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Reddit App 'Apollo' Gets Major Update With New Notification Experience

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Popular Reddit client Apollo today received a notable update that overhauls the notification experience. The app now features custom subreddit watchers that provide alerts when content you're interested in is posted, plus it supports alerts for trending posts in your preferred subreddits.

Apollo-for-Reddit-Feature.png

For those who often use the Reddit Remind Me bots, Apollo now has an option to schedule a notification for a post you want to revisit for an update. The app includes a rebuilt inbox notifications experience, plus there are customizable notification sounds.

In addition, there are 10 new icons to choose from, plus a number of other smaller tweaks and bug fixes. The entire set of notes for the update are available below.
- Brand new, completely redesigned notification experience
- Introducing custom subreddit watchers. Incredibly powerful, you can now create filters and have Apollo watch for interesting content in your favorite subreddits, and get a notification as soon as a matching post exists. So you'll never again miss out on a fascinating discussion about your favorite character Mark in your favorite TV show subreddit, or about PS5 or Xbox sightings in your city's subreddit, or about the squirrels being posted in r/aww. It's so unbelievably handy.
- Trending subreddit posts. With a tap you can turn on trending post notifications for subreddits of your choosing, so when a post in your favorite subreddit does super well, Apollo will send you a little notification to brighten your day
- Remind Me In... tired of summoning "remind me bots" in comments? Apollo can now easily schedule a notification for a post you want an update on, so you can know to come back when OP posts the juicy update they promised
- Completely rebuilt inbox notifications (post replies, comment replies, messages, mentions)
- Probably the best set of icons ever added to Apollo. An absurdly talented crew of designers created some of Apollo's best icons for this update, and guess what, there's like literally 10 of them, ready to make your home screen shine
- A bunch of new custom notification sounds. You can even have A-P-O-L-L-O being typed on a mechanical keyboard as your notification sound!
- Added Video Deblurinator feature/setting which helps with videos not appearing blurry for the first few seconds
- Added option to hide media controls by default when opening media viewer
- Improved album/gallery loading speed
- On profiles can sort user comments and post by time period now
- Greatly improved efficiency with enormous images
- Added option to paste Reddit URL into Search tab search bar to open that link
- Fixed issue where users could be sorted incorrectly in subreddits list
- Option to share watchers via a URL
- Can long-press on Search tab to quickly go to the search bar
- Can long-press on Posts tab to quickly jump to the Jump Bar
- Tweaked Apollo logo for Safari extension
- Fixed bug where it looked like you could edit the text of what you were replying to
- Playback speed options for YouTube videos using API
- Fixed bug where sometimes titles weren't selectable in Select Mode
- Added option to completely hide blocked users
- Fixed missing "Open in YouTube" setting
- Fixed Markdown formatting for long lists of subreddits in comments
- Added pretty icons for long-pressing notification actions
- Underscores can italicize/bold in Markdown editor now
- Fixed bug with favorited users
- Fixed bug where some URLs wouldn't open properly
- Fixed linking of some strange subreddit shortlinks
- Fixed bug where underscores in links could load weirdly in Apollo
- Fixed Open in Apollo redirect loop
- Improved some icons in comment composer
- Fixed weird animation when upvoting a comment with a Wikipedia link
- Fixed bug where custom gestures and Markdown tables could conflict
- Fixed bug where some table-heavy posts could crash (mostly in r/LeagueOfLegends)
- Keyboard opens faster when commenting
- Fixed bug with Face ID/Touch ID
- Fixed bug where the pulsing "live sort" icon for comments would stop animating
- Fixed bug with some Reddit shortlinks
- A ton of other small little improvements
Click to expand...
Apollo is free to download from the App Store, but more functionality can be unlocked through Apollo Pro or Apollo Ultra purchases. Apollo Pro is priced at $4.99 as a one time purchase, and Apollo Ultra is priced starting at $0.99 per month.

Article Link: Reddit App 'Apollo' Gets Major Update With New Notification Experience
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/23/apollo-app-notification-update/
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As someone who has all Reddit notifications off, the topline here is pretty dull. But there’s lots of good stuff in the release notes.
 
