iOS beta app thread

Erica, I think this is an important communication to beta testers and future iOS app users. I believe a majority of iOS users will expect the traditional features of iOS baked in to Dynalist.

Having said that, I donā€™t mind it being a ā€œweb appā€ and think the mobile Safari experience is already pretty good.

As the team grows and more Pro users come on board (I did today!) can we expect a dedicated (customized) iOS app sometime in the next year?

Can you explain what does ā€œcustomizedā€ mean in this context?

What I meant was the difference between the web app and an iOS app. While functionally doing the same things, the iOS app will use the native tools, menus and UI that makes it unique.

We see it in other productivity tools like Todoistā€¦both Android and iOS having certain platform advantages but still very much Todoist in form.

I agree we should inform users about this, but Iā€™m just not sure what the correct words are for expressing this. Something like ā€œsorry guys but this is a web app wrapped in a wrapper so donā€™t expect too many differencesā€? I guess the biggest difficulty we have is that weā€™ve never seen any other app clarifying this, so thereā€™s no sample description we can look at. All the web view apps out there donā€™t really talk about this.

I like customized apps in this sense too, but truth be told, that only works in bigger companies. Honestly both of us donā€™t even use an iPhone and have no iOS development experience. Itā€™s not economically feasible to hire an iOS developer either. Maybe one day we will be able to and then we can build truly native apps that are customized for the platform.

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I think thatā€™s an honest and starightforward response that folks can and will accept. Being upfront with user expectations is hard but the reality is that all of us work with limited resources.

Hereā€™s to a massively successful 2017 where more subscribers could help with a future iOS developer hire.

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Dear Erica,

Thanks for including me in the beta test.

The app works great, but I guess it would be much easier for users to review/edit documents if the UI is upgraded.

I would like to suggest you to refer to other writing apps, especially Bear, Ulysses, and Scrivener :slight_smile:

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Dear Erica,

Does Dynalist for iOS have Custome URL Scheme?
I would like to use Dynalist with Textwell , Draft4 and so on.

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Is this an bug looks like two icons ( upper right ) are on the same position

Not right now, maybe in the future!

Looks like a bug, but I canā€™t make it happen. The two icons appear separately for me.

Did you do anything special to get this?

It happens when I filtering on an tag in iOS beta version

Iā€™ve noticed that you can scroll the page as well as the list of notes. I think the pageā€™s larger scrolling should be disabled and the web kit scrolling left enabled for specific areas. Would prevent it from ā€œfeeling like a web appā€ more.

Also when loading a large new document the app freezes and it downloads it for the first time with no way to cancel. Iā€™ve been in places in the web app with this (home screen icon with no refresh button) and have gotten stuck cause of a bad connection or something.

Seems like the loading indicator needs to come at the download, not processing, phase.

UPDATE: Deleting the app and re-installing via TestFlight fixed the problem.

(But still.)

Original bug:

One of my documents doesnā€™t come up in the iOS app.
The ā€œEverythingā€ doc just shows the loading infinity sign forever.
All my other docs open just fine.
Tried quitting and reloading the app, didnā€™t fix.
ā€œEverythingā€ opens in Chrome iOS app, but not in Dynalist app.
Itā€™s larger than others, could it be hitting some size limit?

I believe a majority of iOS users will expect the traditional features of iOS baked in to Dynalist.

Not sure I agree. When I use a web-based service, and theyā€™ve already invested in developing a robust mobile interface, and they come out with an iOS app, chances are very high itā€™ll be a web wrapper. Iā€™d love to see a native app but thatā€™s really above-and-beyond to my mind.

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I use voice input extensively. (The mic icon on the keyboard.)

When I say the word ā€œnewlineā€, a newline character is added to the current item. I would love for Dynalist to detect this case and do what the Return/Enter key does ā€” create a new item.

If that were fixed I could rapidly enter a series of items without hand input. (Important while driving and brainstorming.)

With the way it currently is, I have to laboriously exit voice input, create a new item by hand, and re-enter voice input, for every item.

(Try it and youā€™ll see how annoying it is.)

So this would be a small fix with a big dividend for me. Namely I donā€™t die and kill a bunch of innocent people on the freeway.

Longer term, Iā€™d love to see better support in the app for voice input.

This could be Dynalist importing/exporting to the built-in Reminders app, which has ultra-easy input ā€” [home button] ā€œRemind me to pick up paprikaā€, done! (This feature alone has me continue to use Reminders when I donā€™t actually like the app that much.)

Or maybe there are ways the Dynalist app itself can support/integrate voice input.

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First, the beta is a great start. Feedback: I am using iPad Pro 12" with SmartKeyboard. Some initial observations:

  • The app has no split-screen support. Split-screen is very import for productivity with ipad, even for smaller screens. The ability to have a dynalist document open and to do research in the other screen in Safari is very nice. Without it, then you lose a lot of value.

  • The SmartKeyboard is an amazing technology. However at the end of the day its an external keyboard, thus other external keyboards will have the same weaknesses. Basically they navigationwith the keyboard is clumsy and many of the ā€œbuiltinā€ shortcuts dont work, or interfere with the native iOS shortcuts.

  • Also related to keyboard, iOS has support when you hold in the COMMAND key for a few seconds that a keyboard shortcut window appears based on the app. It would be nice to have quick access to the shortcut list.

Thank you for your hard work and I apologize if this feedback sounds like criticism, it isnā€™t. As someone else mentioned here, there have to be advantages to the iOS app over the web app. For me offline has no value since I have data on all my devices all the time.

Warm regards,
Chris

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Hi Chris,

In the past i mention to Erica (Dev) that in the future in iOS keyboard shortcuts will speedup my Workflow on my iPadā€¦

Cheers
Dimitry

What does saying ā€œnewlineā€ currently do? Nothing?

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Yeah, weā€™re working on that.

We found out only some shortcuts donā€™t work, for example, Ctrl+Shift+M works just fine. Itā€™s basically that Apple handles basic keys like Tab, Up, Down, and does not let Dynalist know about it. We need to write some native code to make those shortcuts come through.