Resolved since Mlem has all the features I wanted:

https://mander.xyz/comment/22644935

It also solved one I hinted at in a few of my comments, what are the server’s users actually like. That’s exposed in a tab on a pane summarising a server but you can see some of the information online, like the endorsements here for lemmy.ml:

https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/lemmy.ml

Edit of original question

Is there an iPhone client that makes it possible to do these three things in the app:

  1. To be able to see the different sidebars that are visible if you load these two sites (not only the side bar on server I’m registered to):

  1. To be able to scroll these community (sorry not channel) lists separately and independent of channels from other servers (sorry not instances) (and not only the channels on server I’m registered to):

  2. To be able to search “ask lemmy.ml” filtered by communities and see “https://lemmy.ml/c/asklemmy” show up in some way.

Original post

Maybe it’s just the iPhone clients, but they seem to have issues with use cases for other instances, for example:

  • If I’m interested in news from a certain country, and there is an instance focused on that country, I basically need to get on the web to search if there is a useful channel on that instance. If you use on of the iPhone clients to search for a channel and only use the instance name then nothing seems to match show up. You can find users from those channels, channels that happen to use that set of characters, or when people write a channel from that instance, but the search doesn’t seem to match channels on that instance.
  • Clients don’t seem to offer a way to navigate to an instance and see all its channels. This is basically the same use case as above, but with more exploration and less targeted. Again, I seem to need to use the web.
  • I can’t find a way to show the sidebar for an instance, besides the one I’ve registered for. For a lot of instance+channel combinations this really doesn’t matter. But when it matters, it tends to matter a lot. I had a few situations in [email protected] where people basically resorted to saying the instance was lemmy.ml and I had to go look up why that would matter by switching to a browser. (Yeah… a newbie problem, and now I wonder how I could have missed it.)

So, incase this comes across as just statements, here are some questions:

  • Am I missing an obvious client / some buttons to click?
  • Is this just how communities and users grew to use the echo system?
  • Are the iPhone clients all from similar codebases or copying UI layout?
  • Is there some technical issue with the exposed search APIs?
  • Sjmarf@lemmy.ml
    3·
    1 day ago

    Mlem (App Store link) has all of the features you mentioned (I’m one of the developers).

    To be able to see the different sidebars that are visible if you load these two sites (not only the side bar on server I’m registered to):

    Go to the search tab and tap “instances”, which allows you to read the sidebar of any instance. You can also search for an instance:

    To be able to scroll these community (sorry not channel) lists separately and independent of channels from other servers (sorry not instances) (and not only the channels on server I’m registered to):

    In the aforementioned instance page, there’s a “communities” tab that shows this list:

    To be able to search “ask lemmy.ml” filtered by communities and see “https://lemmy.ml/c/asklemmy” show up in some way.

    You can filter by a particular instance in the community search. Here, filtering by lemmy.ml and searching “ask” surfaces [email protected]:

  • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    Are you trying to replace the words ‘community’ and ‘instance’ with ‘channel’ and ‘server’? Using non-standard terms makes it harder to understand what you’re asking for.

    In terms of searching for communities, no app allows for searching for communities on an instance-by-instance basis, unfortunately. As someone else noted, you could try submitting such a feature as a feature request for your preferred client.

    • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
      1·
      2 days ago

      app allows for searching for communities on an instance-by-instance basis

      Yeah, thanks for this. Any chance you know why? It’s pretty easy to do using a browser and I find myself wanting to do it a bit. I don’t notice a clickable target or menu item to open the website for the parent server (that would speed up doing things like this even if its not added to the app) and that also makes me think other people haven’t had much of a desire for this.

      It makes me wonder if “I’m doing it wrong” or if people have grown into workarounds. Maybe people having alts on a few servers so they can see all communities and have a local feed? Or maybe the user base is so tech heavy that a lot of users are mostly on computers and are mostly pulling out their phones to scroll a feed or write a quick reply?

      (And I only wrote the wrong terms three times this post. Sorry if I missed one.)

      • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        Most clients are the hobby project of a single developer who have limited amounts of spare time to implement a wide array of possible features.

