.3.2 added options to hide read posts, and mark posts as read while scrolling. There a new post layout Headline which is a compact style that only displays the post title. I also improved the layout of other compact layouts. Reddit gallery links will now be rendered as regular image gallery posts.
I’ve also spent some time preparing the first AppStore release for Arctic. I just about have everything ready for submission, with only iPad previews left to design. I hope to submit the first release to the AppStore by the end of the month.
One last thing I would like to include in the first official release, is a new default icon for Arctic. I’ve tried my hand at a few icons now, and so far I’ve not found any that feel adequate. If anyone here is a graphic designer or digital artist, feel free to reach out to me.
v0.3.0 Changelog
- Added support for new Markdown features to the Markdown Editor
- Added a loading indicator for Lemmy Explorer
- Added option to set the instance used for Guest Mode
- Added font size preview when using the font size slider
- Added appearance settings for adjusting the style of the top and bottom bars in Lemmy
- Added a warning message that will show at the end of feeds if you’re viewing a filtered feed eg: listing mode set to Local
- Added a new preview controller when composing a post or comment
- Updated Swimmy to use a single instance of Lemmy Api for all API calls
- Updated the account switcher to use the applied font settings
- Updated to save and restore listing mode when switching to/from guest mode
- Updated Markdown rendering:
- Added support for syntax highlighting in code blocks
- Code blocks and inline code will now be rendered in a box
- Block quotes will now be rendered in a quote box
- Added support for subscript and superscript
- Added support for ==highlight==
- Added support for Lemmy spoilers
- Added settings to adjust syntax highlighting behavior
- Added support for loading remote images inline
- Note: This behavior is not enabled yet, I still have more work to do to support videos and animated images
- Fixed issue where non-account cells could be reordered in account settings
- Fixed Safari Open In extension causing a crash due to a previous update
- Fixed Lemmy Explorer failing to load Communities
- Fixed issue where the tab-bar profile title would not update for Guest Mode
- Fixed an issue that could cause font size changes to not apply unless using the iPad layout
- Fixed color themes not applying to the top and bottom bars immediately
- Fixed issue where the listing mode could unnecessarily change when switching to guest mode
- Fixed issue where changing the sorting/listing mode when viewing a post would not reload the feed if the feed was empty before changing
v0.3.1 Changelog
- Added a new Private Messages controller similar to iMessage:
- Messages are now displayed in conversations based on the recipient
- You can now edit, delete, and report messages
- Added forward navigation, swipe from the right edge of the screen to re-open previously open views
- Added support for selecting text in the reply view context preview
- Added an option to the Posts Feed action menu to quickly change the cell layout style
- Added option to lock Arctic using biometrics (Face ID, Touch ID, Passcode), with an optional timeout before locking
- Added a timestamp to inbox comment cells
- Added additional support for internal Markdown customization (user settings coming soon)
- Fixed issue with the Syntax Highlighting settings page, where the preview would render incorrectly on iOS 16+
- Fixed issue where editing a post multiple times would not reflect the previous changes when re-opening the editor
- Updated font size and color in generated initial icons
- Updated the markdown editor to respond to font size changes
v0.3.2 Changelog
- Added option to mark posts as read while scrolling
- Added option to hide read posts in the home feed
- Added option to hide read posts in community feeds
- Added new post layout style Headline: a compact style that only shows the post title
- Added support for fetching images from Reddit gallery links
- Added support for viewing YouTube and Piped videos from opened posts
- Added support for opening links in private messages
- Added support for markdown [[BADGES]] (color defaults to red for now)
- Added a delivered notifications manager for deleting notifications once they are read in-app (not enabled yet)
- Added notification permissions status cell to notification settings, this is intended to assist users when encountering an error while enabling notifications
- Updated unread count polling, polls now allow for threshold waiting to reduce network calls.
- Updated support for inline HTML in markdown, HTML will now render with the correct font
- Updated NSFW blur view layout
- Updated HLS stream support to reduce stalling when playing streams
- Updated post spacing for compact post layouts
- Fixed media seek gestures blocking the navigation swipe gestures
- Fixed forward navigation transition causing a zoom effect for some views
- Fixed issue where canceling a navigation transition would clear the forward navigation stack
- Fixed an issue preventing videos from opening in the media viewer when viewing a post
- Fixed an issue where media gallery views could display duplicate images
- Fixed issue allowing a link preview to be displayed in a media post
- Fixed a crash that could occur when opening the media viewer in rare cases
- Fixed a crash that could occur when attempting to open a URL that not http(s)
- Fixed issue where animated images could display out of bounds when viewed in a paged media viewer
- Fixed spoilers incorrectly indenting paragraphs after the first line
- Fixed issue where selecting the active account in the account switcher would reload feeds
- Updated support for parsing lemmy semantic versions
Links
- Website: getarctic.app
- TestFlight: testflight.apple.com
So Arctic started as a personal project without the intention of releasing it. I had been an avid Apollo user since its launch and thoroughly enjoyed using the app. I decided to model Arctic based on Apollo for myself.
Once I had a near full feature set, I decided I might be interested in publicly releasing Arctic. At the time there was only one other native Lemmy app for iOS (mlem), the rest were either web-based or using react native. I didn’t intend on making an Apollo clone as a public project, but that is exactly where this went. I’ve been trying to breathe some alternative design into the app as it’s progressed, and I will continue to do so.
I know you were not necessarily asking about the design, I just thought I should share a bit about The roots of the project and its design.
As for what makes Arctic stand out; Firstly, I’ve not used Voyager or really any other Lemmy app for very long (a few minutes, maybe hours), so I cannot speak much on what Arctic offers that others don’t.
Arctic is currently the only iOS app I’m aware of that is written in pure Swift using UIKit rather than SwiftUI. For the most part, this does not make much of a difference to the end-user, however, this does allow for some optimizations that are not available in SwiftUI apps, and from the feedback I’ve received, Arctic offers better performance compared to other native alternatives.
Arctic is currently the only native iOS app that offers Account push notifications, and Community notifications for free (to the best of my knowledge), please correct me if another app offers this.
Key Features:
In the end, I I encourage everyone to try out the all the available apps and find what suits them the best.
Thanks for the in depth response, I’ll check it out