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2y ago

Jerboa app and Lemmy 0.18

The 0.18 version of Lemmy was announced. This will solve many issues.

But we can't upgrade yet because the captcha was removed, and captcha relied on Websockets, which are removed in 0.18 so despite the devs agreeing on my request to add captcha back, this will not be until 0.18.1. Without captcha we will be overrun by bots.

Hopefully this 0.18.1 will be released soon, because another issue is that the newest version of the Jerboa app won't work with servers older than 0.18. So if you're on Lemmy.world, please (temporarily) use another app or the web version.

208 comments

The Dev's stubbornness about captchas is a little baffling. Yes, they're not 100% foolproof but they help.
It's like arguing that we shouldn't have locks on or our doors because a skilled lock picker can get past them.
- The devs aren't pushing back against captchas, but they're desperately trying to get 0.18 out to resolve a ton of issues. Captchas need to be redone in the code level and no one has done it yet.
  
  someone has done it, there's a PR here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3289
- They agreed to add them back. You can read their comments in OPs link
  
  That only happened recently, though. For weeks they were replying to instance admins requests to reinstate captchas with things like "bots have beaten captchas, so they're useless."
- My very first post on Lemmy was a (admittedly out-of-date) rant about the devs stubbornness about the hardcoded bad words filter and their behavior in the relevant GitHub issues. And I had people jumping in the comments defending them, telling me that it was fixed years ago, they're better now, surely that couldn't possibly happen again.
  I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
  ETA: and yeah, I know about kbin, I've tried both, kinda waiting to see all the new Android native apps before completely moving over there. Seeing how all this shakes out.
  
  Lemmy has a hardcoded profanity/vulgarity filter?
  
  Kbin needs to sort out their API and get an app before I'm going to try using it directly.

Ok so guys, I appreciate the devs of Jerboa for doing what they do, but I am absolutely switching to another app immediately when something else decent shows up.
- Sync for Lemmy can't come quick enough
- I'm trying them all. As of today, Connect for Lemmy seems to be working the best
  
  Connect for Lemmy is the best thus far.
  
  Really liking the look of summit, but it's lacking a lot of features still.
  
  thanks for the rec! connect is working great for me
- Yep, I'll be sticking to Jerboa until Infinity for Lemmy is a thing.
- How does it compare to wefwef.app ? I’ve been using it a couple of days and it’s been pretty sweet so far. Found it on r/apolloapp.
  
  I just checked this out. Until a better native app is created, I feel like this is by far the best choice for using the site on mobile. Good find 👍
  
  wefwef.app
  This looks really nice, but doesn't look like it has any mod tools.
- Thunder on Android is the best of all the ones I've tried, Adaptive Icon and Material You support so feels very modern. It's a newer app but has a nice clean layout and development is happening fast.

Thanks for keeping the bots out! I'm still successfully using Jerboa, btw.
- you're probably not using the latest version from the GitHub repo then
  
  I'm and it works with lemmy.world, I still get the disclamer about Lemmy version, but still work regardless, what is it happening here?
  
  The new version from GitHub will give a warning, but mostly works with an outdated Lemmy version. That's how I'm typing this very comment.
  It does have a few actions that result in an immediate crash on outdated servers, but posting, commenting, following communities and reading notifications work.
  Oh, and you must be logged in already. New logins do not work.
  
  I am. It gives me the warning and crashes a lot, but it works a little.
  
  Successfully using the latest Jerboa and posting here from a different instance :)
  
  I am, but here we are
  
  Is the version on GitHub more recent than the one in the Play Store? The changelog in the Play Store said the update would make Jerboa ready for 0.18 and that's the version I have installed.

Biggest concern for me is the broken auto scrolling/updating. I can't use this site properly as long as the list of topics doesn't stay in place long enough for me to finish reading the headline.
Hopefully after this is fixed I'll start contributing.
- This will go away with dropping websockets
- Try changing the 1 at the end of the url to 0 as a workaround.
  
  This works! Thank you!

