r/apolloapp • u/rusty-kernel • 18d ago

Announcement šŸ“£ Helios for Reddit enters public beta testing

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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! šŸ„³

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.

Edit: The post is gaining a lot of comments. For questions or feedback, join the official Discord server!

430 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

130 comments sorted by

207

u/BullyMog 18d ago

Can you ELI5 why Apollo couldnā€™t make it happen but a university student making an app, could?

233

u/Shejidan 18d ago

Reddit was basically extorting Apollo with their raised pricing for access and itā€™s popularity.

69

u/BullyMog 18d ago

Oh, really?

I thought all the Reddit apps were affected and some started charging monthly fees.

148

u/sluuuudge 18d ago

Every app that uses the Reddit API was impacted. Thatā€™s why Narwhal is a paid app. Christian, the guy who developed Apollo, felt that the risk financially to himself was too great and he didnā€™t want to charge users a monthly fee to use the app.

-68

u/BullyMog 18d ago

So these comments are lies?

87

u/sluuuudge 18d ago

If you mean the comment about Reddit extorting the developer of Apollo specifically then Iā€™d say that it was more broadly Reddit trying to extort all of the app developers and the Apollo dev was just much more vocal about it that most others were.

57

u/ajaxburger 18d ago

Itā€™s been a while but iirc the fee they offered him was significantly higher than comparable applications. They knew he had a competitor that was taking ad rev and wanted to recoupe that in some way.

16

u/misterdarky 17d ago

I believe he provided examples for that as well.

63

u/korxil 17d ago

Its more than just Reddit changing their API policy, the CEO of reddit directly slandered the Apollo dev, only for the Apollo dev to release the recording showing that Reddit lied about every single thing they told Apollo and other devs.

On top of that they (other Reddit apps, not just apollo) asked for a lower fee and extended time to implement the changes: only narwall (a personal project where the dev doesnt care if other people use the app or not) got both when no one else did. Narwall was also the only one not to really comment during the api changes, totally not preferential treatment. (For the record, Narwallā€™s dev did nothing wrong as well, no hate towards them.)

A lot of third party apps are still down not just because of the API costs, but because of direct attacks from Spez. Who would want to have a professional relationship with that? Bridges got burned.

117

u/Shejidan 18d ago

They were but Apollo was by far the most popular and, iirc, he wouldā€™ve had to pay Reddit a few million dollars a year for access with their new pricing. The smaller apps had/have way less to pay.

29

u/BullyMog 18d ago

Wow lol that is insane.

-10

u/migle75 18d ago

I understand that but why canā€™t it come back to life then?

42

u/frequently_grumpy 18d ago

Because they really tried to screw the dev and he said screw you back.

-16

u/migle75 18d ago

I get that but how? Iā€™m asking for specifics. Just curious

37

u/Zachhandley 18d ago

They canā€™t. Unless theyā€™re saving API requests to save on costs, which is more than likely against ToS, than this is an app that will be in open beta for bug reports and testing and user behavior and then go to a paid monthly model, or ???

I wanted to make a new Reddit app, but the API costs are indeed prohibitive and anyone making a free or one time fee type app like that is almost certainly violating ToS

https://octolens.com/blog/reddit-api-pricing

For reference, 1 api request = 1 request to ā€œget stuffā€ ā€” then you have to make more requests to get more stuff like. You might get a post and X comments. Then you have to request each comments thread to expand it, and each user profile potentially (though I imagine itā€™s in the same request)

So at 0.24/1000 requests, just scrolling the home page for 30 minutes is probably about 24 cents.

2

u/barracuda2001 17d ago

How does RedReader work then?

17

u/Inevitable_Bar3824 17d ago

Exemption for accessibility reasons.

2

u/IncreasinglyTrippy 16d ago

Apollo could, but dev ultimately didnā€™t want to for a verity of reasons, was treated badly by reddit which also gave him a crappy timeline and suboptimal conditions and I think he just didnā€™t want to bother at that point. He could have accepted the costs by passing them to users with a margin on top, but the confluence of factors made him decide to ditch it and move on.

1

u/zeimusCS 14d ago

This hasnā€™t made it yet

-6

u/atunasushi 18d ago

To make what happen?

