Planetary 1.2.0 Beta

I’m excited to announce that the big Planetary release we have been working on for the better part of two months is now available on TestFlight! This release upgrades Planetary to use the latest version of the go-ssb library, and should bring with it faster and more reliable replication. It also uses a new on-disk data format, which means that when you upgrade to this release Planetary will need to re-download all your posts from the network. We have spent a lot of time trying to make this process the least painful it can be. Still for those of us with very large databases it can be slow, but you always have the option to dismiss the migration screen at any time and start using Planetary with the posts that have already downloaded. And it’s actually very safe to do so thanks to our work on forked feed protection over the last few months.

This release also contains another big feature: MVP Feed Algorithms. There is now a selector in the settings that allows you to choose between three different algorithms for your home feed. One of the three is designed to mimic the algorithm used in most other SSB apps that brings root posts with new replies back to the top of the feed. Personally this is my favorite algorithm as it helps me follow conversations even if they unfold slowly over days or weeks, and it has made Planetary a lot more enjoyable for me personally. We plan to build on this simple UI in the future to add more algorithms and maybe even the option to build your own algorithm in-app, but I was surprised how empowering it felt just to have a few simple choices.

The default algorithm also includes follow messages now so you are aware of new people entering your social space. This is a great way to find new and interesting people and something we really missed from other SSB clients.

If you have an iOS device and would like to help us beta test Planetary you can sign up at here. We are planning to leave this build on TestFlight for about a week to make sure there aren’t any major bugs with the migration, so hopefully it will be available for everyone towards the end of next week. #dev-diary #planetary

E: The only iOS device I have is a kind of old iPod, I'll see if I can get it running on there.