It really isnt bad? Like easier navigation on a phone is always a welcome change.
Dms take a couple extra taps, and I wish we had the option still to swipe right to quickly see who is online.
But the search menu is VASTLY improved, and I like the design in general. I’m hoping we get a few tweaks and then it will be perfect
The new swiping behavior is grinding my gears as well. With so many options for it in the settings, I’m surprised they didn’t just have the people in channel list as an option. I’m also not a big fan of the private message section, but it doesn’t bother me nearly as much. Overall a nice update though.
the not seeing folks online is super annoying
i also dislike change but thats a me thing probably
No they don’t? Its the same number
Previously: swipe to show servers and DMs, tap on DM with notification.
Now: swipe to show servers in addition to DMs tab button, tap DMs tab, tap DM with notification.
I don’t mind the redesign but I’ve been noticing more fps lag than usual. Hope it’s something they can fix with a later update.
Imagine the earth does an update and swaps the US and Australia for “easier navigation”. Would you be happy?
I prefer it TBH. things are easier to reach and suit a phone better than what was essentially the desktop app squeezed onto a phone.
How dare you have a positive opinion! /s
I disagree with you and dislike the change but I can eat the same thing every meal for a month. Probably not the best person to judge changes.
One of the biggest issues for me is that you can’t use ‘in:#channel’ anymore in searches for some inexplicable reason. But only on the mobile app — it works fine on desktop! If you could do that it would be fine.
there are now two different search buttons, very intuitive i know, one is channel specific - the one you see when you’re chatting in a channel (basically a pre-set in:channel for dumb people), and a universal server wide one that’s at the very top of the channel list, you can still od in:channel in there, but by default it searches all channels
at least i hope that’s the case, if it’s not i’ll riot
Huh, go figure. Thanks for the info! I honestly never would have found that myself.
I still think it should be possible to use in:channel on the channel-specific search though. One less button press and it can’t be that confusing UX-wise since you have clear intent when doing it (if anything, the fact that the two searches work differently has to be more confusing UX-wise).
things are easier to reach
what exactly has become easier to reach?
Lemmy’s biggest competitor at this point isn’t reddit, it’s Discord, or rather, the monster it has become. It seems to me that instead of creating a subreddit nowadays, every project now wants to use a Discord server for everything.
The problem with that is:
- Asking messages in a big, open chatroom (over, say, 20 people) gets real messy, real quickly.
- Conversations on Discord are difficult to follow when multiple of them are going at once.
- The conversations containing solutions to problems in chat or threads are not search indexable, which is the reason why reddit became quietly dominant in search results, it is simply the biggest centralized repository of organized English language text conversations available.
So why do people insist on using Discord servers to build their community? Simple, it’s the network effect. If somebody wants tech support, it’s way easier to click a Discord invite on an account for group chat you already have than it is to sign up for yet another forum that you only use once. But Lemmy doesn’t suffer from that problem of traditional forums because of federation.
Which brings me to my point, if Lemmy is to grow, it’s better to sell Lemmy to disgruntled Discord admins and forum owners to move their community than it is to get people to move off reddit at this point, since people who wants to leave reddit has all done so at this point.
Discord sucks, but I’ve actually had a 100% successful help rate on it vs Reddit or Lemmy.
Typically Discord servers have specific tech support rooms, and you’ll get help pretty quickly. Only once I have had to ask my question a second time, because it was missed the first time.
Meanwhile Reddit threads just get downvoted, buried, and you’re never helped. Even when I try to search for threads that other people have posted, 90% of threads are just blank.
Lemmy is the worst. Doesn’t matter what you need, they’ll just call you stupid and tell you to use Linux and FOSS alternative, ignoring the fact you NEED to use what you’re asking help with.
A forum should work in tandem with a chatroom in an “ideal” online community, imo. Searchable Q&A with a communication for additional, nuanced interaction. They serve different purposes and can be more powerful when used together, than they could be on their own.
Lemmy does seem to have a bunch of old, crotchety internet nerds on here that like the “old ways” of the webs. But just tell 'em to “go fuck yourself”, if they’re being a dick; and than don’t reply to them again. It’s very freeing. They’re just butt sensitive about linux and foss, cause they were bullied on early internet forums and now act the same way, when expressing their loud-ass opinions. It’s like an unfortunate cycle of abuse that has existed on forums, but don’t let it discourage you from asking anyway… the question might help others
I’m a crotchety old internet nerd… tell me to “go fuck myself”, just for funsies! It’s empowering!
