Limbo and Limmynade have joined forces, and will continue development together as Liftoff!

The past couple of weeks have been tremendously exciting times for all of us as events elsewhere have led to a massive growth in interest in and usage of Lemmy.

Our two separate projects both started with the intention of bringing an existing open-source code base Lemmur up to date, with the aim of helping new users to have a great first experience of Lemmy, while giving existing users access to many rich features. As soon as we became aware of each other we realised that we would work much more effectively by combining our efforts. Read more about what makes Liftoff! special.

We are:

Zach—Extensive experience in Enterprise full stack architecture and infrastructure.

Michael—Many years experience of developing and managing commercial and open source software projects.

Liftoff! is written in Dart for API support and Flutter for front-end development, meaning that it can run wherever Flutter runs. Our primary targets right now are Android and iOS, but the sky’s the limit!

Our current development priorities are to:

  • Ensure that the app runs robustly on iOS and Android platforms.
  • Identify and address any major bugs affecting key functionality
  • Work to improve the user experience on both platforms.
  • Release 1.0 version

Beta builds now available on TestFlight and will soon be available on F-Play and Google Store. (Note that the TestFlight page still refers to it as Limbo, but it does indeed install as Liftoff!)

Liftoff code is made available under GPL2.0 and can be found at https://github.com/liftoff-app

We have already had tremendous support from enthusiastic Lemmy users as separate projects and we look forward to continuing to work with you all. Code contributions, bug fixes, issue reports and suggestions are all welcome, so please join us on our journey into the unknown!

  • darklightxi@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Hey there! (developer of Thunder here)

    I would just like to pop in and say congrats on getting Lemmur up and running! I’m happy to see more Dart/Flutter apps popping up. Since both Thunder and Liftoff use Flutter, this could also be an opportunity for our projects to help one another in good ways - maybe starting off with the lemmy-dart api

    I am currently using a very basic lemmy-dart library that I built from scratch, but this could be the opportunity to migrate to using your fork

    • liftoff@lemmy.worldOPM
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      2 years ago

      You’d be more than welcome, and don’t feel shy about picking through the code for ideas and things you’d like to do better! We’d welcome any suggestions or contributions you make.

      I have to say Thunder is looking good too!

      • darklightxi@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Same here, feel free to look around through Thunder’s codebase as well to gather any ideas, and provide any suggestions or feedback! I’ve been learning a lot about Flutter and Dart through this so far, and it’s been a fun time for the most part :D

  • Zach @bigfoot.ninjaM
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    2 years ago

    Zach here! (The old lemmynade dev)

    Super excited to move this forward with Micahel! Thanks everyone for the support and engagement so far!

    • mykl@lemmy.worldM
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      2 years ago

      Michael here, right back at ya!

      Sad to see Limbo fade away, but we’ve got places to go!

  • ventusx@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Kudos to the devs! I use Liftoff on Android and i think this is it for me!. IMO the number one thing that will help the fediverse gain adoption is good mobile apps, I’m leaving reddit because of two things:

    1. Fuck you u/Spez and u/ModCodeOfConduct
    2. RIF is fun is shutting down and i do most of my reddit time on my phone.

    The app is in early stages but i trust that you’ll make it great!

  • LossLeader@lemmy.studio
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    2 years ago

    I just installed it as well after setting up Obtanium and it already seems much less buggy than Jerboa. Thank you!

  • Zed@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Just installed it on my device it seems to be working great, good job guys, looking forward to see how it evolves.

  • DustyNipples@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    It’s really good, I’ve tried a few apps and I’m sticking with Liftoff!

    My only request rn is a transparent or white nav bar because Pixel.

    Thanks to all involved 🖤

    • liftoff@lemmy.worldOPM
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      2 years ago

      Could you explain what you mean by that request? Happy to log it but I don’t send much time on Android so I don’t understand it :-)

      • Eleu8erios@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Guess have to do with the blueish color of navigation bar at the bottom. Would be better if we could customize it. Kudos to devs!

      • DustyNipples@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Sorry, I didn’t see your reply till now.

        Gesture navigation on Android features a small black bar at the bottom of the screen, it’s transparent (like iOS) most of the time but devs specifically have to account for it, either make it a specific colour or transparent or it just appears black, which is quite ugly when the surrounding app is white or any other colour.

        Some manufacturers like Samsung allow you to remove the bar completely, but on others including Pixel there is no option.

        https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/166478545 - as you can see, lots of people have issues!

        Android 14 beta has a transparent nav bar option (currently only sort of working) so hopefully this will be one less thing for devs to worry about in the future.

        Thanks for your work on this app, it’s fab!

  • dzonc@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    This is great, even in its current state it’s head and shoulders above other options. I had started something myself as a pet project, but you guy have already made a start on my list of feature ideas and I see you’re open to pull requests.

    I’d love to see a bit of an AMA style roadmap discussion, I can see from the git issues there’s plenty of bugfixes and feature requests, but I’m curious if you have any long term design, feature or Ux ambitions?

    Personally I’m more frontend/Ux than developer, sadly as a product owner I rarely get to write code in work these days so my skills are limited to ‘pet projects’. Do you think there’d be any interest in adopting material3 or was you going for more of a device agnostic approach (or more likely is it a leftover from Lemmur)?

    Also, You mentioned F-Droid, no ambition to put it on Google Play? I know it’s early days but it’s relatively simple and currently there’s a complete lack of options for the average user? I personally think this is a huge barrier for people coming from reddit - the kindling for the exodus was lack of third party app integrations but when you look at Lemmy, there’s basically only 1 app and it’s not great from a Ux perspective.

    Good luck with the next steps, wishing the project success!

    • zachatrocity@lemmy.worldM
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      2 years ago

      Love your thoughts in here. Google play is coming, review is pending. Should be any day now.

      About the roadmap and UX design vision right now we just want a robust app that we want to use ourselves. We’re almost there.

      For longer term vision and design direction you should join our matrix and we can have these discussions!

      #liftoff-dev:matrix.org

  • salt@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I had already been using Limbo for a while and loved it. Glad to see you guys working together on this!

  • HeavyRaptor@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Great job with the app!

    The refresh rate does seem to be locked at 60fps which makes switching to the app feel a bit jarring and stuttery. (I’m on a 1+ 8 Pro, 120hz screen)

    • mykl@lemmy.worldM
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      2 years ago

      undefined> The refresh rate does seem to be locked at 60fps which makes switching to the app feel a bit jarring and stuttery. (I’m on a 1+ 8 Pro, 120hz screen)

      I believe that’s the case. I’ve raised an issue on GitHub.

  • TrickyCamel@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    This is the best app so far! One issue I’m having with it is that the keyboard covers the text box I’m typing in so it makes it difficult to see what I’m typing.

    I’m on android.

  • Altair@vlemmy.net
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    2 years ago

    I think this is the most ‘complete’ android client for Lemmy right now! Feels the most seamless to me at least

    Walking users through registering an account here would already make this recommendable to people upset about 3rd party reddit apps going down I feel.