Resolved since Mlem has all the features I wanted:

https://mander.xyz/comment/22644935

It also solved one I hinted at in a few of my comments, what are the server’s users actually like. That’s exposed in a tab on a pane summarising a server but you can see some of the information online, like the endorsements here for lemmy.ml:

https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/lemmy.ml

Edit of original question

Is there an iPhone client that makes it possible to do these three things in the app:

  1. To be able to see the different sidebars that are visible if you load these two sites (not only the side bar on server I’m registered to):

  1. To be able to scroll these community (sorry not channel) lists separately and independent of channels from other servers (sorry not instances) (and not only the channels on server I’m registered to):

  2. To be able to search “ask lemmy.ml” filtered by communities and see “https://lemmy.ml/c/asklemmy” show up in some way.

Original post

Maybe it’s just the iPhone clients, but they seem to have issues with use cases for other instances, for example:

  • If I’m interested in news from a certain country, and there is an instance focused on that country, I basically need to get on the web to search if there is a useful channel on that instance. If you use on of the iPhone clients to search for a channel and only use the instance name then nothing seems to match show up. You can find users from those channels, channels that happen to use that set of characters, or when people write a channel from that instance, but the search doesn’t seem to match channels on that instance.
  • Clients don’t seem to offer a way to navigate to an instance and see all its channels. This is basically the same use case as above, but with more exploration and less targeted. Again, I seem to need to use the web.
  • I can’t find a way to show the sidebar for an instance, besides the one I’ve registered for. For a lot of instance+channel combinations this really doesn’t matter. But when it matters, it tends to matter a lot. I had a few situations in asklemmy@lemmy.ml where people basically resorted to saying the instance was lemmy.ml and I had to go look up why that would matter by switching to a browser. (Yeah… a newbie problem, and now I wonder how I could have missed it.)

So, incase this comes across as just statements, here are some questions:

  • Am I missing an obvious client / some buttons to click?
  • Is this just how communities and users grew to use the echo system?
  • Are the iPhone clients all from similar codebases or copying UI layout?
  • Is there some technical issue with the exposed search APIs?
  • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    4·
    7 days ago

    Are you trying to replace the words ‘community’ and ‘instance’ with ‘channel’ and ‘server’? Using non-standard terms makes it harder to understand what you’re asking for.

    In terms of searching for communities, no app allows for searching for communities on an instance-by-instance basis, unfortunately. As someone else noted, you could try submitting such a feature as a feature request for your preferred client.

    • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
      1·
      7 days ago

      app allows for searching for communities on an instance-by-instance basis

      Yeah, thanks for this. Any chance you know why? It’s pretty easy to do using a browser and I find myself wanting to do it a bit. I don’t notice a clickable target or menu item to open the website for the parent server (that would speed up doing things like this even if its not added to the app) and that also makes me think other people haven’t had much of a desire for this.

      It makes me wonder if “I’m doing it wrong” or if people have grown into workarounds. Maybe people having alts on a few servers so they can see all communities and have a local feed? Or maybe the user base is so tech heavy that a lot of users are mostly on computers and are mostly pulling out their phones to scroll a feed or write a quick reply?

      (And I only wrote the wrong terms three times this post. Sorry if I missed one.)

      • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        7 days ago

        Most clients are the hobby project of a single developer who have limited amounts of spare time to implement a wide array of possible features.

        As I mentioned in my other reply, one such client was Arctic for iOS, which albeit no longer updated, has a community search tool that enables community searching filtered by instance (i.e. the search term ‘dbzer0’ excludes news@lemmy.world and memes@lemmy.world and includes news@lemmy.dbzer0.com and memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com). I’d suggest opening a feature request in the community of your preferred client, clearly explaining the rationale behind the suggestion and its potential benefits, and with enough support it could theoretically get implemented.

        • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
          2·
          6 days ago

          I haven’t been around long enough to have a favourite client so this was more of an exploration.

          It turns out that Mlem does everything I wanted so I’m going to switch to that.

          Thanks for taking your time with me

    • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
      1·
      7 days ago

      Are you trying to replace the words ‘community’ and ‘instance’ with ‘channel’ and ‘server’? Using non-standard terms makes it harder to understand what you’re asking for.

      Can you point out where I did this in the section that I labelled as the edited post? (And it was edited quite a few hours before your comment.) Immediately following the correct terms I do call out some mistaken terms I used in the original post and some of the comments and start by apologising for using the wrong term. That seems like a reasonable thing to do.

      I completely agree that I had somehow learned incorrect terms and used the incorrect terms in the original post and that it’s confusing. Your rationale here is a huge part of why I rewrote it. I kept the original post at the end, and put a title above it, so that the comments that already existed (that pointed out my mistakes) would read well and wouldn’t suddenly change to reflect poorly on the author’s.

      What should I have done differently?

      • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        7 days ago

        To be able to scroll these community (sorry not channel) lists separately and independent of channels from other servers (sorry not instances) (and not only the channels on server I’m registered to):

        I was mostly referring to this paragraph in the ‘Edit’ section near the top; apologies if my comment came across as condescending. It seems like the terms are being used interchangeably?

        Edit: Also, reviewing the community search tool of the Arctic app for iOS, it does seem to sometimes be able to sort community names by instance if you enter the instance name as the search, such as ‘dbzer0’ only listing communities either on lemmy.dbzer0.com or other communities mentioning dbzer0 in their community description. Unfortunately Arctic has seemingly been abandoned, so hopefully other apps will eventually implement similar functionality.

        • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
          1·
          7 days ago

          Arctic was abandoned!?? I found it this morning while test different apps and I was really impressed. Well, besides loads being slow and timing out. And that seemed like a strange thing to be unique to specific client.

          • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            2·
            7 days ago

            I was on its TestFlight version until it was recently removed due to developer inactivity; unfortunate, because several of the features I had requested that were added weren’t on the App Store version. Arctic is still mostly working for now, but will probably break with the Lemmy 1.0 update, and thus I started looking for alternatives. Albeit not as good looking or customizable as Arctic, Mlem has the most features and best UI of the alternatives; I’m also trying Blorp now, which is a newer client with a developer open to feature suggestions at !blorp@lemmy.zip.

            Unlike Arctic, both also support using a Piefed account as an alternative to Lemmy.

            • Mose13@lemmy.world
              2·
              2 days ago

              Let me know how I can make Blorp as good as arctic was! I know push notifications are missing. That’s the hardest to get right imo, so I’ve been procrastinating. Anything else I can probably add more quickly. Eventually I want to get notification support.

              • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                2·
                2 days ago

                Thanks; I’m still using Arctic, Mlem, and Blorp simultaneously, but I’ll keep thinking of more suggestions for Blorp, and hopefully it can come to surpass Arctic in terms of polish. 👍

        • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
          1·
          7 days ago

          TLDR: yeah, I’ve used the terms interchangeably.

          I somehow started off the day thinking a server was an instance, and that a community was a channel. I fixed the initial post but I’ve misused the terms a bit since. And I noticed I did again after proofreading one of my replies to you. I can guess why I’m incorrectly saying “instance” (ie a deployed server) but I’ve got no idea how I started using “channel”.

          Sorry for the mixup and for the long-windedness. This post was a bit of a mess for me trying to ask what I thought was a simple question and then trying to clarify.

  • Sjmarf@lemmy.ml
    2·
    6 days ago

    Mlem (App Store link) has all of the features you mentioned (I’m one of the developers).

    To be able to see the different sidebars that are visible if you load these two sites (not only the side bar on server I’m registered to):

    Go to the search tab and tap “instances”, which allows you to read the sidebar of any instance. You can also search for an instance:

    To be able to scroll these community (sorry not channel) lists separately and independent of channels from other servers (sorry not instances) (and not only the channels on server I’m registered to):

    In the aforementioned instance page, there’s a “communities” tab that shows this list:

    To be able to search “ask lemmy.ml” filtered by communities and see “https://lemmy.ml/c/asklemmy” show up in some way.

    You can filter by a particular instance in the community search. Here, filtering by lemmy.ml and searching “ask” surfaces asklemmy@lemmy.ml:

        • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
          1·
          5 days ago

          Oh, two things I’ve noticed:

          • Voyager let you upload images for a comment. I’m not sure where they stored the images, but it would be nice to have the feature.
          • It’s easy enough to reuse the link button to link to a remote picture, but it would be nice to have the button added to the row above the keyboard.
          • The inbox icons for read, unread look like indicators and then they are backwards. They’re actually buttons indicating what will happen if you press them, but that doesn’t map immediately into my head. There might be a way to clean that up but I don’t have a good idea right now. Maybe you could add a light thin border with a radius around all the buttons in the row to indicate they’re buttons unlike the indicators and that might help.
          • Sjmarf@lemmy.ml
            2·
            5 days ago

            Voyager let you upload images for a comment. I’m not sure where they stored the images, but it would be nice to have the feature.

            You can do this by tapping on the image button in the toolbar above the keyboard. You will need to scroll horizontally through the toolbar to see this option.

            The inbox icons for read, unread look like indicators and then they are backwards.

            Are you referring to this icon? This icon is for indicating read status:

            They’re actually buttons indicating what will happen if you press them, but that doesn’t map immediately into my head.

            The icon I circled isn’t a tappable button; I’m confused :)

            • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
              1·
              5 days ago

              So, on Mlem on an iPhone the inbox counter on the menu bar wasn’t going down when I opened things (and was -1 earlier today) so I updated the interaction bar to add the Mark Read action:

              The indicator bar, everywhere, has indicators in the middle with buttons on the outside. The buttons look the same but slightly larger. If they are toggled on, then you can see them clearly as buttons. Making them look like buttons when they’re toggled off would help me parse the icon Mark Read is currently displaying, since it’s the action that will be applied not the current status of read/unread (how my brain is parsing it).