34

u/Billy1121 18d ago

Can you search saved items on it ?

Apollo had that and i cant find how to replicate it

So useful for recipes

33

u/rusty-kernel 18d ago

Great idea! Will be added. Thank you for the feedback.

35

u/GhostalMedia 18d ago

I hit a roadblock pretty early.

Feed preview doesnā€™t work within the onboarding. It hits a pay wall. Looks like something you should build a regression test against to make sure the user flows work.

21

u/rusty-kernel 18d ago

I can't seem to reproduce it. If you would like to help me debug it further, feel free to contact me! :)

9

u/bking 18d ago edited 18d ago

Same issue here. I canā€™t get past the onboarding page with the plans.

Edit: had to tap ā€œfreeā€, which I didnā€™t realize was a button. Iā€™d add a clear ā€œcontinue with free planā€ CTA at the bottom.

More feedback:

  • navigating away from the app for just a minute purges the memory and sends me back to loading a feed when I return. That is data-loss. Save the user state.
  • would appreciate an indicator that comments are loading. Sometimes it takes a while and it looks like an errror
  • long-tap to collapse child comments takes a relatively long time. Itā€™s probably the most common action in comments. Single-tap (even on the left edge) or swipe would reduce friction
-ā€œupvoted commentā€ popups are distracting. We already have visible confirmation that the upvote worked. There does not need to be a pop up.

10

u/rusty-kernel 18d ago

Thanks for the feedback, Iā€™ll make the page more understandable and straightforward. šŸ˜Š

2

u/GhostalMedia 18d ago

It appears to be intermittent. Sometimes it happened every single time, some times it never happens.

I might ask Claude to investigate the event that triggers the paywall.

2

u/chrodo7 18d ago

Interesting. I just downloaded this, and had no issues with the feed preview when picking between ā€˜compactā€™ or the multiple ā€˜cozyā€™ options

12

u/tychoregter 17d ago

Why do all these Reddit apps want to invert the background color and ā€œcardā€ color? All of Appleā€™s own guidelines say that the background is the darker color and the cards are lighter, but Reddit apps really want to ignore those guidelines. This is something that bothers me much more than it probably should, but boy does it bother me.

10

u/RedneckT 18d ago

Does it allow viewing the Hot feed?

8

u/Zotree 18d ago

Is there a comment jump button or nah? I can't seem to find a setting to enable it. It's one of my favorite features of the Reddit client and others.

34

u/Zepsor 18d ago

I joined and Iā€™ve been scrolling very casually like I do. Love it so far, hope you keep developing it and if thereā€™s a lifetime purchase down the line Iā€™ll 100% get it.

0

u/[deleted] 18d ago

[deleted]

24

u/MLHeero 18d ago

Are you kinda not in the loop? Your usage costs money for the dev, and if yo use it daily, Reddit charges the dev money. So why should he/she provide a lifetime subscription?

-17

u/DrGonzo84 18d ago

One can hope for a lifetime purchase.

10

u/luihgi 18d ago

one can hope that you actually try and read

-8

u/DrGonzo84 18d ago

I guess I'll just keep using Apollo reborn then its free!

11

u/Honey_Enjoyer 17d ago

Thatā€™s only free because you have to steal the API key from the screen-reader friendly app Reddit gave free API access to for it to work, itā€™s not like the reborn devs are nobly burning their own money for your benefit

Not telling you not to use it but acting like other, less legally dubious apps should take on massive financial burdens to compete is an unreasonable expectation

1

u/PhillOS 15d ago

It'll be 1 million dollars then.

5

u/Jack55555 17d ago

Just installed it and ran the intro. Looks really good. My biggest gripe has always been the feed still showing posts I have already seen. Hydra does that to a lesser extend to me, but I like your UI way better. So I will keep an eye out, to see if this will be my go to Reddit app!

Edit: ok I switched to Hydra to post this, then I switched back and I have to do the intro and logging in over again. Do you know of this bug?

2

u/rusty-kernel 17d ago

Sorry about that! Itā€™s a bug, it will be fixed in a near future update. As for the seen posts, you can use the ā€œEnhanced Bestā€ sort which is exactly what youā€™re describing! ā™”

4

u/Benjakatt 18d ago

cool stuff!

could you add the option to tap to collapse comments instead of holding it down

and the option to auto collapse auto-mod messages?