        As I mentioned in my other reply, one such client was Arctic for iOS, which albeit no longer updated, has a community search tool that enables community searching filtered by instance (i.e. the search term ‘dbzer0’ excludes [email protected] and [email protected] and includes [email protected] and [email protected]). I’d suggest opening a feature request in the community of your preferred client, clearly explaining the rationale behind the suggestion and its potential benefits, and with enough support it could theoretically get implemented.

        • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
          2·
          20 hours ago

          I haven’t been around long enough to have a favourite client so this was more of an exploration.

          It turns out that Mlem does everything I wanted so I’m going to switch to that.

          Thanks for taking your time with me

    • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
      1·
      2 days ago

      Are you trying to replace the words ‘community’ and ‘instance’ with ‘channel’ and ‘server’? Using non-standard terms makes it harder to understand what you’re asking for.

      Can you point out where I did this in the section that I labelled as the edited post? (And it was edited quite a few hours before your comment.) Immediately following the correct terms I do call out some mistaken terms I used in the original post and some of the comments and start by apologising for using the wrong term. That seems like a reasonable thing to do.

      I completely agree that I had somehow learned incorrect terms and used the incorrect terms in the original post and that it’s confusing. Your rationale here is a huge part of why I rewrote it. I kept the original post at the end, and put a title above it, so that the comments that already existed (that pointed out my mistakes) would read well and wouldn’t suddenly change to reflect poorly on the author’s.

      What should I have done differently?

      • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        To be able to scroll these community (sorry not channel) lists separately and independent of channels from other servers (sorry not instances) (and not only the channels on server I’m registered to):

        I was mostly referring to this paragraph in the ‘Edit’ section near the top; apologies if my comment came across as condescending. It seems like the terms are being used interchangeably?

        Edit: Also, reviewing the community search tool of the Arctic app for iOS, it does seem to sometimes be able to sort community names by instance if you enter the instance name as the search, such as ‘dbzer0’ only listing communities either on lemmy.dbzer0.com or other communities mentioning dbzer0 in their community description. Unfortunately Arctic has seemingly been abandoned, so hopefully other apps will eventually implement similar functionality.

        • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
          1·
          2 days ago

          Arctic was abandoned!?? I found it this morning while test different apps and I was really impressed. Well, besides loads being slow and timing out. And that seemed like a strange thing to be unique to specific client.

          • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            2·
            2 days ago

            I was on its TestFlight version until it was recently removed due to developer inactivity; unfortunate, because several of the features I had requested that were added weren’t on the App Store version. Arctic is still mostly working for now, but will probably break with the Lemmy 1.0 update, and thus I started looking for alternatives. Albeit not as good looking or customizable as Arctic, Mlem has the most features and best UI of the alternatives; I’m also trying Blorp now, which is a newer client with a developer open to feature suggestions at [email protected].

            Unlike Arctic, both also support using a Piefed account as an alternative to Lemmy.

        • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
          1·
          2 days ago

          TLDR: yeah, I’ve used the terms interchangeably.

          I somehow started off the day thinking a server was an instance, and that a community was a channel. I fixed the initial post but I’ve misused the terms a bit since. And I noticed I did again after proofreading one of my replies to you. I can guess why I’m incorrectly saying “instance” (ie a deployed server) but I’ve got no idea how I started using “channel”.

          Sorry for the mixup and for the long-windedness. This post was a bit of a mess for me trying to ask what I thought was a simple question and then trying to clarify.

    • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
      2·
      2 days ago

      To be clear. I would like these three things:

      1. To be able to see the different sidebars that are visible if you load these two sites (not only the instance I’m registered to):

      1. To be able to scroll each of these channels lists separately and independent of channels from other instances (not only the instance I’m registered to):

      2. To be able to search “ask lemmy.ml” filtered by channels and see “https://lemmy.ml/c/asklemmy” show up in some way.

      I’m not sure your comment addresses that, or if it does, which one.

      • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        2 days ago
        1. All sidebars should be visible in most if not all apps.
        2. By channel do you mean community? Similar to a “subreddit”? For example, we’re communicating on [email protected]. If your instance uses something like this tool to automate community discovery that can help.
        3. Not sure about this one
        • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
          21·
          2 days ago
          1. Community sidebars are. But servers also have sidebars that sometimes include information that applies to the nested communities / users and I don’t know how to see those in the Voyager or Arctic iPhone apps.
          2. I did mean community. Sorry. And I don’t think it’s that. I personally am subscribed to a number of lemmy.world communities so the should be synced to the server I’m on, but they only display in search if there is a text match, not a server / ID march:

          • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            20 hours ago

            For federated software servers are more commonly referred to as instances. Sync let’s you view instance sidebars but it hasn’t been updated in a while.

    • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
      2·
      20 hours ago

      Yeah, that’s where I started. But after setting up then I occasionally wondered if certain communities were around and couldn’t search how I want when I happened to be on an app.

      It turns out that Mlem had all the features that I wanted.

  • asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev
    1·
    2 days ago

    Depends on what client you use. Showing all communities (which is what I assume you meant by “channels”) of an instance does not require authentication, at least for Lemmy. Which means it is totally possible to implement this feature into the clients.

    Communities will not show up in someone’s instance if nobody has made the community known to your instance. Someone from your instance DOES NOT need to be subscribed to a community from a remote instance to make it visible for users on your instance. Subscribing only lets your instance receive updates for that community.

    These previous ways will only show communities that are already known to the instance. Especially if you joined a small or inactive Lemmy instance, there will be few communities to discover. You can find more communities by browsing different Lemmy instances, or using the Lemmy Explorer. When you found a community that you want to follow, enter its URL (e.g. https://feddit.org/c/main) or the identifier (e.g. [email protected]) into the search field of your own Lemmy instance. Lemmy will then fetch the community from its original instance, and allow you to interact with it. The same method also works to fetch users, posts or comments from other instances.

    https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/01-getting-started.html#following-communities

    One other way that is not mentioned here is by putting the community tag without the ! into your instance’s URL after c/. This too will initiate a webfinger request and make the community known. E.g.: https://your-instance.com/c/[email protected]

    Related helpful documentation: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/federation_getting_started.html

        • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
          2·
          2 days ago

          Exactly what I was after and one of my initial guesses in the post. Thanks.

          It’s a shame, it would be useful

          Actually, maybe not. For #3 I’m trying to search for keywords (that are commonly in the community name) on a given server that I’m not registered to. It would also be nice to search keywords in the text of a post that are in any post on a given server, that is not the one I’m registered to.

          ie. keyword = “scuba”, server = ${known australia server}, match is one of community names or posts.

          Edit note: Wow I have an issue with saying instance when I mean server and channel when I mean community

          • asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev
            2·
            2 days ago

            See my edit. It is possible, but the client needs to implement it.

            If you think it would be useful, open a feature request in your client’s repository. It can be done by getting the list of all the communities in your instance and searching by instance domain.

    • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
      2·
      2 days ago

      Thanks for taking the time. I updated my question a little to clarify and finished just before you posted.

      I mostly just want a way to find communities on other instances and I don’t think this reply helps unblock in-app solutions to that, but I did learn a lot so thanks. For example, if I learn of an australian server and want to see if there are any channels that would be worth scrolling / subscribing for an upcoming trip. I could search a bunch of terms and still not find an obvious community that I would find by loading the servers website and navigating to the community list and it would be nice to be able to do this inside the app, or have a clickable target that loads the server.

        • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
          2·
          2 days ago

          I’m a bit confused. I think you’re suggesting I add any community I want to find to that tool so it’s searchable. Isn’t that a chicken or the egg problem? If I have already found and subscribed to the channel, I don’t have a reason to be searching for it. It could help other users, but like I say in my other comment, I don’t think this is a sync issue, it seems to be an issue with the client / server implementation of the string matching.

          Or I’m misunderstanding and then I’m sorry.

  • ccunning@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 days ago

    In Voyager if I search for a country name I can apply that search term to Posts, Comments, Communities, or Users. If for example I choose Communities it will show me communities across instances.

    I don’t know of a way to address your second scenario,

    But the third one you can get to in Voyager by pressing and holding on the community name or from the “…” button

    ETA:

    • porcoesphino@mander.xyzOP
      1·
      20 hours ago

      Yeah, that example doesn’t work if the server is for thai people / topics but the community is something like scuba diving (and the sidebar doesn’t mention thailand). Then it wouldn’t show up in the search in Voyager.

      It’s okay though, Mlem does all the things I wanted so I’ve switched to that. Thanks for taking so long to write out the flows for me.