This release is meant to fix a lot of the issues plaguing the app currently.
Sorry, I am leaving AVIF support out of Summit for the time being (some AVIF images will still be supported by the Android OS). The currently AVIF libraries available for Android all have flaws. Including them may fix some AVIF errors but add others. For the time being it looks like adding an AVIF decoder to the app is not worth it since they are buggy and greatly increase the app size.
It’s expected that the app will increase in size significantly after this release due to adding AVIF support.
Lemmy servers have starting to roll out AVIF encoded images. Unfortunately, Android 11 and below do not have built in AVIF decoders. In addition, even on Android 12 and up, AVIF support is not good leading to the issue that AVIF images will fail to load on many devices. To fix this issue, an AVIF decoder is being bundled with the app. AVIF decoders are pretty large in size meaning the app size will grow greatly. However, given the alternative (images not loading) this is probably the better option.
Note that the AVIF decoder only supports Android 24 and up. Unfortunately if you are using a device older than that then you are out of luck when it comes to AVIF images :(
In addition, this release fixes the issue where the post feed will fail to load after loading 10 pages of posts on some instances.
Full changelog
- Add support for downloading avif image files
- Add support for pagination via page cursors.
- Fix a crash when loading comments on Android 9 and below.
- Fix a bug where changing feeds will not fetch the correct post feed.
- Fix a bug where PieFed feeds broke.
Update
The approximate size increase of the app on the play store is 5MB. When downloading from Github, the installer size is expected to increase 15MB due to the installer needing to support multiple architectures.
Update 2
Found a few bugs with the cursor implementation. In addition some users reported some bugs with it as well. Fixing and releasing as v1.75.1.
- Fix a bug where changing feeds will not fetch the correct post feed.
- Fix a bug where PieFed feeds broke.
Update 3
Found more bugs. Addressing then releasing as v1.75.2.
- Hardcode special rule for
sh.itjust.worksto not use cursors because it breaks on this instance for some reason. - Remove AVIF library.
Update 4
Cursors are a lot more buggy than I anticipated. As a result I am disabling pagination using cursors by default as instead offering it as a setting that can be enabled. It will be available as Settings > Misc > Use cursors when loading the post feed.
This change will be released as v1.75.3.
It’s slightly amusing that this release set out to fix two major issues that were caused by new Lemmy changes: AVIF images and extremely small limits placed on the max page index and both of the “fixes” implemented in Summit had to be reverted because either of these features appear to be ready. AVIF support on Android specifically appears to be poor and cursors, despite having been around for a while are still too buggy to use for production.
- Default to use page indices for post feed pagination. Add setting to switch to use cursors instead.
Update 5
Releasing a fix for a bad bug.
- Fix a bug where there is a race condition between the community being set and fetching posts which can result in fetching posts for the wrong community.
I can reproduce the issue. The problem is, I can even reproduce the issue using only raw API calls, even on my desktop. This likely means there is either some quirk of the post list API that I am not understanding or there is a bug with the post list API when using cursors.
Not sure what I can do here other than disable listing posts via cursors. But if I do that then post loading will break on some other instances. I can offer a setting users can turn on and off themselves but that would result in a bad user experience but that might be the only possible solution at this point :/
Thanks for looking into this and for confirming that you can reproduce it, even with raw API calls. That strongly suggests the issue is either an edge case or an inconsistency in how the post list API behaves when cursors are involved, rather than something specific to your implementation.
Given that, a temporary, user-toggleable option does sound like a pragmatic workaround, even if it’s not ideal from a UX perspective. As you noted, fully disabling cursor-based loading globally could introduce regressions on other instances, so making it optional at least avoids breaking existing behavior elsewhere.
It might also be worth checking with the Lemmy instance admins or developers directly (e.g. via the relevant lemmy.world or Lemmy dev communities) to see whether this cursor behavior is a known issue or a configuration-specific problem. Since multiple instances appear to be affected, it does feel more like an upstream bug or API quirk than something you can reasonably fix client-side.
Ultimately, I agree this puts you in a difficult spot, and whatever approach you choose here is understandable given the constraints.
One additional thought: if it’s reasonably straightforward to implement, Summit could potentially surface a small notification or hint when this specific cursor issue is detected, pointing users to the relevant setting. That way, users who run into the problem but aren’t aware of the workaround have some guidance, without forcing the setting globally or degrading the experience for everyone else.
Just a thought — I realize this depends entirely on how easy it is to reliably detect the condition in practice.
Yeah its difficult to detect because the issue surfaces as a network timeout which can happen for all sorts of reasons.
That makes sense — if it just presents as a generic network timeout, reliable detection would be tricky.
No worries, it was just a passing thought while I was out walking the dogs. Thanks for taking the time to look into it and for the quick fix. Your fast turnaround and clear responsiveness to feedback are genuinely appreciated, and it really shows how quickly you iterate on new releases and bug fixes.