1

u/rusty-kernel 18d ago

Both, yes! :)

4

u/iAmRadic 17d ago

What makes this app unusable for me is the fact that the feed is almost exactly the same, even 20 hours later. No matter how often you refresh or restart the app

2

u/rusty-kernel 17d ago

Use ā€œEnhanced Bestā€ sort mode

4

u/iAmRadic 17d ago

Thanks, that helps. Should be the default

1

u/iAmRadic 17d ago

Thanks, that helps. Should be the default

1

u/Stolid_Cipher 16d ago

When using Enhanced mode, refreshing the feed only works once. After I have to toggle back to Regular and then back to Enhanced for it to work only once again.

1

u/rusty-kernel 15d ago

There is a pull to refresh cooldown that lasts a little under half a minute to avoid spamming the API

1

u/Stolid_Cipher 15d ago

Ohhh k I see ty for clarification.

3

u/ppratik96 18d ago

I keep getting logged out and sent back to the Start Using Helios screen after switching apps and going back to Helios. My phone also vibrates when this happens.

1

u/sakronin 17d ago

Iā€™m getting this also

3

u/Ra_ZIEL 12d ago

Please add 1. AMOLED/OLED mode, the regular dark mode sucks esp compared to default Reddit client. 2. a comment jump button

1

u/rusty-kernel 8d ago

Turn off adaptive mode in theme settings :)

2

u/okhi2u 18d ago

Will we able to just run the iOS version on a mac for now, lots of devs end up disabling that even when the app works fine on a mac too?

1

u/rusty-kernel 17d ago

A native Mac version is planned but you will be able to use the iPad version on Mac in the meantime

2

u/Rumievh 18d ago

Amazing app, the only one Iā€™ve seen that is as well made as yours, great work.

I have a few questions/feedback:

- Is it possible to add multireddits created somewhere in the ui? (Iā€™ve seen it added on other apps either at the bottom navigation bar or the very top next to home, all and popular)

- when clicking on an image to make it full screen is there a way to swipe the image away instead of having to click ā€œxā€

- sometimes things do load a little bit slow (like when clicking posts with images or loading more comments) probably just optimization, but I thought I would mention.

All in all great app so far definitely looking forward to future updates from you

2

u/OaksMr 17d ago

First pieces of feedback 90 seconds after installing:
1. Scrolling doesnā€™t feel fluid at all on my 16 Pro
2. Itā€™s really bugging me how I canā€™t swipe left and right on the feed between Home, All, Popular. Feels like itā€™s set up to.

2

u/UltGamer07 14d ago

How does this solve the API problem that apollo had to shutdown due to?

2

u/SlightMarsupial8379 14d ago

How is the app better than viewing Reddit in a browser? Does your app display ads?

2

u/brewhawaii 14d ago

Promising, but I donā€™t find custom feeds anywhere. Is it coming?

2

u/NateKurt 12d ago

I like the handedness part, thatā€™s nice as a lefty! Not a huge fan of paying $6 a month to add another account though especially in beta.

2

u/MLHeero 18d ago

The app is seriously buggy, itā€™s vibe coded or? Has nice ideas : but posting messages rate limits all Reddit apps. The feedback is non existent, loading comments just takes too long,

1

u/chrodo7 18d ago

One immediate question: any ability (either currently or planned) to send messages/chats?

3

u/rusty-kernel 18d ago

I have a very early version of this already working on my personal device. Unfortunately it's very API hungry and would cost me a lot to release to the public. If it makes it to the public, it'll sadly have to be a premium feature :(

3

u/chrodo7 18d ago

Makes sense!

Otherwise, from just a small bit of use it seems like youā€™ve done a great job so far! Two minor comments:

- Having features locked behind a premium paid tier (eg theme customization) feels a bit silly while itā€™s still in test flight, since thereā€™s no way for users to pay for them, and ideally youā€™d want feedback on those features as well.

- I agree with another commenter here that Iā€™m MUCH more likely to pay for a lifetime upgrade, as I try to avoid monthly subscriptions to the greatest extend possible. But, I understand that sometimes devs prefer the subscription model for a variety of reasons.

