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Bitwarden will be switching to native apps for both Android and iOS (www.reddit.com)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by mahavir@lemmy.world to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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Libredit link: https://reddit.invak.id/r/Bitwarden/comments/1b32bbz/going_native_the_future_of_the_bitwarden_mobile/

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[-] Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 81 points 10 months ago

Our Xamarin app is a bit sluggish and uses a lot more resources on your device than you might expect.

Especially on my slower phone, the Bitwarden UI feels like it would shortly freeze. And some actions take longer than expected.

The new native apps with a new UI look great and should be better to use.

[-] DharmaCurious@startrek.website 3 points 10 months ago

Question. I am a computer dumb. Is this scary for me? Lol.

[-] faintwhenfree@lemmus.org 23 points 10 months ago

No, you should ignore these types of posts though.

[-] Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 10 months ago

No, this is mainly cosmetic changes and changes not visible to the user. It's a result of a small team growing and thus having more time for making their apps better to use.

[-] noodlejetski@lemm.ee 6 points 10 months ago

the apps will look a bit different but will be faster.

[-] Dumbkid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 37 points 9 months ago

I didn't even notice the app was sluggish, but this is still great news!

[-] linearchaos@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

Yeah I mean we use the app for like 3 seconds here and 3 seconds there. I'm not saying that if it was twice as fast it wouldn't make a meaningful impact but I still might not notice.

[-] Timely_Jellyfish_2077@programming.dev 30 points 10 months ago

Much needed change.

[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.world 26 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Eh. Crossplatform isnt the problem here; Xamirin is. There's a host of next gen cross platform frameworks like Flutter, React Native, Blazor that save you having to maintain two distinct apps; something that's only going to add a bunch of developer burden

[-] moritz@l.deltaa.xyz 13 points 9 months ago

I always recognize Flutter apps on Android as being non-native and avoid them because of this.

I think it is because they seem to never use the system font but Quicksand instead and all the animations feel slightly off.

[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Personally, beyond a few material-like components I always prefer it when an app goes for its own system-agnostic design language like Spotify does. On desktop I'm definitely more picky if I can get away with it; Qt dor KDE and GTK for GNOME etc

[-] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 months ago

i love having all my apps match my system, gtk or qt for desktop mui for android

[-] deadcream@sopuli.xyz 1 points 9 months ago

I have given up on the fight a long time ago. On the desktop the only line I draw is that the app must respect system font configuration and use system-provided file dialogs.

[-] deadcream@sopuli.xyz 2 points 9 months ago

Same with Compose even though it's ironically considered native in the Android dev community.

The easiest way to tell that the app is not native is tooltips (those that appear when you long press on a button in a toolbar). For some reason UI frameworks just can't agree to display them in the same way, even if they use material design. Compose's ones are especially bad (some apps like Play store actually have different kinds of tooltips on different screens, meaning they use multiple UI frameworks in the same app).

[-] moritz@l.deltaa.xyz 1 points 9 months ago

With Compose apps I actually never had this problems yet.

[-] deadcream@sopuli.xyz 1 points 9 months ago

It looks mostly the same as XML views but some components look and behave wildly different for no apparent reason (tooltips are one of those).

[-] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Agree. Will it be as performant as native? No. But will it be plenty performant for a password manager, yes.

The only thing I wish RN and Flutter would figure out is bloat. File sizes are huge compared to native. A shame there can't be a shared model in mobile apps for the core system.

[-] AMDIsOurLord@lemmy.ml 7 points 9 months ago

Flutter is native. It gets compiled to an executable, it just takes a render plane from the underlying OS and renders everything in it's own engine. They're working on a new render system that will make it go even faster.

React Native is just a fancy web browser wrapping with some helper APIs.

[-] aeharding@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

React Native is just a fancy web browser wrapping with some helper APIs.

React native is not a browser. It uses native components.

[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

RN is native too I think, at least it advertises itself as a way to compile some kind of XML syntax into native widgets on either platform. An improvement to PWAs even if I despise typescript

[-] hruzgar@feddit.de 1 points 9 months ago

yeah, it displays native widgets but there is still a js engine (browser) running in the background. So the basically made a layer between native components and Javascript. But the code which is running is js and js is slow.

[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

yeah the JS/TS was always a killer for me ngl

[-] deadcream@sopuli.xyz 1 points 9 months ago

JS by itself is very fast (it's one of the fastest dynamic languages). It's interop with platforms APIs that is slow, at the fact that each React app spins up its own instance of Chromium also doesn't help.

[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

I guess smaller apps would be nice but that's also a thing that can be helped - I have a handful of flutter apps on my phone right now (that i know of) and they run in at:

18MB - Nextcloud recipes client

50MB - Spotube (Youtube music client with spotify integration)

100MB - My job - a savings and investments app, with half a dozen third party API integrations.

So depending on your scope and stuff you can really build an app to whatever size. Cant account for react native or blazor but the idea is usually just abstract native graphics APIs instead of using a browser runtime.

[-] ARNiM@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago

Man that looks sleek. I can’t wait for this update to roll out.

[-] noodlejetski@lemm.ee 14 points 9 months ago

gosh, I wish Tuta were next.

[-] DerpDerpingtonIsHere@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

If only.

[-] noodlejetski@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago

their UI is the only thing that makes me consider switching to Proton Mail from time to time, but in the end it's just too much hassle to do it all over again.

[-] LunchEnjoyer@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

Happy to hear!

[-] SiblingNoah@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

Your turn, 1Password. Native apps are just plain better.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 14 points 10 months ago

1P has native apps.

[-] aeharding@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

Everyone on this thread: I can recognize native apps when I see them 😤

Native apps when they see them:

[-] SiblingNoah@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

They switched to Electron.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 months ago

Sorry I thought the context was Android and iOS. Yes, the desktop apps are Electron.

[-] preasket@lemy.lol 2 points 9 months ago

1password should just open source its apps. IMHO, security and infrastructure software has no business being closed source.

[-] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Wait so what have we been using?

Edit: ah ok the post explained everything well

[-] kosmoz@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago

This is great news! 👏

[-] subtext@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

Very exciting news… I’m the tech support for the family and I just can’t yet recommend argon as the hashing algorithm for everyone yet because they’ve said there’s a few potential hiccups. Looking forward to something snappier.