Lemmy is a very popular alternative to Reddit that is open source and decentralized in nature, making it a solid choice for those looking to move away from mainstream social media.
It has been consistently growing over the past few years, with new instances and many users primarily using it for their online community interactions, freely discussing things that matter to them.
But, in this smartphone-dominated world, accessing the various Lemmy instances using a web browser just doesn't cut it, and that is where open-source Android clients like Eternity come in.
Eternity: Browse Lemmy Instances Effortlessly
As a fork of the Infinity For Reddit project, Eternity is a Java-based Lemmy client for Android that is being spearheaded by Balazs Ádám Toldi, a full-time software developer at Ericsson.
Even though Eternity is in the early stages of development, it is good enough for daily driving without any major issues. I tested it on my Android 14-equipped smartphone, and the experience turned out great.
At first launch, I was taken to an empty “Subscribed” page with no content. I then logged into my Lemmy.world account and went into the “All” page. It showed me a pinned post by the admins of the instance, followed by many random posts from other communities.
Eternity's initial setup flow.
Do keep in mind that Eternity allows multiple accounts to be added to the app, which can be done from the sidebar menu.
After logging in, the feeds started filling up, with the “Subscribed” tab showing my subscribed feeds and the “Local” feed showing US-focused posts.
Eternity's local and subscribed feeds, with a post from one of those opened.
Interacting with a post from the feed is quite familiar, with buttons to upvote/downvote, comment, bookmark, and share the thread. The comment editor is similar to the post editor (more on that shortly).
The page for a community shows relevant details like the number of subscribers, the active users, the posts, and the total comments made so far. The feed has helpful filters like Active, Hot, New, Old, Controversial, etc. for finding posts according to one's preference.
Eternity showing a Lemmy community, filters for the feed, and instance info.
I could also see details of the Lemmy instance I was logged into from the sidebar menu, with key metrics like total users, active users, the number of communities and more.
The post editing experience is superb too, with rich text editing making things easier, and readable. Before sending a post or even a comment, I can see a preview by clicking on the eye symbol to weed out any mistakes.
Eternity's post editor in action, alongside a demo post with a comment, and the profile page.
Similarly, the profile page is a useful tool that lets me see my most recent posts and comments, with a handy indicator of my Lemmy account's cake day.
If you're wondering if this app features a dark mode, it does. I forgot to switch to it when I took those screenshots. Apologies for the eye burn. For AMOLED displays, there is a dedicated “Amoled Dark” theme, which takes advantage of the perfect-looking shade of black on such displays.
Eternity's settings are quite useful.
The settings menu also hosts options to tweak the gestures and buttons for the app, with the misc settings featuring an option to set which web browser to use when opening links.
However, the most interesting aspect of Eternity, at least for me, was the “Lazy Mode” feature, which would automatically scroll the feed for me, when I was feeling particularly “lazy”. 😆
Eternity's Lazy Mode feature in action.
At the time of publishing, I have been using Eternity for almost a month now, and I don't intend to stop anytime soon. The experience is nice, and I get my daily science meme fix from it, so I am happy to keep it installed.
Install Eternity
The latest Eternity release can be found on F-Droid and the Play Store. If you want to manually build from source or just want to take a look at the source code, then you can visit the project's Codeberg repo.
💬 Do you use a Lemmy client for Android? How does Eternity compare to that?
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Abhishek Prakash
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