And also… fuck you buddy, get good!
I feel like Discord fills a different need than forum type systems.
The one API I have on discord, likes Discord as a place for casual chat about the system. I think the devs prefer it because it is an active place for the community; to word it better, ‘hey look at this cool thing I did’ > response within a few minutes ‘that’s cool’ heart^5 fire^3 thumbs up^7. Whereas on a forum you’d be waiting for hours, or just not have that casual of a conversation.
It replaces the old usage of IRC servers.
The help channel is highly responsive, and great for things you want a quick chat about, need a response now, or if you get help now great, but if not, you’ll figure it out on your own before you would ever get help on a forum, so it’s not worth posting to a forum.
Threads really do help organize when a discussion is going to be large, and discord is very much searchable, just not from your browser search engine.
For changes to the API, ideas, issues, or bugs, they direct you to github “Discussions” or “Issues”. They do have an idea discord channel, but it’s a more casual thing, or far out there discussions.
Discord does get a lot of hate for it’s searchability, which is valid, but I don’t have a problem with it as long as places like Stack Overflow (or what replaces it) are still around.
Maybe you just identified the need for an activity pub fediverse project specific to dev support/communities for tech projects.
Discord is the same problem for the internet as the Facebook grups were. Its hermetic, the info stays there, its hard to search thus the same problem is being asked over and over. StackOverflow and Reddit strength is that’s they are indexed and easy accessed
Discord is really bad for preservation of information. I can still find forum posts from 10 years ago on a given topic all over, but discord links seem to expire and break all the damn time and it’s hard to search through. It sucks that discord has become the defacto choice for user community space.
Lenny does part of this yes. Fediverse is the bigger ticket item. From a single account I can federate to different networks and post questions or have other interactions in different formats.
Was I the only one that didn’t like having personal chats in the same place as servers?
This seems like a huge UI improvement tbh, and I’ve been using Discord for years on mobile and desktop.
The discord UI has always been confusing hot garbage. If they’ve done anything to address that then weeee!
They essentially took notifications/settings from the bottom corner and the personal chat section and just made a four panel bottom menu with individual icons for each. They’re simple in aesthetic but fairly clear, in my opinion.
So it goes as follows.
Servers -> Private Chat -> Notifications -> Settings/Account
Otherwise it’s the same as far as I can tell, really. I can still swipe to go back in servers, etc.
Yeah I just checked. It’s still hot garbage, but slightly less so. I think this is actually an improvement.
Don’t forget that the “back” behavior in “forum” channels actually goes back to the forum now, instead of opening the channel list!
Fixed a major PITA.
It’s a departure from the desktop UI and it made the whole thing much clunkier.
I will be fair, moving the button to the bottom row is more convenient if you have a lot of servers to scroll up through and use the DMs a lot, I don’t care about that as much.
What I do care about is how the rest of it changed. Can’t just quickly swipe into the DM list and back any more, if you exit the DM that’s it, you gotta click on it again. Switching between DMs and servers is more clunky, a bunch of UI I was actively using is broken up. They broke the search function, and the new way to check channel participants (click on the title) is uncomfortable as hell compared to old “just swipe to the right”.Personally I hate the new UX even if some bits are an improvement. It’s just too much stuff to change all at once and not for the better.
I just hate that I can’t swipe to easily to get to servers from messages anymore. You still can but it takes a second to load now after swiping and it’s not as consistent to get it to do it.
Edit: Also removing the member list for a server being on the right when you swipe is annoying too.
Yeah I think this is a huge improvement to the app tbh
yeah much easier to reach.
the new ui is buggy but that’s obviously not intentionalI used the beta UI for a while and imo the new one is worse since it brings backs some of the old UI (i.e. the 1:1 port of the desktop UI for the server sidebar). What they had in the beta UI for server selection was so much better
the drawer was pretty convinient but didn’t work with server folders that well…
also the fullscreen channel list didn’t look good.
the current “new” ui is a nice middle ground
To everyone complaining about the updates; it’s likely that after a week or so you will just get used to the new layout and won’t even think about it anymore.