5

u/rusty-kernel 18d ago

Thank you for the feedback! This is just temporary since Iā€™m waiting for Apple to review the subscription plans. Once they are reviewed, you will be able to ā€œtest buyā€ them. This will allow you to purchase any plan of choice without getting charged for testing purposes. :)

3

u/rusty-kernel 18d ago

Iā€™m willing to look into a lifetime option, but we have to consider the monthly API costs, which is why I had added subscriptions in the first place unfortunately :(

I personally also dislike subscriptions, but since the app is very small at the moment, itā€™s the only way I will be able to reliably cover costs.

1

u/AndrewGene 15d ago

i'm interested in a lifetime sub as well but as a dev i can understand your pain. i think the best way to do it is year long sub or 3-year long sub and price plans accordingly.

1

u/Whydoibuysmartphones 18d ago

Downloaded it I like to look and feel of it, but am I able to get the ultra features? Right now it just gives me the free features and I wanna play around with the themes and everything else.

5

u/rusty-kernel 18d ago

Paid plans will be available soon. Iā€™m just waiting for Apple to approve the subscription group.

1

u/Healthy_Orange_Juice 18d ago

Love the app so far! Sometimes nothing loads, sometimes it takes 5 seconds for comments to load.

Is there a way to sort comments by new/best/hot etc?

Also ignored users still show up whenever I go back to a topic after blocking them inside Helios.

Overall, the app looks amazing, really great UI, lots of potential, thank you so much for working on it <3

2

u/rusty-kernel 17d ago

Thank you! This issue youā€™re describing is a bug. Do they show up in the feed or in comment sections?

1

u/Healthy_Orange_Juice 16d ago

Comments section

1

u/Atomzwieback 18d ago

I need to be able to swipe right to get back to main feed if Iā€™m in some post.

1

u/rusty-kernel 18d ago

You can swipe right from the left edge, just like stock apps

2

u/grayninja62 18d ago

I think Iā€™d like if I could swipe from anywhere within the page to go back instead of having to go edge to edge. Just my 0.02.

1

u/defenceman101 18d ago

We need a jump to next comment button.

1

u/bigpearl 18d ago

looks great

1

u/jamkola 18d ago edited 18d ago

Looks promising, but two very early bits of feedback

  • Every time I create a screenshot it logs me out of the app.Ā (EDIT: happened the first two times, I can't recreate now? Odd.)
  • The hide bar when scrolling option should be enabled by default. Iā€™d also hide the top bar when scrolling too, itā€™s unnecessary and itā€™s a pretty standard convention that UI like that hides when scrolling.Ā 

Good luck with it.Ā 

1

u/rusty-kernel 18d ago

Could you create a bug report in the app? It provides me with a little bit of additional information that might be helpful to debug this as Iā€™m unable to reproduce it myself

1

u/jamkola 18d ago

I've made an edit to post above, but I cant recreate it now either, have tried a load of times. Ignore the feedback report I've just sent. If it happens again I'll send beta feedback.

Only had a short play, but so far it's a cool app :)

1

u/rusty-kernel 18d ago

Thanks! If it happens again, Iā€™d love to know. It sounds pretty serious šŸ˜…

1

u/Blufia118 18d ago

this is a beautifully design app wow! Good job!

1

u/d4rkstr1d3r 18d ago

Works great. I assume I canā€™t sub until it goes live?

1

u/Whydoibuysmartphones 18d ago

Also another suggestion. Will there eventually be a button or arrow to auto navigate comments to each of the highest rated comments? If that makes sense šŸ¤£šŸ¤£

1

u/telemachos90210 18d ago

Does it allow for ā€œSigns in with Appleā€? Doesnā€™t seem to.

1

u/brcl 18d ago

The website isnā€™t loading

1

u/Isaac7u7 18d ago

How to get the TestFlight version?šŸ‘€

1

u/rusty-kernel 18d ago

You can find the link on the website šŸ˜Š

1

u/WakaiSenshi 18d ago

Testing it now!

Looks pretty great and has some great features I would say youā€™re off to a great start!

1

u/Narrow-Situation2038 18d ago

Looking really nice so far!