Appreciate you waiting for the 18.1 upgrade

I know these are early-adopter pain points, but I think if Lemmy is really gonna take off, the devs need to get serious about backward compatibility and ensuring backend upgrades don't completely break major instances/clients. IMO switching from websocket to HTTP should have been treated as a breaking change with a new major version release and a more controlled rollout period for this exact reason.
- Quoth semver 2.0.0:
  Major version zero (0.y.z) is for initial development. Anything MAY change at any time. The public API SHOULD NOT be considered stable.
  "Semver proper" only starts at version 1.0.0:
  Version 1.0.0 defines the public API. The way in which the version number is incremented after this release is dependent on this public API and how it changes.
  
  This is important. Many people (and news outlets for that matter) consider Lemmy a product, when it really is very much an on-going early stage development effort.
  It's amazing how well everything works already, but nothing should be considered stable at this point.

Jerboa asks for 0.18 to be installed, but works with 0.17.4 mostly without issues.
- it crashes constantly for me now.
  
  same for me.

Here is a link to the current state of captcha re-implementation: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3289
This request was reopened after it was merged prematurely. You can read the preceding discussion here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3249
Lemmy Devs have agreed to add it back, so I dont thing it will be long.

If you already Jerboa installed and set up and working then upgraded it in place, it seems to continue working fine with the 'outdated' version of lemmy.
That fact indicates that Jerboa is needlessly and overly sensitive with its startup checks when installing fresh and attempting to connect to a lemmy instance. I consider this a flaw with Jerboa.
Unfortunately, on my phone, the previous version of Jerboa always just crashed instantly on startup. That bug was fixed in the newest version of Jerboa, but I was never able to get Jerboa running enough previously to set it with a user account and preferred Lemmy instance.
- Yeah, mine complained about the server version but from what I can see everything still works ok.
  
  Same

For now i made a shortcut on my phone's home screen to this lemmy instance to act as a quasi lemmy client, works pretty well for the time being.
- Lemmy is a progressive web app and can be installed directly
  Heres a link to the instructions to install pwas from google Install pwa
  ... so i read the instructions and its not too helpful. Open lemmy in chrome on android then hit the 3 dots in the top right and near/above the option to open the desktop site you should see an install lemmy button
  
  I have a similar option in Firefox that I'm currently using. Thanks for telling there's other options, though.
  
  Sad that firefox seemingly cant do that ;(

Ouch. I understand exactly how things like that happen, but it is unfortunate. Hope it's resolved quickly.
There is a tremendous amount of pressure on everyone in the development/admin chain right now because of the insane influx of new users. (I'm one of them.) It amazes me how well everyone has been handling it. And I am grateful to all of you!

I just updated and it gave me an error on jerboa but it still seems to be working fine
- As long as you keep logged in.
- Yep. Got the warning but works just fine.
- As a new user it won't let me login to this server
- Likewise, hopefully it continues to work!

@[email protected] Dodged bullet anyway, v18 2FA doesn't make people confirm that their app is configured correctly by asking for a code, as is tradition. It just gives them their QR/Key and locks them into 2FA immediately. If they botch adding it to their app they are locked out. And I hear the code currently being generated is silently incompatible with Authy, so those people end up SOL even if they do everything right.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3309 / https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3325
- Whoa. That's not ideal.

Damn, that sucks. Is manual approving + email not enough for the time being?
EDIT: I see that in the GitHub issue you linked, you answer this question. TLDR: No, it is not enough it seems.
- manual approving
  this won't scale, captchas are a low-hanging fruit that should have never been removed
  
  They were removed because they don't work with the new system, not because someone felt like removing it. If someone volunteers to add them back, they'll be back
  
  I understand. It would only be until captchas are back in the release (i.e. 0.18.1). I only suggested this because 0.18 fixed some nasty annoyances.

Alternatively to Jerboa, it's possible to use the web site as a contained web-app, using Firefox on Android.
- Thanks for showing me this. It worked on chrome too.
- Q: When you do that, does it somehow segregate the session/cookies from the rest of your browsing with the browser
  
  Sorry, I have no idea about that.

