[opensourcedex]

voyager is a free, open source social networking project written in TypeScript and released under AGPL-3.0. It has 1,810 GitHub stars, 174 forks and 256 open issues, and was last pushed 5 days ago. On this registry it ranks #23 of 44 tracked projects in Social Networking, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available.

What is voyager?

What it is

Voyager is a mobile-first web client for Lemmy and Piefed. It lives in the Fediverse and ActivityPub ecosystem. The project is written in TypeScript and licensed under AGPL-3.0. It uses React, Ionic, Capacitor, and PWA patterns to run on iOS, Android, and desktop browsers. It is an Apollo-like open source client for Lemmy.

It solves the problem of accessing Lemmy communities with a polished mobile interface without native app lock-in. Users can browse link aggregator communities, read threads, and interact from phone, tablet, or desktop. Because it is web-based, it is lightweight and self-hostable.

Key capabilities

  • Supports light and dark modes, plus iOS and Android visual themes.
  • Lets users view, subscribe to, and favorite Lemmy communities, with multi-account support.
  • Allows upvoting, downvoting, replying, saving, and bookmarking posts and comments.
  • Provides single comment thread context view and collapsible comment threads.
  • Supports creating posts with URL, photo, or text, and editing or deleting posts and comments.
  • Handles messaging, mentions, and replies, with swipe gestures for actions such as hiding posts.

Who uses it and how

  • Community members use it on phones or tablets to browse Lemmy or Piefed instances, read link aggregator posts, and comment in threads.
  • Users with accounts on several instances switch between identities through multi-account support.
  • People who prefer web apps use the Progressive Web App through hosted deployments such as the official vger.app instance.
  • Users can try the continuously deployed beta build from the main branch, accepting that it may break at any time.
  • Self-hosters can run Voyager because the README states it is self-hostable, though deployment details are not given in the excerpt.

Getting started

Voyager can be used through native apps in the stores, through hosted Progressive Web App deployments such as vger.app, or through a self-hosted web deployment. The project also offers a beta track built from every commit to the main branch, which may break at any time.

When to use it — and when not to

It suits users who want an open-source, web-based Lemmy client instead of a native Apollo-like app. It may not suit users who need moderation tools, native notifications, badging, or translations today, because the README places those on the roadmap. Community deployments are not maintained by the Voyager team and may not match the source code.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Voyager

A mobile-first Lemmy web client

Report Bug · Request Feature · Releases

  ​         

matrix chat lemmy community


Voyager for Lemmy

Voyager is an Apollo-like open source web client for Lemmy. It's a mobile-first app, but works great on desktop devices, too. Please feel free to try it out!

What does Voyager currently support?

  • Light/dark mode
  • View and subscribe to communities
  • Multi account support
  • Single comment thread context view
  • Upvote, downvote and reply to threads and comments
  • Interact with user profiles
  • Comment thread collapsing
  • A bunch of swipe gestures
  • Messaging, mentions and replies
  • Creating new posts (url/photo/text)
  • Deleting/editing comments
  • Deleting/editing posts
  • Swipe to hide posts
  • Saving/bookmarking
  • Favorites
  • iOS and Android themes

What is on the roadmap?

  • More customization
  • Native notifications and badging
  • Mod features
  • Translations
  • ...and more!

💪 Mobile webapps are awesome

Native apps can be great, but we believe in the strengths of the web. Why use a web-based Lemmy client?

  • Cross-platform Use the familiar Voyager interface on your phone, tablet, desktop computer, and more!
  • Self-hostable No worries about your favorite app getting taken down, and you can customize to your desire!
  • Lightweight No large installation bundles - and it's easy to try it out

Deployment

Ecosystem

For most users, we recommend the native app available in the stores:

       

However, if you prefer using the Progressive Web App, there are a number of folks that host it:

Community Deployments
Country URL Description Contact/Privacy
🇺🇸 Virginia, USA vger.app ✅ Official Voyager PWA instance ➡️
🇫🇮 Finland m.lemmy.world Voyager hosted by the mastodon.world team. ➡️
🇸🇬 Singapore v.opnxng.com Voyager hosted by Opnxng in Singapore. ➡️
🇲🇽 Mexico voyager.nohost.network Voyager hosted by Nohost in Mexico. ➡️
🇺🇸 USA vger.thesanewriter.com Voyager hosted by the lemmy.thesanewriter.com team. ➡️
🇺🇸 Oregon, USA m.lemmy.today A fast, general purpose instance located in Oregon, USA ➡️
🇫🇷 France v.lemmy.dbzer0.com Be Weird, Download a Car, Generate Art, Screw Copyrights ➡️
? v.programming.dev A collection of programming communities ➡️
🇺🇸 Oregon, USA v.lemmy.eco.br A fast, general purpose instance located in Oregon, USA ➡️
🇩🇪 Germany v.lemy.lol Long-term, general purpose Lemmy instance. ➡️
🇵🇹 Portugal voyager.slrpnk.net Sustainable future interconnected with nature and community. ➡️
? app.thelemmy.club A general Lemmy instance for all! ➡️
? m.lemdro.id Fully open source instance with incredible transparency. ➡️

Note: Community deployments are NOT maintained by the Voyager team. They may not be synced with Voyager's source code. Please do your own research about the host servers before using them.

Beta Testing

Voyager maintains a beta track continuously deployed from every commit to refs/heads/main). The beta build may break at any time.

Self-Host

There are two ways you can run Voyager as a PWA in a production environment. The recommended method is using docker. We also support a traditional deployment method without docker. Read below to see how to get each method set up.

Docker Deployment

In order to host Voyager yourself you can use the provided Dockerfile to build a container with Voyager. The Docker container itself does not provide any SSL/TLS handling. You'll have to add this bit yourself. One could put Voyager behind popular reverse proxies with SSL Handling like Traefik, NGINX etc.

Tip: Use Watchtower to keep your deployment automatically up to date!

Environment variables
  • CUSTOM_LEMMY_SERVERS (optional) e.g. lemmy.world,lemmy.ml,sh.itjust.works - a comma separated list of suggested servers. The first will be used as default view for logged out users. You can specify only one if you want.
From source
  1. checkout source git clone https://github.com/aeharding/voyager.git
  2. go into new source dir: cd voyager
  3. build Docker image: docker build . -t voyager
  4. start container: docker run --init --rm -it -p 5314:5314 voyager
Prebuilt
  1. pull image docker pull ghcr.io/aeharding/voyager:latest
  2. start container: docker run --init --rm -it -p 5314:5314 voyager

Note: The provided Dockerfile creates a container which will eventually run Voyager as non-root user.

Traditional Deployment

While Docker makes things easier, Voyager can be hosted by any HTTP server (nginx, apache etc).

readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is voyager free to use?

voyager is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does voyager do?

Voyager — a beautiful app for Lemmy and Piefed

What is voyager written in?

voyager is primarily written in TypeScript. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/aeharding/voyager, and it has 1,810 GitHub stars.