I paid for Sync to toss some money to a dev responsible for the #1 used app on any of my phones for the last 10 years. I paid a criminally low amount back then for how much I used the app.

It happened to also come with ad removal, but I block those and trackers on my network anyway.

I’m another Alacritty user. It’s been my daily driver for years at this point and I have no complaints

That’s fair. It definitely comes down to your own trust, but for me I’ve been using Sync for Reddit for roughly a decade and I’ve never seen anything sketchy from ljdawson.

I also don’t rely on just their word, I block this stuff on my own network anyway.

As for a refund, the 1-time payment to remove ads isn’t expensive (to me anyway) and depending on how much time you spend on the app it may have already been worth it.

But again it’s all your preference anyway. Nothing wrong with using a different app.

I mean I’ve thought about it. But I don’t keep the same account for very long and I honestly wouldn’t even know what I’m doing lol. And it feels weird to volunteer for the sake of volunteering ¯\(ツ)/¯

What exactly is coming within a week? I’ve been using Sync since yesterday morning.

NVM I’m dumb

For what it’s worth the dev said today he’s working on regional pricing. Comment here to get your country priced out sooner

I get that. A lot of the differences are only going to be evident as you continue to use the app. If you’re already set with Thunder then that’s great and I’d encourage you to donate to the dev.

If the ads in Sync aren’t an immediate turn off/deal breaker I’d also highly encourage you to give it a real shot over a week or so. There’s a bunch of customization options to tweak it just how you like and the app runs smooth as butter, for me anyway. The app was super popular on Reddit for a reason.

I tested this yesterday. There were zero hits in TrackerControl with ads removed.

For me it’s a familiarity thing. I’d been using Sync for Reddit for close to a decade. It’s my defacto standard for feature set in these types of apps. I’ve tried and continue to use the apps that came out first, but every single one of them has quirks that don’t align with how I prefer to use the platform. Sync does.

Saying all the apps are literally the same makes me wonder what it is you’re looking to get out of them/how you use them. Do you like to share images from posts with people outside of Lemmy? That’s easier on some than others.

For example, on Summit I have to open the image in the internal browser then the external browser then copy the link/share from there. On Connect they have a 3 dot menu that has a share url option. On Sync it’s a 3 dot then share option/copy URL to clipboard.

It’s little nuances like that that make or break an app for me. At a certain level these are all just interfaces to interact with the Lemmy platform so they are going to be similar in many ways. But some apps can offer a better user experience than others. It really depends on what you want/how you use the platform.

Butthole problems

Yeah I’ve been using a lot of the available apps and while I had my favorites (Summit and Liftoff) there has always been little quirks that I’ve just been dealing with. The moment Sync hit my device it’s like I’m back to my reddit experience for the last decade. I’ll still keep an eye on the other apps, because I very much prefer and try to support open source developers. But I just can’t force a subpar experience on myself.

The Summit dev has been extremely responsive and has added in a few features I requested on a quick turnaround. They also happen to be out of town on a work trip this week so the timing probably sucks for them. And as I’m typing this I’m remembering that ones not even open source 🤦‍♂️.

Also worth noting at the time they said it was temporary and due to the lack of sufficient mod tools available in Lemmy. If mod tools improve that could change. But yes, right now it’s definitely something to think about with world being a massive instance that m with a lot of larger communities.

My goal wasn’t to compare Sync to other Lemmy apps, it was to compare it to something I know has a bunch of trackers/ads in it. theScore is a sports news/scores app.

I did a quick test and confirmed no trackers were present after paying for ultra.

Sorry I’m not sure what you’re saying. There’s 3 or more distinct groups here:

1. Lemmy devs, responsible for Lemmy itself + they run lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml
2. Server admins, responsible for whatever instance you’re browsing from and whatever instance the post is on (I use lemmy.dbzer0.com, you’re on sh.itjust.works, these are two different admins/teams of admins)
3. App devs, in Sync’s case ljdawson

Are you looking for a single donation to go to all of these groups?

Here’s how I tested:

Pihole off on my home network, TC running. Open Sync (I paid for ultra, so no ads) and then exported the csv. There were zero hits. Open theScore (riddled with trackers and ads) and then exported the csv. There were 16 hits.

Left is Sync, right is theScore.

I saw this with other Lemmy apps recently. It 100% grabs trackers from posts as well. The remaining Google ones are likely related to ads in the app which I would expect to disappear when you remove ads.

I’ll give it a whirl and report back in a bit.

I’m not sure how that would work with those being two separate sets of developers + instance admins. I don’t even think you can do instance admins + Lemmy devs in one place.

It’s worth opening an issue on GitHub, but I suspect this is a Lemmy problem. I’ve had this happen in Liftoff, Summit, and Connect.

For your first question, the one time ad free only seems to remove ads. Ultra gets extra features, those are listed if you scroll down on ultra page