I did a poll and nearly 30% of the people who voted said they used Sync! It’s stayed around that percent the whole time too!
EDIT: Here is the poll I forgot to put this here like five times lol https://strawpoll.com/wby5A21R1yA
After reading this I decided to try it out. Within 5 posts there were ads. No thanks, I’ll stick with Connect.
Edit: I was scrolling everything and replied. I didn’t see this was in the official community. My opinion doesn’t matter in here. I think it’s great that sync is successful and I hope it continues. So yea, keep on keeping on.
It’s a single developer that should be paid for his work. You can easily upgrade to the ad free version for a few bucks…
If it was reasonably priced, I’d agree. But €20 is just insane, especially when the clients it competes with already have no ads for free
I’ve used sync for almost ten years now… I think it’s worth the fee to remove ads. But sure, there are ads.
It’s strange, both on Sync for Reddit and Sync for Lemmy I’ve always seen the space for ads, but never an actual ad showing in that space. So I just get random black spaces between posts
I had to trawl through the cookie settings and manually disable every single option. After that I no longer see any ads, just a space where the ads should be. Annoying that I had to do that though, with Reddit Sync I’d paid a one off fee I think and never saw any ads.
I get it though. I think this app is the devs main job, and the user base is significantly smaller than what it was for Reddit so he’s having to put ways in to recover some income.
I could be mis-remembering but I think I did click that, but the “legitimate interest” options were still ticked?
FWIW you can use list or compact view and it won’t show ads (for now at least). Or just pay the pricey one-time fee to remove ads.
I’ve been using systemwide adblock on all my electronics for years now so I forget that in app ads are a thing. But yeah, I see your point. They do offer a one time purchase to remove ads.
Me too, which makes Sync an endless scroll of black squares where ads should be. No thanks, Connect it is.
You might need a better adblocker. With AdGuard I see an empty box from time to time. It’s in the colour of the background.
Out of a few thousand who responded*.
Well it was more like 4-5k and it is most likely a fair representation of overall users, as it was asked in a general community which is one of the largest and the percentage stayed around the same the whole time
I don’t want to be a dick. All I’m saying is running such a poll is tricky as time of day as well as day of the week will impact the results drastically. Add to that the type of audience and then you’ve got massive skew.
What general community on what instance?
There is no way this poll provides a realistic sentiment thats anything but a pulled out of thin air guess.
Does the poll verbiage differentiate if I have Sync but use Liftoff far more at the moment?
This poll was originally shared in !asklemmy@lemmy.ml then in !voyagerapp@lemmy.world. Given how one of them is one of the 3 largest communities on the Lemmy network and the other is a community for another app, I would say those communities probably aren’t biased. There wasn’t even a link to the poll on this post until seven hours after this post was created, which was after most of the engagement with this post.
The poll asks for which client(s) you mainly use and has the opportunity for multiple, so 25-30ish percent of 4.5k people (1.8k people) voted that Sync is one of their main clients. That doesn’t mean they don’t use multiple, but it does mean it is by far the largest client used by people in general, even if everyone uses multiple (which I do)
A lot of people are mad about sync, because of dumb reasons. but man I just wouldn’t use lemmy without it. I’d rather just not.
I’m not mad, I just prefer open source software that doesn’t collect my data. What are your favorite things about sync that I can’t get with Jereboa?
If you aren’t the kind of person that says things along the lines of Sync is bad because it has an ad supported version which is optional but it shouldn’t be optional for some reason, then we aren’t talking about you.
to answer your question, sync has a nice and modern user interface that is enjoyable to spend your time with.
Jerboa is… functional, Sync has design and thought behind its interactions and user experience. If that’s okay with you, then that’s fine. But I wasn’t happy there.
Even if I’m not using Sync, I am happy that Lemmy has a great app that draws Reddit users, and a smorgasbord of apps to choose from.
That’s probably why people are mad. I’ve seen lots of comments to the effect of they don’t want Redditors here because they’ll “ruin” Lemmy.
Sync makes it harder for them to gatekeep.
Like Lemmy is to Reddit, FOSS clients are to paid alternatives.