Personally, I have no issues with the update. Took about 5 mins to understand the changes move on. I also welcome the true black theme. Will save a decent amount of battery on my phone.
I heavily disagree with you. People who get annoyed by certain ui changes always will, I still hate YouTube’s new layout multiple years later.
There are always people getting annoyed by changes, doesn’t matter what the changes are. Sometimes I get the impression that humans just need something to be annoyed about.
How about not fucking around with UI just so some manager can meet the yearly bonus?
Keeping something that’s difficult to maintain and cannot integrate well with new features isn’t how software works.
It is absolutely not about difficulty to maintain or feature issues, it 100% comes down to different ways to funnel you where they want you.
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If your UI/UX elements have that deep ties with your deeper stack your codebase has big issues.
Corporate understander here
Revanced helps with the atrocious youtube experience
Honestly it’s desktop that drives me insane though. I remember I used to have it hard linked to an old hack that used the old layout still, but they took that away a while ago now.
Old.reddit vs new…
I wouldn’t really use that comparison. The discord update resembles the old one. But old reddit and new reddit are damn near unrecognizable to one another.
Honestly great example.
I was in this same boat until I realized I can’t send images from mobile right now and looking around for others talking about it, there were complaints that images they sent were sent to the wrong people or chats. If true, that’s insanely incompetent for a business or their size.
Oh shit I was just fighting this I didn’t even bother googling it tho cause I just thought discord was being jank for me Not it being a everyone problem
Kindof shows how common this is for me lmao
Knowing how their desktop app works on Linux (or more specifically doesn’t and requires you to mingle with it if you want any degree of Wayland awareness) it doesn’t surprise me their app remake (because it’s not just a redesign) is total garbage. I hope they get around to fixing the performance and bugs; but as things are right now I’m staying on Vendetta and refuse to update.
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Go figure
Any recommendations that already have good size populations and work across multiple devices?
Getting people off Skype was a big ordeal. Let alone Discord.
I’m still mourning the loss of ICQ
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App exists but barely anyone uses it
Skype was my childhood lmao
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An ejabberd instance can handle 2 million concurrent users. The free software XMPP server is used by the likes of League of Legends, Fortnite, Zoom. If it’s a good enough for them, it would easily handle your community, big or small.
I don’t agree. Really nice improvement imo. But I get it, change is hard.
Fascinating, I really didn’t think there were people who would consider that a nice change but 🤷♂️
How? You liked having your personal chats in the servers section? This seems like a clear UI improvement across the board to me, much more intuitive.
I’ve always liked having personal chats in the servers section. The notifications were much more clear, as the chat would always pop up to the top, and navigating to them was significantly easier as every area for messaging was easily accessible through one motion.
The UI is generally better and separating personal chats isn’t a deal breaker for me, but the new app is buggy in ways that actively impede my daily use, such as search filters not working over the full server in the default search bar, and the structure for dms makes it much harder to go seemlessly between talking in a server and talking with a group of friends in a dm or sending a message to someone. Swiping out of DMs to servers has much more friction, and switching between DMs takes significantly longer and is incredibly glitchy, sometimes trapping text boxes in a different chat, opening the conversation well above where you were actually talking, and many times it simply will get trapped in one dm and I need to restart the app fully to use DMs normally again.
I generally use significantly more DMs than servers, talking with my friends in groups of 3 or individually and having one or two servers for large communities of people. As such, the significantly shittier DM experience on mobile is making me want to use discord significantly less on mobile.
I do still look in the server section for my dms lmao
I like knowing where things are. I couldn’t find dms after the update until some told me. I also keep trying to swipe left to see members but that has moved too. I feel like in general everything has become harder to find.
The app literally shows you what changed the first time you boot it up, idk how you guys have such a hard time.
it only showed me there were 3 themes to choose from
It didn’t do the obligatory “here’s what we changed” thing for you?
maybe it did I can’t remember
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Just wish I could swap back
Yeah I’ve been trying to not instantly hate change
Its really hard tho
I’m proud of you, random internet stranger!
Thank you random internet stranger
Personally hate the change to the swipe. I get that on some huge servers people probably use the “reply” feature a lot, but I definitely don’t have so much use for it as to give up the nice, coherent and logical UX of “channel/server list is on the left, user list is on the right, just swipe to them”.
