Android mobile app - lose my place when I switch apps

I’ve been using the android mobile app for a few months now, and I like it. I’m having a problem with it though and have what I think is a feature request.

When I am reading discussions using the app I keep losing my place. When I need to switch to another app (which of course happens frequently on mobile) and then switch back I find myself back at the list of sites. Also, when I’m on the list of sites it seems to me I should be able to click through to a site and go back to what I was doing rather then land on the frontpage again. It’s a bit infuriating.

I am inclined to stop using the app now and instead use chrome tabs, though I will miss that lovely list of sites with notifications.

2 Likes

I am totally open for a user pref that would keep track of your latest spot on the forum and then always open the site there. It is slightly tricky cause the server would have to take care of it.

On iOS I can switch apps without losing my spot, does android not have the equivalent switching semantics? Are you forced to click back and back out of the app?

2 Likes

If you use the OS app switcher and go back, it will be there in the same spot (unless your phone reclaims memory and kill the app).

If you go to the app drawer and open it again, it closes the old instance and opens from the start all over.

It’s a react native bug that was closed, and I believe that we should implement the hack they recommended:

https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/8570#issuecomment-250364867

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Pretty sure @sam has on his plate to release a new Android app with 1.8 official release so we can just deal with it then.

In general we should release a new version of app, both iOS and Android, after each Discourse release.

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This is EXACTLY what happens. I switch to the phone or text messaging or whatever, then go back to my home screen to go back to discourse and find myself back at the list of sites.

Another issue that keeps recurring, maybe related, is that the timestamp of the last update keeps reverting to 11:44, even after restarting the phone.

@tobiaseigen please: with which forums do you most often lose your sense of place?

(Can you name, or link to them?)

Thanks

Don’t laugh, a few times I used that as a feature. Because I tired of going back, back, back … back, back … without knowing how many more gos would be required before I arrival at the list. Eventually I remembered that swiping down reveals the close button that appears at the first step into a forum.

All of the forums I am on, including meta.

The solution here seems to be to fix the react native bug, though Sam’s idea to have a server setting to remember the last page a user was on is also interesting if it can be implemented.