              For uploading an image, the bar I see above my keyboard is this:

              And I don’t see a place to change what’s in that bar.

              As a side note, after opening the app and using it, I did a scan through settings and on the comments the interaction bar wasn’t quite what I’d want so I updated it and hit save. It offered for me to push the change to all interaction bars and I thought that of course I wanted the change pushed to all comment interaction bars. Anyway, I imagine the rest of my interaction bars are pretty custom now.

              • Sjmarf@lemmy.ml
                2·
                5 days ago

                Ah, I see! I get what you mean about the icons being confusing. Swapping them around might also be confusing, though… what about just always showing the “open envelope” icon, both when the button is on and when it is off? 🤔

                The indicator bar, everywhere, has indicators in the middle with buttons on the outside. The buttons look the same but slightly larger. If they are toggled on, then you can see them clearly as buttons. Making them look like buttons when they’re toggled off would help me parse the icon Mark Read is currently displaying, since it’s the action that will be applied not the current status of read/unread (how my brain is parsing it).

                Sure, I’ll add a setting for this. If you’re on the TestFlight beta, it’ll probably be in this weekend’s update.

                For uploading an image, the bar I see above my keyboard is this, and I don’t see a place to change what’s in that bar.

                If you put your finger on the bar and swipe to the left, it’ll show more options :)

                • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
                  1·
                  5 days ago

                  what about just always showing the “open envelope” icon, both when the button is on and when it is off?

                  When the inbox counter doesn’t go down, it’s nice to quickly know which posts aren’t correctly marked. I don’t think displaying that way makes it more clear but I am about to rush to do something so I might not be thinking it through. I’ll think as I use the app and get back to you.

                  I think another issue is that the client gets out of sync with the server on the Inbox page. I think it only notifies that a refresh is needed when new items are added to the list.

                  And when the refresh banner shows up, if you pull down to reload instead of pressing the button in the banner then a load indicator shows and eventually clears but the banner doesn’t. I’m not sure if that’s because the load isn’t happening, if it’s the load is being thrown away, of if the banner state isn’t being updated.

                  If you put your finger on the bar and swipe to the left, it’ll show more options :)

                  🤦‍♂️ I even noticed the link button was greyed out but for some reason I thought it was a bug and displaying as disabled even though it was clickable. Swapping from scroll to a hamburger menu is one way to handle future user stupidity but I’m not sure if it’s better, or there are better alternatives.

    • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
      2·
      7 days ago

      To be clear. I would like these three things:

      1. To be able to see the different sidebars that are visible if you load these two sites (not only the instance I’m registered to):

      1. To be able to scroll each of these channels lists separately and independent of channels from other instances (not only the instance I’m registered to):

      2. To be able to search “ask lemmy.ml” filtered by channels and see “https://lemmy.ml/c/asklemmy” show up in some way.

      I’m not sure your comment addresses that, or if it does, which one.

      • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        7 days ago
        1. All sidebars should be visible in most if not all apps.
        2. By channel do you mean community? Similar to a “subreddit”? For example, we’re communicating on !lemmyapps@lemmy.world. If your instance uses something like this tool to automate community discovery that can help.
        3. Not sure about this one
        • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
          21·
          7 days ago
          1. Community sidebars are. But servers also have sidebars that sometimes include information that applies to the nested communities / users and I don’t know how to see those in the Voyager or Arctic iPhone apps.
          2. I did mean community. Sorry. And I don’t think it’s that. I personally am subscribed to a number of lemmy.world communities so the should be synced to the server I’m on, but they only display in search if there is a text match, not a server / ID march:

          • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            6 days ago

            For federated software servers are more commonly referred to as instances. Sync let’s you view instance sidebars but it hasn’t been updated in a while.

    • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
      2·
      6 days ago

      Yeah, that’s where I started. But after setting up then I occasionally wondered if certain communities were around and couldn’t search how I want when I happened to be on an app.

      It turns out that Mlem had all the features that I wanted.

  • ccunning@lemmy.world
    1·
    7 days ago

    In Voyager if I search for a country name I can apply that search term to Posts, Comments, Communities, or Users. If for example I choose Communities it will show me communities across instances.

    I don’t know of a way to address your second scenario,

    But the third one you can get to in Voyager by pressing and holding on the community name or from the “…” button

    ETA:

    • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
      1·
      6 days ago

      Yeah, that example doesn’t work if the server is for thai people / topics but the community is something like scuba diving (and the sidebar doesn’t mention thailand). Then it wouldn’t show up in the search in Voyager.

      It’s okay though, Mlem does all the things I wanted so I’ve switched to that. Thanks for taking so long to write out the flows for me.