IMO, swiping should be for navigating UI, not interacting with individual items. Now there’s a useless thing on the swipe and I have to reach to the top of the screen if I want to check who’s online and in the channel. Annoying.
That and the new DM screen doesn’t use swipe right as navigation, it’s just a “back” button now. Can’t quickly look at the DM list and go back to your conversation by swiping right-left any more. Literal lazy design because this is an easier way to program that interaction.
Don’t care super much about the DM button moving, it’s more convenient to access but breaks the UI paradigm. Shrug.
Oh, and the “midnight” theme is not new, you could use it for years now in the old versions.
You hate the swipe to reply feature because you find it incoherent.
I hate it because I used to stim around with it.
We’re not the same. :P
Oh I absolutely used to stim with it :D
My fingers do random swipes all the time, so it’s annoying.
Community should fork & fix it⋯ oh
You know there is a fork on Android called Aliucord. It allows you to install pluggins like better discord.
Or vendroid
I can vouch for vendetta, it’s wonderful. I used to use aliucord as well
I don’t use Discord for security/privacy reasons, but none of these are listed on F-Droid
They’re mods of the proprietary Discord client, so yeah they don’t meet the criteria. But the mods themselves are open source which is nice.
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Great info. I can understand modifying YouTube to remove ads, PnP, & screen-off usage for an entertainment app, but I don’t know I would tolerate that for messaging actual humans. It’s a shame these efforts aren’t going into self-hostable, decentralized options. :(
Its not a fork it just injects some stuff into the app. And it uses a really old version as a base because they have a shortage of devs.
member list swipe being missing is a problem
not being able to swipe from dm to dm list is a problem
performance is a MUCH BIGGER problem than either of these, my galaxy s9+ should NOT be on its knees begging for for forgiveness by using a fucking chat app.
the prior two can be easily fixed, but the performance is really concerning. ill be using aliucord until they sort that stuff out anyway, new app is pretty but unfortunately flawed
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The new update is way better than the previous one.
The new update doesn’t care about people with accessibility concerns. My fiancé can’t use the official app at all because they changed the contrast to make it impossible to read no matter the theme. The best they can do is 3-5 minutes looking at the official app before they get a headache and have to stop using their phone.
This update is actively harming its users with no options to undo it.
I was not aware of this, I hope they improve the accessibility asap!
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I think it’s just different. Not incredibly better but not worse. People hate change.
I really like the update 🤷♂️
How the fuck do I see who’s online on a server now that I can’t open the drawer on the right anymore? I don’t use Discord much but I could figure it out.
Click the channel title
That is definitely not the place I would expect that to have been, thank you
There’s a chevron next to the channel name, indicating that you can get more details if you tap that. I get that it’s a significant design change but I don’t think it’s that unintuitive.
It’s a little unintuitive that it shows status of the people in the server and not something to so with that specific channel.
Not quite. It shows the online status for the people that are in that channel. Not all users are in all channels so, imo, it makes sense. The only complaint I can think of is that you can’t see the status for all of the people in a server.
It’s not clear though, because if I reminder correctly, tapping channel names before this update would give you information related to the channel, didn’t it?
And it still does…
It does the same as it did before. Hitting the channel name was just an alternative navigation method to swiping the chat window.
I think it’s a clear step in the wrong direction
discord is my compromise platform, because the only other platform all my friends could agree on was whatsapp, and fuck meta
They agree on WhatsApp? All my friends want to stick to the horrible Facebook Messenger for some reason.
We’re a weird mix of nerds in our mid to late 30s, some care enough about privacy to not have Facebook, but had been on whatsapp since pre meta.
Some refuse to install new apps, because “ugh not another one”
Definitely a compromise
They want to appear to care about privacy, you mean.
Because all of those apps own (literally or is their property) every image text and other data you give it
there are levels of data hygiene and levels of inconvenience people willing to put up with. Pumping less data points into the machine is still better than pumping more
I don’t agree. Pumping more is better if you don’t care. Because then it can provide the services of knowing you.
So you chose tencent?
yes this is oversimplified blah blah
it was a difficult choice - I pushed for them all to join signal, but there were some holdouts.
Whatsapp was e2ee, which discord is not. Discord can run in a webbrowser or a sandboxed flatpak on my desktop. All messengers suck, what ya gonna do?
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Been using Guilded, still needs a little work for the mobile app, but overall pretty good.