ELI5?
- there's a couple of points here
  current website is version 0.17.4 (you can check this at the very bottom)
  version 0.18 is ready, but there's no captcha yet (the thing where you have to identify objects on squares, or click a box that'll turn into checkmark)
  without captcha, bot accounts (not real users) can register to the site too easily
  so we're gonna wait for version 0.18.1, the one with captcha active.
  the Jerboa app, the android app for browsing Lemmy has also recently updated, and will only work for Lemmy version 0.18 up, thus it's advised to use another app or just the web for now
  note : the site version 0.18 is already out for the main Lemmy instance, which is lemmy.ml, but lemmy.world (where we are now) is gonna wait for version 0.18.1
  
  I'm using Jerboa and everything seems to be working fine. Edit: Jerboa started playing up mainly crashing on opening it. Binned it off and now using Connect
  
  I'm currently using the app called lemmy connect without issues.
- Lemmy.world is running Lemmy version 0.17.4 right now (check the bottom of any Lemmy instance and it'll tell you what version is running). The new version fixes a lot of things, but lemmy.world can't upgrade to that new version yet because it'll be overrun by bot accounts. We have to wait for the next version and skip this update because that has the protections for bot accounts.

Captcha has been merged https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3289#issuecomment-1609087178 And 0.18.1 RC1 has been tagged https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/releases/tag/0.18.1-rc.1

So that's why Jerboa crashes as soon as I log in.
Moved to Connect, happy with that.

@[email protected]: 0.18.1-rc1 is out with captchas: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/releases/tag/0.18.1-rc.1

Thank you for the info and keeping on top of this :) have a nice weekend

And to anyone using Jerboa, be sure not to update past v0.0.34 until you see server v0.18.1+ on lemmy.world.
- Dev of Summit here. Summit v0.1.17 was released recently and this version is backwards compatible and should support both 0.18 and older servers if anyone wants to give it a go for the time being. It is still missing a lot of feature though.
  
  Great app btw.
- I just deleted and installed v0.0.34 from F-droid to log in
  Once Lemmy.world updates, I will update as well

Jerboa just quit when I tried using it on Android - Pixel 5 w/Android 12. Wouldn't open at all, so I quit on it. Trying out Summit now
- I just got liftoff and it slaps
  
  I'm def gonna try it out, thank you!
- Also have that problem. V0.0.34 crashes, and V0.0.35 doesn't work with Lemmy.world, so I had to switch to Liftoff
  
  Liftoff is awesome! So far, I really love that app

Should've read this first. I was getting that instance outdated popup on jerboa app, thought a logout and re-login would resolve it. Now I can't login, my mistake..
- You can use this fork: https://lemmy.ml/post/1498929
  
  Use the forks, Luke :)
  
  Thanks

Thanks. I installed Jerboa yesterday and it was not working. Glad to know this may be the cause. I can wait for 0.18.1 for mobile access
- You can install 0.0.34 off github in the meantime: https://github.com/dessalines/jerboa/releases
  
  That version crash on launch for me. Anyway to fix it?
  EDIT: I fix it doing like this:
  Run the app in offline mode (airplane mode).
  Than go to login, and try sign in with your account.
  Turn on internet again.
  Once logged in, I updated the apps, and I am still logged in.
  That's strange, it is like you can be logged in, but the devs just opted to not allow you to.

Has the websocket api been removed from Lemmy with this update?
- Yes

Thunder, which is on the IzzyOnDroid F-Droid repo is a decent Lemmy Android app that plays well with lemmy.world currently. It also supposedly has an iOS version.

If you are logged in you can just update Jerboa to v0.0.35 and you'll get a message saying that the app works better with Lemmy v0.18 but it still works.
If you are not logged in, then use Jerboa v0.0.34 to log in and then update to v0.0.35
- Fun fact, the reason why login is incompatible between 0.17 and 0.18 is in 0.18, the value of the user's default sort order and "listing order" (eg. all, local or subscribed) was changed from an numeric value to a string (text) value.

After installing Jerboa from the Play Store I encountered the crashing issue everyone is mentioning. I was able to seemingly fix the issue by going into the App Info -> Storage and hit Clear Storage. After it cleared it's been working fine for me. Hopefully this works for you folks unless I'm missing something about the issue.

https://media.tenor.com/3t8n3nxRWIgAAAAM/among-us.gif
- https://lemmy.ml/post/1498929

How about temporarily disabling sign ups until 0.18.1? As more apps update to 0.18 it'll be annoying to juggle versions.
- Anything stopping new members from signing up is going to hurt the adoption of the platform as a whole.
  