Great news! Apollo is a much better Reddit experience than the actual Reddit app. A really excellent app from a former Apple employee (IIRC), it very much shows itself to be a labor of love (I mean, sure, he charges for it, but he's clearly writing it because he loves good code and good UX, rather than it being just something to make money).
 
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nCode said:
I get it costs money to run servers, but basic features such as push notifications shouldn’t be behind paywall.
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But push notifications require servers to operate. And for subscription haters, Apollo does offer a lifetime unlock IAP at $49.99 (equivalent to 5 yearly subscriptions). And for those who doesn't need push notifications, $4.99 IAP.
 
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HorstBockman said:
...and improved tracking, no doubt.
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Yo, Apollo dev here. Nope, not quite. I've quite literally never made a penny off any user tracking or selling or any of that. Apollo makes money through an old school business model where people exchange currency for things they want. 😛

Apollo does have crash reporting and some analytics, but even that you can completely turn off in Settings. That stuff's just so as a dev I can know if a new feature is actually getting used and I should continue spending time on it, for instance.

Thanks so much for covering Apollo, Juli. I think I've said it before but going from running home from school to catch the MacRumors live blog for WWDC to actually being mentioned on the site never stops blowing my mind.
 
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ChristianSelig said:
Yo, Apollo dev here. Nope, not quite. I've quite literally never made a penny off any user tracking or selling or any of that. Apollo makes money through an old school business model where people exchange currency for things they want. ?

Apollo does have crash reporting and some analytics, but even that you can completely turn off in Settings. That stuff's just so as a dev I can know if a new feature is actually getting used and I should continue spending time on it, for instance.

Thanks so much for covering Apollo, Juli. I think I've said it before but going from running home from school to catch the MacRumors live blog for WWDC to actually being mentioned on the site never stops blowing my mind.
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best iOS app imo hats off. Certainly makes Reddit browsing actually enjoyable
 
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Notifications never worked for me, and and now after updating I just get an error at the notifications menu, some json error.
guess will continue to use Pager app for Reddit notifications
 
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jonnyv34 said:
Notifications never worked for me, and and now after updating I just get an error at the notifications menu, some json error.
guess will continue to use Pager app for Reddit notifications
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Weird, notifications have been working great on both my iPhone and iPad, for ages now. The notifications are a subscription feature, if I understand correctly (which is reasonable, because they use back-end servers on a continuing basis). Apollo is one app where I got the pay-once/lifetime subscription as soon as it was made available - the app is worth it.
 
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ghostface147 said:
I’m more curious what app icon Apollo users are using. I’m using void emperor.
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I'm using the ATP (Accidental Tech Podcast) icon. It's one of the "secret" ones. Apollo/Reddit "head" with nice rainbow background.

I actually don't dare change away from it, for fear of being unable to switch back (not sure if I need to re-enable it each time or not).
 
Thanks for the kind words all. @CarlJ it won't go away don't worry, and you can always re-enter the code word after.

jonnyv34 said:
Notifications never worked for me, and and now after updating I just get an error at the notifications menu, some json error.
guess will continue to use Pager app for Reddit notifications
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Hmm that's not good, could you send me your logs and mention this issue? I'll take a look. Settings tab > About > Logs

EDIT: Okay I think we pinpointed the issue and fixed it.
https://twitter.com/x/status/1528876635847524352

Jonny can you let me know if it's still happening for you?
 
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ChristianSelig said:
Thanks for the kind words all. @CarlJ it won't go away don't worry, and you can always re-enter the code word after.
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Yes, but what if I forget the code word, ages after I first entered it?

It would be awesome to have Apollo put a separate section at the bottom of the icon selection screen, showing the secret icons one has previously unlocked, to make them clearly visible (though I confess that I haven't looked recently to see if it now does something like that).
 
Worst thing in the official Reddit app is when I have the reflex to long-press a comment to copy it, and then it just hides it, scrolls somewhere else, and then I completely lose the context of where I was.

It kind of also does this in Apollo, but I don't really lose the context. Anyway... is it possible to disable this behavior ?

Edit : Found it. Settings ➜ General ➜ Tap to collapse
 
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