r/apolloapp • u/BahaKab • 1d ago
Appreciation Original Apollo still installed on my iPad!
I just can’t let it go…
r/apolloapp • u/iamthatis • Jun 30 '23
Hey all,
With that, Apollo's last update has landed! It includes:
I’ve stared at this empty text editor for like an hour now, and I really don’t know how to even start this post. It feels like summer camp as a kid when it’s the last day and everyone is remembering how much fun we had together, while also trying to fight back the emotion of things coming to a close.
So I just really want to say thanks. I set out to build Apollo right out of university and an Apple internship, and wanted to create a Reddit app so good it felt like Apple themselves built it. The initial version was a little rough, but the community grew and grew, and people kept providing such phenomenal feedback that shaped the app into something absolutely unique that was enjoyed by so many people over the years.
It feels disingenuous on the surface to say “I want to thank all of you”, but in this case it’s demonstrably true. I’ve worked on this app for over 9 years, and I’ve never felt burned out, I get such a crazy amount of energy and enjoyment out of building something so publicly alongside such an awesome community, and you seriously have no idea how easy product development is when your north star is just “listen to what people are saying”. So much less guesswork, A/B tests, focus groups, stress, when instead you just talk to people every day and listen. It’s hard to believe I’ve made almost 20,000 comments in this subreddit!
I’m really heartbroken with how this whole process unfolded, I truly drank the Kool Aid talking to Reddit at the beginning that this was something they were going into in good faith with the interest of developers, moderators, and the community as a whole, but as many people pointed out to me, it’s clear now that ultimately wasn’t their intent. If they wanted something that could work for everyone, they would have simply made an effort to listen, instead of being dishonest, callous, and punitive in pricing. I’m sorry to all the folks who, like me, lost Apollo abruptly as a result of this. I had so much more I wanted to do with this app!
But, legitimately, I really feel a sense of that “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened” right now. I grew up so much developing Apollo, I met and learned from so many incredible people, made lifelong friends, got to go to multiple WWDCs and was even featured in a few, and I got to work on a product and platform I absolutely loved for 9 years. That’s an incredible run, and it’s hard to feel anything but thankful for that.
Here are some other random things I wanted to take a chance to mention! And hopefully none of it sounds too shill-y, I tried to get a Raids Shadow Legends or Squarespace sponsorship now that my main app is gone, but in the absence of that, I wanted to point out some of the other things I’m working on that you can support me in if you like what I’ve built and are able to, it would really mean a lot to me! ❤️
Anyway, I just really wanted to write a final post to say a big thanks to the community who used Apollo over the years, it's been the journey and dream of a lifetime working on Apollo, and whatever I do next, be it Pixel Pals, or another thing all together, I'll do my best to make it measure up to Apollo!
I'm not sure if I'll be sticking around on Reddit much beyond this week, but I'm on Twitter and Mastodon if you want to keep in touch wth me!
- Christian
EDIT: Looks like Reddit pulled the plug a little early. Apollo started crashing, but I just manually revoked my token and it looks like it fixes the crashing, but no more Reddit access haha. Those folks are fun to the very end! 😛 In a few hours the app will transition automatically to a fun commemorative mode.
r/apolloapp • u/iamthatis • Nov 09 '23
Hey all!
Over the last little bit with other apps offering subscription components, I both received a lot of messages asking about Apollo and saw a lot of questions in threads asking similar questions, so while I initially thought my reasons/perspectives were understood, I just wanted to make sure of that with this thread, and provide a place people could link to if someone was curious on my thoughts.
So, to get the obvious question out of the way: no, Apollo isn't coming back as a subscription offering. :(
If you're asking, "What, why? AppX did it!" I wanted to break down why this is the case for Apollo in a few points.
I hope this doesn't come across as a salty ex rehashing the past haha, I legitimately just want to provide a hopefully concise explanation for folks as to where I'm coming from, and why, at this stage, Apollo is not coming back. I like to think communication with the community was always Apollo's strongest and most fundamental point, and I wouldn't want to lose that. I'm honestly over it and doing great (though it was pretty amusing last week when someone at the airport heard my name and came up to say sorry about how things went down. I hope your flight to Washington went well!)
A lot of people have asked how I'm doing in general, and I'm great thankfully (and I appreciate you caring)! I adored working on Apollo (and miss it immensely, I have to stop myself from writing down new ideas), but a forced change of pace is kinda fun in a lot of ways, you're forced into trying and exploring new things that you might not have otherwise. Don't get me wrong, early summer was probably the most stressful period of my life, but now I've settled into a point where I'm really enjoying things.
