What is Reddit
For the uninitiated, Reddit is a social news and communities platform. It is the 20th most visited site in the world and 6th in the US. Reddit is consists of millions of mini-forums known as subreddits. There are subreddits for things ranging from World News, Politics, Gaming to niche topics like Mechanical Keyboard, Cosplay and Guitar Pedals. From popular subjects to niche hobbies, there a dedicated subreddit for almost everything. The content on Reddit is user-generated wherein other registered users can comment, upvote, or downvote it. If you own an Android phone, check out our picks of top Android apps for Reddit. Here are the top 10 reasons why we think Apollo for Reddit is a better app to access Reddit on iPhone.
1. Gesture Support
Gesture control has become a common feature in Android, iOS, and many other apps. But, how many of these gestures we remember and use daily. Probably only a few. One of the reasons behind that is the complex nature of different gestures, which we can’t recall if not used every day. Apollo offers simple and intuitive gestures. There are four swipe gestures, Right-Left short swipe, and Right-Left long swipe. These gestures do things such as Upvote, Downvote, Reply, Save, and more. You can even configure them to your liking in the settings.
2. Secure Your Favorite Subreddits with FaceID
Maintaining the privacy of your Reddit activity is quite important. Hence, people get the option to hide their location and other details. Also, you can prevent anyone from snooping into your phone while you enjoy posts in r/tightpussy (totally safe for work subreddit with cat photos). You can lock up Apollo with FaceID and Passcode to prevent unauthorized access. Every time you launch or switch to Apollo, it will ask you to grant access only after you use Face ID or Passcode to unlock. You can enable that feature from the Settings.
3. Built-In Media Viewer
Reddit is full of surprises. Sometimes the title of the post will not match with the content or the content of the subreddit will not match its name. In the comment section, the posted links can trick you into opening them and finding something completely different. Apollo helps to prevent that with link previews and showing full URL address. It also has built-in Imgur viewer which eliminates the tedious process of opening links in Safari. What Apollo can’t prevent is you getting hoodwinked from the guys like u/shittymorph and u/GuyWithRealFacts.
4. GIF Scrubbing
GIFs are one of the major components of Reddit. There are whole subreddits dedicated to GIFs, for example, subreddits like r/FullMovieGIFs compress an entire movie into a GIF. A video usually has a seek bar that lets you scroll till the desired time. However, GIFs can only be paused/played. Apollo’s GIF scrubbing feature allows you to perform video-like scrubbing to find the perfect frame you were looking for.
5. Use Different Reddit Icons
We all are familiar with the Reddit’s default icon, known as Snoo aka Reddit Alien. It is instantly recognizable across the web and is also the default icon of Reddit’s official mobile app. But what if you want a different icon for your Reddit app? Apollo provides over 15+ icon options to spoil you. Further, the developer keeps adding new ones every month. Sadly, you can’t make and use a custom icon for now.
6. Better Comment View
By default, Reddit acts as a discussion board and offers a thread-like layout for each post. Comments are used to reply to the main post or other comments. Popular posts garner more than 1000+ comments, and keeping track of a piece of information or flow of the post is often confusing. The multi-colored comment view of Apollo makes it easy for you to keep track of the flow of comments as well as distinguishing comments on the main post from replies to other comments.
7. Block Things You Don’t like
Imagine you are browsing Reddit at your work, scrolling through posts from your subscriptions. A wild post, which should have been marked NSFW, comes right at the moment when your boss is passing by. To avoid such things from happening, you can block specific subreddits, posts containing peculiar keywords, and other users. That feature is useful for blocking spoilers, earlier from Game of Thrones Season 8 and Avengers End Game, and other pop culture media.
8. Powerful Text Editor
On official Reddit app for iOS, you can only enter text while writing a comment. There is no provision for adding any media. Apollo’s Text Editor has full Markdown support. So you can add Imgur albums, GIFs, videos, and images via Imgur to your comments. You can even convert text into lists, quotes, superscripts, etc. with just a tap. Further, there is also a built-in search box for finding subreddits, which you can directly mention in your reply.
9. Real-Time Notifications
On Reddit, you might want to read all the comments or the responses posted on your comment. It can be tiresome to open a particular thread repeatedly to check for updates. For catching up with them, Apollo supports real-time notifications. The app also pushes the notifications to the Apple Watch if you own one.
Pricing Caveat
Apollo is developed by an enthusiast indie developer who mainly relies on sales from app purchases and donation. While Apollo has a free version, many of the above features are available only in the Pro version of the app. The Pro version is available as a one-time purchase at a price of just $0.99 to $4.99. That unlocks all the above features expect Real-Time Notifications, which are available in Ultra Version. The Ultra version costs $0.99 monthly and is also available as lifetime purchase for $19.99. These prices seem reasonable considering the quality of the app and the features provided.
Apollo for the Win!
While Reddit has a perfectly functional mobile website, serious users prefer having a dedicated app to catch up on their daily dose of news and memes. Reddit also has an official app for both Android and iOS. But it fulfills only the basic needs. It doesn’t have any features that stand out to make your mobile Reddit experience better. That said, Apollo stands out with its beautiful interface, fast performance, and a bundle of features, which makes it a top choice over other apps. Next up: Want to Customize Reddit’s Web Client to your liking? Follow our guide customizing it on Windows and Android.
