AbbisPromethia

I'm Abby! That's it

This is an extremely WIP page. Is it still? Or have I not edited my page in years? Who can tell
pfp by https://twitter.com/gutstosis


erica
@erica

No, it's not on the App Store or Play Store. This is by design.

You know the thing where NSFW creators, models, artists, etc. ask for protections so that they can make a living and not be impacted by bullshit regulations? This is why. Cohost is a NSFW-friendly site meaning that if it had an App, it would have to abide by (literally only) Apple's rules. Apple hates porn and it does not want it on its app store. It's why Twitter has insane rules around hiding it and why Discord makes you toggle NSFW servers on Desktop manually. Remember when Tumblr banned porn and everyone left? It was almost entirely because of this. To avoid this happening here, there is no native app.

Also the team is four people and it would take more than that to maintain an iOS, Android, and web experience that is consistent across the board.

However, you can very easily add Cohost to your Home Screen like an app. Here's how!

iOS

Open cohost.org in Safari and click the Share button at the bottom. (It's the middle one.) In that list, click Add to Home Screen. That's it!

Now just log in, and you're set.

Android

For Chrome users, open cohost.org and tap the three dots/hamburger menu. (I don't know what it looks like, I'm not on Android sorry.) From there, select Add to Home Screen.

For Firefox users, open cohost.org, tap the hamburger menu and select "Install".

Now just log in, and you're set.

Finished!

Now you have Eggbug on the go! The Cohost mobile site was built to functionally work like an app and the features are identical to the website. Enjoy!


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in reply to @erica's post:

Is it mostly because of the way that push notifications can lead us into that cycle of "always have to check my notifications, must respond right away, must be connected all the time" type of mindsets? I mostly ask because I do like having push notifications so I don't forget or miss things I would want to respond to (object permanence is not my strongest suit) and I get anxious that it's a time sensitive thing, but that's also probably the exact sort of thing y'all are hoping to untangle in us.

This is what I do too!
Slight caveats to them:

  • Doesn't work for accounts that require logging in (effectively only public accounts can be RSS'd)
  • No RSS feed of your home feed (see above)
  • Asks aren't included for context, so chosters look like they are yelling into the void unprompted (this has been reported)
  • Only shows the latest post in a rechosted thread

If I ever figure out how RSS-Bridge works I do plan on adding Cohost support so that it expands on the original feeds if available, and fixes the issues above.

it'll only be on your home screen, don't do the grab and drop thing, just press he automatically install button, it's worked more often for me (though rn both work, Android 14, Nova Lauvcher). It also might not have an icon, for some reason it shows up blank for me, but most launchers let you replace single icons with any image file

hello, i had the exact same issue:
i'm using a realme device with realmeUI 4.0 based on android 13

the firefox web apps i installed on my home screen only appeared after installing a system update (though i don't think it's related to a specific update, or maybe it's not related to updates at all, maybe you only need to reboot your phone)

realme and oneplus are both subsidiaries of oppo, so realmeUI and oxygenOS are basically different coats of paint of the same thing, so this might work for you too

good news for computer users: PWAs are becoming a thing on most desktop OSs (Linux needs a browser that supports it, like Edge, Mac OS coming next version, I assume Edge already does PWAs there as well). I do not endorse Edge as a general purpose web browser on any OS.

This works on my phone but not my retroid sadly :( probably cause the retroid is using Daijishou which has an apps screen but this technically doesn't make an "app" it makes a widget

would be neat if there was an apk that was just a wrapper for the site or something of the sort I don't know android stuff. But I imagine that's too niche a situation to focus dev time on when there's much better things

Works as well as any android or iOS app I've ever used tbh. Only annoyance I've experienced is the iOS version won't let you download pictures for some reason. Not sure if it's an issue with WebKit itself or just something on the to-do list.

For me the phone vibrates and the picture wobbles a little like it's being selected, but nothing comes up. No options. It's bizarre. Works normally if I visit the site in the Safari app. My only iOS device is an iPhone 6s running iOS 15 though so it might just be old and crappy lol

Thank you so much for doing this, I had wanted to make something like this because imo it's one of the best things about cohost, but I don't have All the Platforms so I couldn't do the screenshots.

It depends on how "rich" chrome decides to make the "installation experience". Which is mostly based on how some stuff with a specific file (manifest) is set up.

Basically, don't worry about it. It should work, the same.

A comment has been hidden by the page which made this post.

A lot of us don't have the capacity to just "learn how to use our phones" to a greater degree, though. I know a lot about how to use my phone, but I also know there's a lot I don't know because I don't know how to learn about something I have no way of knowing exists. I wouldn't have thought about my phone being able to effectively make a pseudo app out of a website because previously I knew of apps and websites and just accepted when something didn't have an app. Most of the time with technology, I tend to accept when it can't do the thing I want it to do, unless it's making it exceedingly difficult to use the device in the first place.

Being disabled makes it a little difficult to learn technology as well, because it's a constant flood of new knowledge and if I'm too foggy to remember some foundational piece, which frequently happens, it all falls apart and I can't figure out what to do. I say this as someone who comes from a family of extremely software and hardware savvy people, half of whom work (or retired after a career of working) in tech, I tried so hard to absorb all of this stuff but I also do not have someone teaching me how to use the phone I might not even have in a year or two because of planned obsolescence and predatory phone deals.

Which is to say... Yes. We all have to learn at some point, from somewhere, and there are quite a few of us who don't have easy access to a patient teacher who can explain things so simply. Some of us may need to be able to read instead of hear the instructions, or may need to be able to reference something repeatedly. It may seem basic to you, but there are also things I consider basic that many other people don't know, yourself included in some cases I imagine. At least the folks thanking Erika for this are making an effort to do exactly what you just said, learn how to use our phones. So laughing at us for doing exactly the thing you want us to do is.... Counterproductive. 🙂

I'll never understand why people like apps so much. All these sites work just fine in the browser! Plus if you use Firefox you won't get ads for sites like twitter and tumblr anyway!

I'm so glad this is the way Cohost is going!

On android I highly recommend an app called "Hermit" that lets you create lite apps from any URL and has some nice customizations you can toggle. I use it mainly for cohost and ao3 to create 'apps' for em c:

It's free and but there are some premium features (one-time payment too, not a sub model) like being able to use sandboxes so you can have multiple accounts logged into the same site and create separate 'apps' for them to be logged in simultaneously (on sites where you can't toggle/link accts)

Oooh, I'll need this for managing my SFW side of Twitter, the Kiwi browser (that supports chrome extensions) doesn't have a browser profiles option, and I don't like to use the actual app for this reason.

Thanks!

app/native versions of websites always baffled me...
usually they're just the exact same thing, but you can't have multiple tabs open, or can't select text, or can't save images, etc.

Going through Firefox on Android doesn't seem to work for me, I can install Cohost but the keyboard doesn't work and I can't even paste anything into the login or password fields.

It works shockingly well. I don't know why though. If I do this with another website like Kiranico it just opens the page in Safari. Not sure what wizardry the devs are doing to get it to act like an app.

Progressive Web Apps (PWA) work on any platform as long as the browser supports it. Even on Linux phones, you can take advantage of PWA with GNOME Web or any Chromium based browser (I recommend Ungoogled Chromium if you go that route).

I highly recommend going this route as it's far more privacy and security friendly. You're not installing a dedicated app that uses hidden permissions to parse as much data from you as possible or might be lagging behind on security vulnerabilities. Instead, you're still using a webpage running in your browser, with all its privacy and security protections in place. Have uBlock Origin installed in your browser? It also functions in any PWAs you install!