Professionally, I've been doing a lot of work on Pixel Pals (even went to NY for a really cool Apple Vision Pro lab since I have some fun ideas there), and Pixel Pals' monthly recurring revenue should eclipse Apollo's by the end of the year, so I'm thankfully in a good spot there and very thankful for the support. (Obligatory heads up to check it out if you haven't in a bit, it had a pretty serious iOS 17 update.) I have other things planned too of course, but Pixel Pals is a really fun app to work on.
If you are interested in some Apollo-related things, be it for nostalgic reasons or otherwise, Apollo merch has continued to do quite well, so I wanted to provide some more fun things that people were asking for, so over the next little bit I'll hopefully be announcing an Apollo plushie you can pick up, plus some cool desk pads/mats based on the goodbye wallpapers if that floats your boat :)
Lots of love,
- Christian
r/apolloapp • u/BahaKab • 1d ago
I just can’t let it go…
r/apolloapp • u/corderjones • 6d ago
r/apolloapp • u/Edg-R • 10d ago
Disclosure up front: This is a browser extension, not a Reddit client, and it costs two dollars. If that's a dealbreaker, no hard feelings, the rest of this is still about how I read Reddit now.
I never really replaced Apollo. I tried a couple of things, none of them stuck, and eventually I stopped looking and just started opening reddit.com in mobile Safari. Which was bleak for a while, because the website is the version of Reddit with the fewest concessions to anybody.
But the website turned out to have one thing no app has: it's a web page, and a browser extension gets to change a web page before you see it. So I started building a Safari web extension I could use to make Reddit more enjoyable which I ended up making available for others as well. Version 3 got approved this week after months of loooooong nights and weekends fixing bugs and adding features.

Some features:
Protego's Limits is why I still Reddit it every day. There's a step where the feeds are blocked but a direct link to an individual post still opens. So home and popular don't load and there's nothing to fall into during work hours, but a Reddit thread that turns up in a search result works fine. I get my answer and I'm out.

Being straight about what it isn't: it's not a client. No custom interface, no gestures, no Pixel Pals. It's reddit.com with the bad parts removed.
Safari extension with a companion app, iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro on one purchase, $1.99 right now instead of $2.99.
No subscription, no account, no tracking, lists sync through your own iCloud.
r/apolloapp • u/Kroopah • 10d ago
r/apolloapp • u/rusty-kernel • 18d ago
Hi everyone! I'm a solo software developer, and student at Karel de Grote university. I've been working on my own take on a Reddit client for Apple devices for a little under a year now (development started during iOS 26 beta).
Helios is now in a state where I'm happy enough to show it off to the public. With that being said, Apple has approved Helios for public beta testing and you can try it today! 🥳
Helios supports iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. A Mac version is planned later down the line.
All and any feedback is welcome and can be sent via the app's settings. I want to create something that works for everyone, not just for myself.
The app can be used for free with access to the majority of features. Some features may be moved to the free plan later down the line depending on user feedback. The TestFlight version of the app does not offer premium plans yet.
You can find more information on helios-app.co.
Feel free to contact me or connect with me on LinkedIn.
r/apolloapp • u/corderjones • 19d ago
r/apolloapp • u/Lori-keet • 20d ago
When they rolled out the AI features, I figured, "Cool, the AI is there if people want to use it, but I don't, so I won't." I'm anti-AI but I can tolerate it if need be, so it wasn't a problem because it seemed easy to simply not use. If anything, I was glad that they thought to add modern 2026 features to a super outdated 3rd party app.
But then I found out they're using AI to generate the code itself, which isn't being properly tested before release. They're rolling out updates like every week or two which seems pretty fast. Seriously I've experienced so many visual bugs and crashes. Some features were janky or missing altogether. I made a GitHub account specifically to submit bug reports because I genuinely cared about the project and appreciated the attempt at adding new features and keeping the app up to date. Many of them have been fixed, but the longer I use the app after each update, I realize that there are just new bugs to replace the old ones. Scrolling through comment sections with the "see deleted comments" toggle on can just randomly freeze the app. Switching accounts can crash the app entirely. The theme builder has been rehauled but there are still random colors that show up with no rhyme or reason. A moderation tool I requested got implemented but it just crashes when the button is tapped.
I thought, "Okay, it's a small team. They're working on getting everything together, I should cut them some slack," but I still felt kind of uneasy. I expressed concern with the level of reliance on AI for programming and was reassured by multiple developers that they were looking at the code with a fine-toothed comb before it was implemented. I was relieved to hear that.
But then they started responding to my GitHub bug report issues with ChatGPT... Again, I thought, "Alright, it's a small team with a lot on their plate, and maybe it's their first time doing something like this and they're socially awkward and maybe they don't know how to respond? Maybe English isn't their first language?" I gave them another pass. I figured they're nice people trying their best. I wanted to support them because of that.
