Hi Mlem Community,

We are thrilled to announce the launch of our 2.0 public beta!

Please be aware that this is an early beta build, may be missing features you consider essential. See the “Roadmap” section further down for a full list.

We’re trying out a new TestFlight structure with two groups:

  • Weekly: this group gets a weekly build with the latest state of our development branch. Changelogs for these builds will be posted to the new Beta Feedback Megathread
  • Stable Pre-Release: this group receives curated manual releases that have been tested by the bleeding edge group. Each release represents a coherent development scope, and changelogs for these builds will get their own “New Beta Release” posts.

Join the weekly beta

Join the stable beta

If you prefer the most stable, feature-rich Mlem experience, we encourage you to stay on our v1 until 2.0 is ready for the App Store.

What’s New

Markdown Support

  • Full Markdown rendering powered by our custom cmark-gfm fork
  • Rich Markdown editing tools built right into the keyboard

Tiled Posts

The new “Tiled” post layout renders posts in a 2-column grid, giving you the content density of Compact mode with much larger thumbnails.

Keep Place on Account Switch

You can now switch accounts without losing your place in feed, perfect for saving a post to a different account. This behavior can be toggled in Settings -> Accounts; you can also long press an account in the quick switcher to choose your refresh behavior.

Updated Middleware

We rebuilt how we communicate with and manage instances from the ground up to address the challenges of a federated platform and give us a clean, strong base to build future updates on. Backend changes aren’t very visible (for now–we’ve got some very exciting features planned to take full advantage of the new architecture), but they support a lot of the new features in this list.

Guest Accounts

You can now add guest accounts to any instance and browse its content without creating an account!

Performance Improvements

We’ve also refactored our entire UI structure to cut out a lot of inefficiencies present in the v1 codebase. The result is a noticeably snappier app.

Color Themes

Or, properly, a framework to support color themes. Right now you can choose between Default and Monochrome, but more are on the way!

UI Upgrades

We’ve kept the majority of our v1 UI/UX, but taken the opportunity to spruce some things up. See if you can spot what’s new!

Misc

  • Improved cross-instance resolution—opening content not accessible from your instance now opens the content in-app using a guest session on the host instance, rather than in the browser
  • The subscription list can now be sorted alphabetically or by instance
  • Post creator is now hidden by default in aggregate feeds. This behavior can be changed in Settings -> Posts.

Roadmap

This is by no means a complete list of everything we have planned, but it’s the major outstanding items we have mapped out. If there are v1 features missing from this list that you’d like to see prioritized, let us know and we’ll work that into our development plan!

  • Post/comment improvements
    • Inline image uploads in comments
    • Create posts
    • Crossposts
  • Moderation/administration tools
    • Mod mail
    • Moderator, administrator actions
    • Moderated feed
  • Media improvements
    • Improved image handling (all backend work, but should improve performance)
    • Proper video handling
  • Post and comment searching
  • iPad support
  • Keyword filtering
  • Settings icons
  • Mark read on scroll

Known Issues

  • You will need to sign back into your accounts. This is an unfortunate consequence of migrating the app from Lionel Hanners’ account to my own. We apologize for the inconvenience.
  • The tile layout can be a little stuttery. We’re working on a fix with the “Improved image handling” item.
  • Navigation and tab bar accents remain gray after closing the composer sheet
  • Tall images in website previews don’t get appropriately cropped

Cheers,

The Mlem Group

Mlem is a free and open source project. 100% of our funding, which pays for things like server time, comes from our generous donors; we do not, and will never, run ads or sell data. If you’d like to help support Mlem, you can donate here.

  • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    71·
    3 months ago

    So this is one feature I really like from Voyager that I think would be nice to implement. Accounts that are 30 days old or younger can have a tag applied to their comments to show you that. I find it pretty helpful. Here’s an example:

    The other thing that’s a much more minor refinement, is that I think you should be able to just paste a URL in the search box as well. I know the button is there, but it disappears when the search box is activated, including by double-tapping in the tab bar, which means backing out to click it. I think this would just make the flow a little better and mean people can choose which suits their muscle memory better.

    Also, if I can put in a theme request for Dracula? 😅 Hell, point me to the right files in the repo and I’ll make a pull request.

    Edit: Oh, a comment/post preview button in the editor would be nice :)

    • Sjmarf@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4·
      3 months ago

      Thanks for the feedback! I’ve created issues for these features :)

  • Veedem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 months ago

    Loving the updated feed design, btw. Much cleaner look with clear separation between the posts.

  • Chef_Boyargee@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    3 months ago

    Looks great so far, thanks for the awesome work! One issue I have bumped into is not being able to log into blahaj.zone. It keeps giving an unable to connect error. I can log in to their instance just fine via browser though.

    • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      21·
      3 months ago

      I just logged into my blahaj account using the “weekly beta” and it worked. It might have been a temporary error on the Blahaj side. Sometimes the web ui goes down but apps still work and vice versa. I think it’s usually maintenance stuff.

  • nocturne@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    Is there a way to preserve settings from the old version to the new? Specifically appearance.

    Edit: I think I got it pretty well back to what it was. But I found when going to edit a post your text does not wrap. The only way I was able to get to the end of the line was to hit return and make it two lines.

    • Eric@lemmy.mlOPMEnglish
      7·
      3 months ago

      Is there a way to preserve settings from the old version to the new?

      Not right now. We’ve rewritten and reorganized the entire infrastructure that handles settings and configuration, and the new and old schemas are more or less alien. We’ve got an issue open to build a settings import/export tool which will allow things like easily migrating settings across platforms that should also make this possible.

    • nocturne@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago
      Spoiler

      The color contrast looks good, unsure if that was fixed, or if the app is working better with the high contrast setting in accessibility now.

    • Sjmarf@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      We’ll no longer be supporting iOS 16 from Mlem 2.0 onwards, I’m afraid. We’re sorry if that means you can’t use newer versions of Mlem. You can read more about our reasons for doing so here.

      • vinnymac@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        3 months ago

        Thanks for the response. I have no issues with the existing app personally, so alls well! I guess if apps are starting to deprecate support for 16 I’ll have to look into upgrading in the next year or so anyways.

  • XNX@slrpnk.netEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    This is amazing! It looks so good!

    Is there a way to disable haptics for example when click the scroll to next comment button

    • Eric@lemmy.mlOPMEnglish
      4·
      3 months ago

      Thank you!

      Haptic feedback settings aren’t in the current build, but we’ll have them in the next! That build should ship tomorrow.

  • nocturne@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    Clicking on a reply in your inbox takes you to the top of the thread, not the reply as it has previously.