Welcome to the homepage of Raccoon for Friendica!
Table of contents
Overview
Raccoon is a mobile client for Friendica, a federated social platform. The app is powered by Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) and Compose Multiplatform (CMP), mainly focusing on the Android platform, even if it could run on iOS too and – who knows? – in the future new platforms could be added (such as desktop).
Like the “twin” Lemmy app, this project started out as an exercise to experiment with KMP and CMP, push them to the limit with some real world task with a fair amount of complexity (image loading, HTML rendering, file system and gallery access, networking, local database management, shared preferences, navigation, resource access e.g. fonts/drawables/localization, etc.), and it quickly grew to a fully functional app that can benefit other users too, this is the reason why it is released as an open-source app.
Rationale
Friendica is an extremely powerful and feature-complete platform, it has some distinctive features that other widely diffused Fediverse platform do not have yet (e.g. groups, direct messages, media gallery, the possibility to organize contacts in circles to read/publish contents, an integrated event calendar, etc.) so it deserves to really stand out in the Fediverse.
Unfortunately, using the web app in a mobile device is not entirely optimal (because the web UI is very “dense” with information which hardly fit on a mobile screen); and there is no mobile application that supports all of its features in a user-friendly way:
- most Fediverse apps (e.g. Moshidon) revolve around Mastodon, so they support Friendica only in that subset of features that it shares with Mastodon;
- some Friendica-specific apps like Dica or Friendiqa are quite old and unmaintained;
- Relatica looks very promising, it is modern and well maintained and it has received some visibility from important international foundations, but it is written using a programming language I don’t know so I could not contribute to it in any way.
Raccoon tries to combine the feature-completeness of Relatica with the well-polished UI of Moshidon, providing a Friendica user with everything they need from their mobile device (more complex features such as content moderation for admins will only be possible via the webapp) and presented in a familiar way like most social clients.
Key app features
Here is a list of the most important features of the app:
- timeline view with ability to switch feed type (public, local, subscriptions, user-made lists);
- post detail, i.e. opening a conversation in its context and see the replies, number of re-shares and people who added it to favorites;
- user detail with ability to see posts, post and replies, pinned posts and media, subscribe for notifications from a user, follow/send a request or unfollow them, see all following/followers of a given user;
- support for ActivityPub groups (i.e. distribution lists) and opening forum-like (or Lemmy-like) mode;
- see trending posts, hashtags, news and following recommendations;
- follow/unfollow an hashtag and view all the posts containing a given hashtag;
- post actions (re-share, favorite, bookmark) and – for own ones – edit, delete or pin to profile;
- global search hashtags, post and users containing some specific terms;
- customize the application appearance with color themes, font sizes, etc;
- login using OAuth2 (or, on Friendica, legacy login with username and password);
- view and edit one’s own profile data (custom fields and images not supported yet by the back-end);
- view incoming notifications and filter the list of notifications;
- manage one’s own follow requests and accept/reject each one of them;
- view the list of one’s own favorites, bookmarks and followed hashtags;
- create a post/reply with image attachments (and alt text for each attachment) a spoiler, a title (only on Friendica) and write formatted content in HTML, BBCode (on Friendica) or Markdown (on Mastodon);
- schedule a post for a future date or save it to local drafts;
- report posts/users to administrators for content moderation;
- mute/unmute, block/unblock users and see list of muted/blocked users;
- manage one’s own circles (user-defined lists), which on Friendica can also be used as a publishing target;
- see polls in read-only mode (voting is not supported by the back-end yet);
- multi-account with easy ability to switch between accounts (and, in anonymous mode, to switch instance);
- send direct messages (only on Friendica) to other users and see conversations;
- manage one’s own photo gallery (only on Friendica).
Acknowledgements
A special thanks goes to all those who contributed so far:
- informapirata
- all those who reported feedback and ideas through Friendica, Mastodon, GitHub, emails, private messages, homing pigeons and every possibly imaginable medium.
This project would not be what it is were it not for the huge amount of patience and dedication of these early adopters who sent me continuous feedback and ideas for improvement after every release, reported bugs, offered to help, submitted translations to their local language, offered help to other users and made the community a better place, etc.
You are awesome… THANKS ❤️🦝️❤️
Further reading
If what you have read so far sounds interesting to you and you want to know more, here are some useful links:
- have a look at the main README
- consult the CONTRIBUTING guide.
If, on the other hand, you just want to interact with the community, provide suggestions, report bugs, contribute with translations or tell your opinion, you can:
- use the Friendica group to receive updates about the new releases, participate into public discussions, provide your feedback or just share your memes about raccoons with any other people;
- use the GitHub issue tracker to report bugs or request features;
- finally, if none of the above methods fits your needs you can write an email or reach out to me on Matrix.