zlacker

>>foxfir+(OP)
I cannot agree more and this has always been a pet peeve of mine.

Most native apps are some half gig large where even the heaviest website is a few mb. They dont let you highlight text and have other bizarre design choices. Even worse, they request importing contacts list which isnt even an option on the web.

Native apps could be butter but more often than not they are like margarine. Smooth, oily, and not good for you.

>>rustys+Fg
A lot of native apps are just wrappers around a JS context with a few bridges into native APIs and they are pure data grabs.

Reddit always asks you to use its native app, for example. Why the fuck would I care so much about Reddit that I want it outside of my browser? Same goes for any other website.

>>ljm+tp
Reddit is one of the cases where a native app makes sense. Some of the 3rd party Reddit apps were great.

But I'll eat my hat before I'll install Reddit's own app. Reddit killing off 3rd party apps is why I post here and not there.

>>spauld+hq
I too switched from Reddit to HN during the API protests of '23. But I always browsed through old.reddit anyway, I never used the third party apps. I'm aware of names like RIF and that everyone said they were great, but what was great about them?

>>card_z+gr
I imagine it depends on how you use it. I came to Reddit late and never got into the old interface. I commented a lot on technical subreddits and didn't do much with the doomscrolling ones.

I used Boost. Its ads were not intrusive (and I despise ads) and the UI was written with a small touchscreen in mind. If not for my distaste for phone keyboards, I'd say it was a better experience than the website on a desktop.

Would it be possible for a mobile browser to have a better experience? I don't know. I value my sanity too much to do web development. But Reddit was absolutely determined to make its mobile site unusable and the official Reddit app had a bad reputation (and I wouldn't give those bastards the satisfaction after being nagged so much to install it), so a 3rd party app was the only reasonable solution.

>>spauld+zE
I hold phones sideways, then I forget that it's weird to do. People like apps (and mobile versions of sites) because of human hand anatomy, I guess.