Show HN: Oliphaunt – A native Mastodon client for macOS | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Oliphaunt – A native Mastodon client for macOS

testflight.apple.com

105 pointsanosidium39 comments

I’ve been building Oliphaunt, a native Mastodon client for macOS, as a solo project — designed to be fast, lightweight and feel right at home on the Mac. It’s not built with Catalyst or Electron framework.

Key features:

• Native macOS UI using AppKit with some SwiftUI integration (not a web wrapper)

• Core Data for local caching

• Responsive, keyboard-friendly interface

• UX tailored for desktop-class Mac computers

• Supports multiple accounts, cross-instance timelines and search

You can try it via TestFlight (macOS 14+ Sonoma): https://testflight.apple.com/join/Epq1P3Cw

Feedback is welcome here, on GitHub, or via TestFlight: https://github.com/anosidium/Oliphaunt-Feedback-And-Support

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What’s the sense on mastodon lately? I feel like the core concept is also its Achilles heel in that with all these disjointed communities it’s really not a community at all.

It's the only social media I still use.

I don't notice "disjointed communities" I just look at the posts from people I follow without knowing which server they are on. I'm aware you can see a list of posts on your local server but I imagine people on most instances (unless the instance has a strong theme like for people from a particular location) never use it.

It's not very community-like out of the box, that's totally true.

OTOH, after you follow both people and hashtags, it feels pretty much like everything else, more or less.

New iOS (XCode) developer here.

Do you have any pro tips for optimizing workflow, reducing toil in XCode, or speeding up UI testing?

It does look nice.

I can't seem to figure out how to open posts and profiles though. Neither single nor double-clicking does anything. Sometimes double-clicking a post that contains a link would open the link in the web browser. The only thing that works is right click -> open in new window. MacOS 14.7.5 (23H527)

Thanks!

Yes, that’s intentional — to view a thread or profile, use the contextual menu (right-click or control-click). Clicking is reserved for posts that contain a link or preview card, which will open in the browser.

Always great to see native macOS apps! Is there a reason you aren’t using SwiftUI for the whole thing and that you opted for Core Data instead of Swift Data?

Swift Data is CoreData in a wrapper.

Also, not OP, but I’m glad it’s written in AppKit vs SwiftUI purely; AppKit just feels better on the desktop. I can always “smell” a SwiftUI app just like I can an Electron app.

If the Settings app on current macOS is SwiftUI, then I can too. It's horrible.

Never thought of that. Is that why the Settings app is so slow? If I click on one of the menu items on the left, it takes half a second or more to load the screen.

Search is also broken af raycast saves me from going mad

SwiftUI doesn't help, but each panel is a separate process. The previous version of System Preferences hid the delay by showing an animation, the new one doesn't.

Why is a separate process necessary here?

You don’t want login settings, cursor blink rate settings and random app settings running in the same process

Why? Is there a mechanism by which one of those would be able to interfere with another?

Yes, the mechanism of “memory access”.

I still think they could easily load quicker though. Even switching between the different menu items in Settings takes long, when going back to ones that you already used earlier. They don't seem to be doing a lot of caching. At least they could keep those processes running for a while.

Unless it's actually SwiftUI taking time to render that UI, which would be bizarre.

As a macOS user I am so used to everything happening in the blink of an eye, so this is something that stands out. It's really not a big problem, 300-400ms.

Ok, let me rewind a little. Are preference panes actually running apps? I imagined them more conceptually similar to an HTML form that System Settings displayed and processed and then wrote the results back to a plist or whatever. And in that model, there wouldn’t be a clear advantage to having separate processes.

Was I imagining that wrong?

Yes they are more applike than UI-definition-like.

Thanks! I’m glad to hear that.

It’s an AppKit-first app — I’ve used SwiftUI in parts where it fits well, but I’ve avoided relying on it entirely because it’s still maturing, especially on macOS. In certain areas, it can compromise the native look and feel, or introduce unexpected behaviour.

As for Core Data, it’s a proven and robust framework that already does everything I need. Swift Data is still relatively new and doesn’t yet offer the same level of flexibility or stability for more advanced use cases.

Towards the end of COVID lockdowns I wrote a small, native macOS replacement for Zotero and ended up having to go with AppKit. Bit disappointing to hear the look and feel of a Mac assed mac app still hasn’t been replicated in SwiftUI.

Do you write about your experience with macOS dev at all? I would love to hear about it. I still look back fondly on that experience and toss around the idea of revisiting it, Documentation Archive and all.

I like the Mac integration and all the features in the menu. Did I miss bigger fonts somewhere?

Nope. I will add this feature in future updates.

The link goes to testflight?

Yes. It's not on the Mac App Store yet.

Nicely done, looks good!

Thank you!

Thanks for the TestFlight invite! I’ll install the iOS build and keep an eye on performance, UI responsiveness, and any crash logs. Happy to send feedback through the TestFlight app if anything comes up.

Why isn't it open source? Ice Cubes is pretty good and FOSS

Then use Ice Cubes. Not everything has to be FOSS.

What's the argument against it?

Alas, fell at the first hurdle by saying my Akkoma and GotoSocial instances aren't valid.

Could you please give me some instance URLs so that I can check?

You can find out about different servers on https://fedidb.com

FediDB doesn't track GoToSocial servers, because of a dispute about scraping/crawling.

Is there a better source that tracks a broader range of Fediverse servers? At the moment, my app officially supports Mastodon, though I’m aware there are derivative forks and other compatible implementations.

I guess that's been solved, because you can go to https://fedidb.com/servers and there are ~10 GtS servers being listed, all of them on the newest version.

Thanks, that's helpful!

Added a couple of mine to the issue I filed earlier.

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