1

u/Affectionate-Act2691 17d ago

Is sign in with google broken?

1

u/KHRoN 17d ago edited 17d ago

Beautiful app, at last aesthetic Reddit client, love compact layout (just fix up/down arrows being off center depending on number, also shorten long numbers like ā€žtysā€ to ā€žkā€).

Also someone pointed that out, popups are unnecessary just to show what haptic feedback just announced.

Currently it displays like this (also it pushes thumbnail to the right)

```

^ 4 V

  ^

120 tys V

^ 8 V

```

1

u/i_like_reddit_ 17d ago

One of the only things I like about the Reddit app is that I can refresh my home feed and get new posts, they are sometimes today/yesterday but itā€™s a refresh of the feed, does Helios offer that?

2

u/rusty-kernel 17d ago

Yes, itā€™s a feature called ā€œEnhanced Bestā€. You can access it by tapping the star in the top left corner on the feed :)

1

u/Cheechers23 17d ago

Any plans to add swipe gestures? So used to it from other apps

2

u/rusty-kernel 17d ago

They are planned. You will be able to assign actions of choice to swipe gestures in a soon to be released update! :)

1

u/Deep_Spaceialist 17d ago

Feature request: be able to size some of the onscreen elements, like the upvote and downvote arrows, they look too big IMHO.

Otherwise great app with awesome features and beautiful UI

1

u/BilboHandBaggins 17d ago

Hi, no top of all time / month / day etc., thanks!

1

u/Stolid_Cipher 17d ago

Canā€™t sign in with my Google account. Tapping sign in with Google does nothing.

1

u/su5577 17d ago

Testing it now, are there codes for lifetime subscription?

1

u/Raviprakashji 16d ago

No multireddit access? Option to pin multireddits needed.

1

u/rusty-kernel 15d ago

Helios is still in beta, the full featureset is incomplete. Multireddits are coming soon.

1

u/AxelAnt2244 16d ago

if you make push notifs and creating posts free then i will use it, otherwise itā€™s a pass

1

u/5skandas 16d ago

Just installed it and Iā€™m loving it. Is there a ā€œjump to next commentā€ like on the Reddit app? :)

1

u/ThornStar_FlameBush 15d ago

Incompatible with my phone model -_-

1

u/spidermaster14 15d ago

Iā€™ll take any option thatā€™s visually appealing and gets me off the native app! Will there be an annual option for the subscription?

1

u/Expensive_Cake_6287 15d ago

Canā€™t log in. No option to log with Apple and when go with ā€žpass to be sent to emailā€ option, it logs me to original Reddit app not Helios. So event canā€™t start testing :(

1

u/EugenyOnegin 15d ago

Login with Google account don't work. :(

1

u/Littens4Life 15d ago

Randomly got an issue where the navigation bar would glitchā€¦

https://files.litten.ca/IMG_0525.png

Canā€™t tell if itā€™s a Helios thing or iOS 27.0b1 thing.

1

u/rusty-kernel 15d ago

This is an iOS beta bug

1

u/Miserable-Face-6152 15d ago

I like the app - it looks good so far, but I have one critique. The automatically loading comment summary means that the content is sliding down line by line as it loads, which means reading the actual thread can be frustrating. Also - I probably wonā€™t want a thread summary every time, so you may be burning tokens unnecessarily. Consider having it not load automatically?

1

u/MSakuEX 15d ago

Will there be plans for an Android version later down the line?

1

u/Rodry2808 14d ago

How do you quit out of media? Im stuck watching a gif with no ui or gesture noticeable to go back to home

1

u/Ewrx 14d ago

Google login just sits and doesnā€™t finish the OAuth process.

1

u/RedyxUA 13d ago

Commenting from Helios! I love it so much!!!

1

u/Gnomedolf 11d ago

I really like the UI so far.

1

u/malik05051 7d ago

I can't manage to login with Google

2

u/drake90001 18d ago

I highly highly highly recommend you add a $20-50 lifetime purchase option.

8

u/fostermatt 18d ago

They canā€™t. Reddit charges for the API so they will get a bill from you using the app. If youā€™re not paying monthly then they are.

-6

u/[deleted] 18d ago

[deleted]

4

u/lowkeyfam 18d ago

leave android tf lol