At the time of writing the current release of Pachli is 2.1.1, forked from Tusky 23.0, and contains many quality of life improvements and bug fixes. Some of these have subsequently appeared in later versions of Tusky (I try and indicate them below with a "*").
[!NOTE] This is a bit rough-and-ready, but I think it's accurate. Obviously this will become out of date after a new Pachli or Tusky release. Corrections as comments to this gist are welcomed.
The most significant and impactful are probably:
- "Load more" is gone. Posts are loaded automatically as you scroll through your timeline
- No missing posts. Tusky (and many other Mastodon clients) have a bug that causes some posts to be missed if you leave the app and come back later. Pachli always shows you your full feed
- Never lose your reading position. Tusky (and many other Mastodon clients) can lose your reading position if you leave the app and come back later. Pachli always restores your reading position in whatever timeline you were reading
- Translation. If your server supports translation then Pachli enables it in the UI. Use the "..." menu to translate a post, see the Pachli 2.0.0 release announcement for more details.
And then there's the following:
The user interface has undergone some significant changes.
- Choose from a range of different fonts to meet different accessibility needs
- Scrollbars, to make it easier to see how much you've read / how much more there is to read
- Configure more than five tabs (*)
- Add "Bookmarks", "Trending Links", and "Trending Posts" as tabs
- Open the search, enter some search text, and then tap one of the tabs ("Accounts", or "Hashtag"). Tusky deletes the search text, Pachli doesn't.
- An updated colour palette
You can hide "self-boosts" from your home timeline. A self-boost is when someone posts something, and then some time later they boost their own post. (*)
Lists can be marked as "exclusive", meaning that posts from people on that list will appear in the list but not on your home timeline. (*)
- The video player code has been updated, and can play more video formats (*)
- Videos aren't dimmed for the first few seconds when they're played
- Viewing an image, switching away to another app, and then switching back to Pachli shows the image or video, instead of a black screen
- In Tusky, zooming in to an image could cause it to "stick" if you tried to zoom out, or swipe to another image. That has been fixed. (*)
- Link previews show more information
- Creating a filter and setting it to apply to notifications doesn't work in Tusky, it does in Pachli.
- Pachli can check for newer versions and prompt you if an update is available.
Pachli has a roadmap, Roadmap · Pachli roadmap. At a high level:
- 1.x - launch and resolve critical bugs uncovered during launch (done)
- 2.x - support translating posts, both off- and on-device (underway)
- 3.x - support (optionally) fetching data from remote servers for a better experience
- 4.x - improve support for tablets, foldables, and other larger devices
Pachli aims to release a new major or minor version roughly once per month, and has consistently achieved that goal.
Tusky had five releases in 2023, and I did the work for two of them.