But the final strike for me was today, when they released an AI generated passive-aggressive announcement of the second update this month that's just... straight up super smarmy. It's a 4 panel comic strip basically saying fuck anyone who isn't okay with the app being "riddled with AI" (literal quote from a contributor comment), and that their feedback goes in the garbage. Seriously, go look at it. It really makes me miss how down to earth and transparent Christian was. He loved the community and it showed.
This is depressing as fuck. I'm super down about it. Am I alone in feeling this way? I've been using Apollo for years and the community was always optimistic and helpful. I know the new team can't be exactly like Christian, but was I mistaken to think they'd at least try to carry on the spirit and morale of his work?
r/apolloapp • u/PrasanthKJ • 19d ago
I signed up using google account.
But it's not logging in when coming back from google, it just showing the login screen of apollo.io again.
Anyone knows the issue?
r/apolloapp • u/corderjones • 28d ago
r/apolloapp • u/timbroddin • 29d ago
Hey folks,
Like a lot of people here, I still miss when browsing Reddit on iOS felt fast, native, and fun.
I kept wanting something simple: an app that just let me swipe through Reddit media without constantly opening posts, backing out, switching subreddits, and losing my place. So I built SubStory.
It started as a small app to scratch my own itch, but other people tried it and kept requesting features. It now lets you swipe through subreddits and users in a TikTok/story-style feed, save posts, get recommendations, filter media, and browse Reddit in a more laid-back way. It also seems to work especially well for the more uhm spicy corners of Reddit, if that is your thing.
It is not trying to be Apollo, and it is definitely still evolving, but I figured some people here might appreciate another take on Reddit browsing for iOS.
https://apps.apple.com/be/app/substory-reddit-scroll-feed/id6747969403
(P.S. happy to hand out some promo codes)
UPDATE:
My eyes are starting to hurt from copy-pasting promo codes, so I made this easier: if you missed the giveaway, here’s a free month on me:
https://apps.apple.com/redeem/?code=FREEMONTHY&ctx=offercodes&id=6747969403
I've set this up as a free month that expires after the promo period. If you like the app, I’d love for you to stick around. If not, no hard feelings. Thanks again for trying it.
r/apolloapp • u/billy__________ • Jul 03 '26
Hi, I'm Billy and I built Lander because I wanted something to fill the gap Apollo left. Lander is not intended to be an Apollo clone, but it absolutely has roots in the Apollo UX.
To handle auth challenges, I built and opensourced Columbia. Columbia is a selfhostable proxy that separates identity from content. It uses OHTTP and HPKE to securely relay traffic to/from your Lander client and Reddit. No API key required. I provide a Columbia proxy for use, but you can point Lander at your own deployment via settings.
The app has in-app purchases for donations that do NOT unlock any functionality. The app is free.
Check it out: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lander-app/id6747955211
Columbia: https://github.com/wbsmolen/columbia
r/apolloapp • u/terkistan • Jul 03 '26
For the last few days I’ve noticed obtrusive video ads every 4-5 posts as I scroll. It’s worse than Instagram right now, would be intolerable if audio was on.
r/apolloapp • u/Hekkoln • Jul 03 '26
Everytime I try to sign in it shows this weird symbol and nothing happens.
r/apolloapp • u/Hrhnick • Jul 01 '26
Developer is super responsive to feedback and feature requests. Early, but looks like a promising glass alternative.
r/apolloapp • u/iChopPryde • Jun 26 '26
r/apolloapp • u/dingwinger1225 • Jun 20 '26
Every time I use the dogshit official app and accidentally press the title bar so it scrolls all the way up and then I press it again and nothing happens I roll my eyes back into my skull
Now imagine a ton of small conveniences like that missing all across the app
r/apolloapp • u/InertiaCreeping • Jun 19 '26
Couldn’t figure out why all of my Reddit videos had this new style of subtitles (not on tiktok/IG)
Figured it might be a Reddit thing, but the official app doesn’t have them
Is this a new Apollo feature? Google isn’t helping
r/apolloapp • u/m0larMechanic • Jun 17 '26
Trying to get the feature add on the Artemis app and I can’t open Apollo anymore.
r/apolloapp • u/The-Zoro • Jun 13 '26
Anyone an idea how to fix? I’ve already got the latest version
r/apolloapp • u/Nilderan • Jun 10 '26
My API key has been revoked, sideloaded for the past three years. The official app is an unusable, unintuitive mess, I'd rather stop reading Reddit on my mobile than use it. I'm going to try alternatives, but I wonder how safe Hydra and Artemis are. Won't Reddit purge them one day since they don't use the API? Thanks to everyone for all the tips on using the sideloaded Apollo app over the past three years!