The only way I can see to stay clear of business practices I don’t like is to support the FOSS model.
I’m not saying Sync isn’t a good client, or that the dev has anything other than the best intersts of his users in mind, it’s that at any point a decision can be made which you have no control over. Service models for software, for example, very rarely seems to be in the users interests.
Give the FOSS clients a shot, they are also constantly improving!
I installed both Jerboa and Liftoff and ended up on Sync.
I run Linux and 99% foss software on PC and same on phone.
Sync was the only android client I tried that was usable. The keyboard bug in jerboa was maddening
What keyboard bug? I haven’t run into it, and I’ve been using it for months.
idk if the other commenter experienced the same bug as I did, but for me, deleting characters in the comment text box would also delete the last space. So, for example, if I typed “idk if the other commenzr”, and I started deleting the ‘r’ and then ‘z’, the text would turn into "“idk if the othercommen”. It would just keep going like that. Otherwise Jerboa is fantastic though, but it get’s annoying fast.
You could try out Eternity. It’s a fork of Infinity for Reddit and has great UI/UX design. Though not using latest M3 design guidelines it’s lightyears ahead of Liftoff, Thunder, etc. imo (which I couldn’t stand personally - tastes vary ofc!)
You can get Eternity from F-droid when you enable the IzzyDroid Repository (included in droid-ify, a much better fdroid client than the official one)
Just installed it. Long time infinity user, now a jerboa user after the switch.
Eternity looks great! The biggest issues I had with other apps is the unchangable Instagram layout where even with a log phone I can see maybe 1 post at a time. Then I also like seeing the community icon to know where the post is.
Compacter comments where you can easily see levels, but it doesn’t load every child comment all the time at once. Both jerboa and eternity are the only FOSS apps that fit that bill 😊
I was similar with Jerboa first then Sync despite being mostly a Bacon user at Reddit. I tried Sync just before the Hoopla started.
I found the sensitive swipe gestures of Jerboa difficult as there was no way to turn them off so when Sync came along it became the default for me as the swipe features don’t cause as issue for me.
it’s that at any point a decision can be made which you have no control over
This is true for any software you didn’t write. Plenty of FOSS software has gone in directions I didn’t like.
The only real difference is whether decision makers have a profit motive. That’s important, but that said, it’s not everything.
And at any time you or someone else who is likewise pissed off can fork the software and put it straight
That’s really not a valid argument for 99% of users. I’m not going to fork FOSS software because I’m an adult and have a full time job. I don’t have the time to learn about the inner workings of the software to fix it. Most users are less tech savvy than myself, anyways. Saying “just fork it and fix it to your liking” to the average person is not realistic.
There’s a big difference which is that clients have minimal lock in. Reddit has a monopoly over the community while you can easily switch clients with little lost.
But switching clients means wasting your time learning a different app and getting used to different UI. I wouldn’t like to switch from Connect at this point even though it’s a bit buggy so I think client does matter a lot. Reddit APIcalypse was all about clients and if I didn’t care about the client I would still use Reddit with RedReader. Or if I cared even less I would use Reddit app.
But I can always use an older APK, at which point I do have control over the changes. I can even inject custom code if I really want to - some people are still using Sync for Reddit with their own API keys.
And you’re stuck with potential security issues/missing regulatory chages, lack of new features…
Yes, if I choose to stay on a specific version, I’ll be stuck on that version.
And you’re stuck with potential security issues/missing regulatory chages, lack of new features…
But you have the same issue with FOSS apps if they change something I don’t want. If you choose to stay on a specific version, you will also be stuck with potential security issues/missing regulatory changes and a lack of new features.
Where and how has this poll been shared?
Right now Sync is at 29% which makes me think the results are skewed if the poll has been predominantly shared in the sync community.
This poll was originally shared in !asklemmy@lemmy.ml then in !voyagerapp@lemmy.world. Given how one of them is one of the 3 largest communities on the Lemmy network and the other is a community for another app, I would say those communities probably aren’t biased. There wasn’t even a link to the poll on this post until seven hours after this post was created, which was after most of the engagement with this post.
Maybe the percentage is high because it’s a good app a lot of people use