  There are still many other instances that accept signups, so I don't think temporally disabling lemmy.world signup will hurt lemmy.
  However, having a popular client incompatible with a popular instance will annoy existing and new users.
- The release candidates for 0.18 were published at an almost daily basis. I think it's fair to assume .1 won't take forever.

Thanks ruud I'm having a really good time.

Omg I was just getting on track developing my own Lemmy app based on websockets and now they are being removed... welp
- While I understand your frustration, the change was announced beforehand.
  
  Should've paid attention I guess

I tried that app over a week ago (F-Droid) and it just crashed 5 times just me trying to read the refugee welcome message.
Now that my beehaw account got approved a few days ago, I thought I give it a try again to use it with the app (Play Store), but now it crashes as soon as I start it while it loads its changelog message.
Hopefully one of the other 9 clients is going to have something more stable to offer than this.
- I'm seeing this same thing: crash on startup. I'm "using" the latest from the Play Store.
  Edit: installing the latest release from GitHub is working
- Same deal. Worked for a week or so, now jerboa crashes on start...

Thanks for being so on top of this.

beehaw only seems to support 0.17.4 rn
- Beehaw don't support Lemmy.World and other instances that dare to allow anyone to set up an account. They are anti-fediverse.

Thank you for posting this explanation.

Jerboa also won't work with Android older than 8.0 though that's less of a problem for server ops. But it still seems like reliance on unnecessary shiny tech. My 5yo Android 7 phone still works perfectly well and I plan to keep using it a while longer, so I can't use the official Lemmy app. I wonder how fundamental Jerboa's dependence on Android 8 is. Anyone know?
- The real crime here is that a 5yo android phone is running 7 which was released 8 years ago?
  
  It was released in August 2016 so that makes it almost 7 years, but your point still stands.
  
  It actually came with Android 6, and the vendor shipped one upgrade, to Android 7. Hmm, it looks like the phone (Moto XT1625) was announced in 2016, so 7 years ago.
- seems like reliance on unnecessary shiny tech. My 5yo Android 7 phone still works perfectly well
  I don't think it's the responsibility of unpaid app developers to work around that, especially when you can probably install a somewhat recent custom ROM. I have an ancient Nexus 4 with LineageOS 18.1 (Android 11, the last version for 32bit CPUs) and that version of LineageOS is still getting updates every few months.
  
  LineageOS doesn't pass google's SafetyNet, so it locks you out of a lot of banking apps, and also some other important apps.
  It's possible to run those by rooting the phone and doing some hackery to trick the app into bypassing the SafetyNet check, but that's a race against google security features.
  Besides, I gave up running LOS on my old phone and just bought a new phone with stock android 13, and Jerboa crashes on startup on it as well.
  
  That's impressive
  
  Asking users to install custom roms to browse Lemmy doesn't seem sound a good strategy for Lemmy to beat Reddit. What I'm wondering is whether Android 8 development is somehow easier than Android 7 development. I have not looked at the source code of RedReader. Someone mentioned the existence of Reddit API emulation for Lemmy. Maybe the easiest thing is run that, and point a copy of RedReader at it.
  Lineage does sound nice, but it doesn't support my phone.
- My 5yo phone is running Android 13. Get LineageOS.
- Tbh just use a custom rom
  
  If I get a new phone while my old one still works, I'll perhaps try a custom rom in the old one. Otherwise it's like messing with a production server.

Good decision.

Thanks for the update, keep it up!

My Jerboa somehow isn't yet updated, so I am safe..

Doesn't the CI pipeline not produce an installable build with that patch applied somewhere?

If your looking for another app to use in the mean time you can use https://wefwef.app if you add it to your homescreen it will work like a native app.

Frequently getting "404: FetchError: invalid json response body at http://lemmy:8536/api/v3/site" when trying to visit posts here, maybe due to some backend overload. I guess you know about this but mentioning because I didn't notice other posts about it.

Another app?

Good decision, thank you!

It's just me or comments posted from this instance to instances in 0.18 don't appear to be syncing?, It's that normal?

Lemmymade seems to work for now. But some features are missing there I think.

I have yet to find another app that is consistently reliable and feature rich. Should we just sign up for a different instance until lemmy.world is upgraded?
- You might try Liftoff or Thunder. I am replying this from Thunder and its working fine for me. You can find both of these apps on f-droid.

208 comments