Discourse Hub Reviews

DiscourseHub is literally nothing but a web browser. As others have said, when you tap on a forum, it will open up a safari viewing window. It’s useless and you’re better off adding the forum to your home screen as an app. I, too, wish that they could have made this a real app; it shouldn’t be very difficult.

I used DiscourseHub with a podcasting community that I interact with often that runs a discourse instance. App ran perfect and functioned as expected on iPhone 13 Pro Max, Purchased iPhone 15 Pro Max installed DiscourseHub , anytime I enter the site information it loads like 20% of the way and just sits there doesn’t matter how poor or great the connection to the internet is. I looked for a way to email the developer and try to address them directly but doesn’t appear such an option exist. Looks like I’ll be using the client in Safari for the time being.

Up until about a week ago it was working fine. But either they updated or changed something and now when I go to login it opens the webpage for logging in, I do so and then rather than redirecting me to DiscourseHub it just takes me to the website.

I have to login EVERY SINGLE TIME which makes DiscourseHub pointless and worthless. Seriously how hard is it to get the redirect done right or simply have a done button on the site after logging in?

There is just no point in using DiscourseHub unless you use a ton of forums that use discourse. It just switches to your browser when you want to read something anyway. And I can’t even check notifications in DiscourseHub . It just expands and shows new post titles with no indication of what is actually a notification.

Also, after the update it only loads correctly half the time. I just get a blank screen and have to force close.

Previously, DiscourseHub was basically a wrapper for Discourse instances but served the useful purpose of keeping the forums I manage or follow out of the clutter of tabs that makes up my Safari app. With this update, DiscourseHub is nothing more than a launcher for a Discourse site in Safari. I have no idea why anyone would use DiscourseHub when a bookmark in Safari does precisely the same thing. I wish I hadn't updated.

I have mixed feelings about the update. While I like the dashboard structure to easily see what is new and updated. I really enjoyed being able to use DiscourseHub as a client and not just a link to launch a Safari tab to my discourse sites. I would prefer the pre-update version to the current version

The actual forums are good, a little convoluted, but good. DiscourseHub basically does nothing but open those pages, and is pretty inferior to even just using Chrome to view them as DiscourseHub has basically no options or settings. It won’t even open to a specific community by default. There are no alternate themes or layouts to make navigation or reading easier. There’s no search function to help find communities. It’s like a very, very basic web browser.

Functionality of DiscourseHub is OK, I wish it were a little more self contained rather than using Safari. However, for many versions now DiscourseHub often crashes when trying to open it. I sometimes have to open it 3 or 4 times before it will open without immediately crashing.

Super simple app interface.
Which is fine.
But the reason it drops from 4 or 5 stars to a 2 is because my login doesn’t persist. It behaves as if I am a brand new user every time app opens. That might be fine on a desktop/laptop web browser. Bit in a mobile experience? Unacceptable.

I’m deleting DiscourseHub, and just going back to using Chrome.

As has been noted, the relaunch effect is a nuisance: if you do too much heavy stuff in the interim, DiscourseHub loses your place and starts out from scratch. And, of course, unlike a browser, there is no kind of tabs option, which would be immensely helpful at times.

For me, though, the biggest defect is the to-top scroll function (where touching the top of the screen scrolls to the top of the page). I use iCab for serious browsing, which does not have this at all relying instead on a persistent scroll bar (which can also be problematic at times). The problem is that the long-scroll pageless format used by Discourse means that scroll-to-top absolutely makes no sense. Discourse has its own little quick-scroll widget, anyway. The developer/maintainer needs to disable the scroll-to-top response.

Does what it says it does. Useful if you use a Discourse based community and want notifications on your phone, and/or just a dedicated way to access it instead of keeping a tab open at all times.

It would be better if the web view wasn’t cluttered with the super fat bars at the top and bottom. Would be better yet if it adopted a standard app UI, can still use the web view but have back button at top left and title in proper iOS ui.

APP occupies more and more storage space; how to deal with the accumulated cache space?

DiscourseHub helps me to host/participate in online discussions. I come across views of so many different people on a single issue, that is what is the best part of an online interaction like this.

Gives me notifications for all my forums and loads the forum pages just fine. Nothing bad about DiscourseHub…5/5!

IMO it is not a problem that DiscourseHub opens a web View for you to interact with discourse itself. Discourse provides such a solid mobile browsing experience anyway that building a native app which would improve upon what the mobile web version does would require a ton more work than most people realize. I think that managing notifications and providing a unified location for accessing the discourse instances that you follow is a perfect sweet spot for DiscourseHub and so far it has served that role well.

I've now started using this as my browser now as it keeps all my favourite websites accessible and i don't have to search for a link any longer.

I can stay logged in to multiple different communities. Love the notifications feature. Recommending to others for sure.

It delivers whatever it promises. Useful if you use a Discourse based community and want notifications on your phone, and/or just a dedicated way to access it instead of keeping a tab open at all times

There’s another review out there about how this does what it needs to do, handles push notifications and offers a central places to access different instances. They’re right. I’m giving 5 stars to offset some of the other bad reviews. DiscourseHub deserves better.

I've now started using this as my browser now as it keeps all my favourite websites accessible and i don't have to search for a link any longer.