Ice Cubes for Mastodon Reviews

by I Already Have A Nickname

It just got stuck accessing the URL for my mastodon server. I checked and the site and server are up and running perfectly. The official Mastodon client and other third-party clients had no trouble setting up access to my account.

IceCubes also loaded some off-color posts in the background, visible before I had even setup my account. It would be preferable if it didn't decide to load posts visible on my screen before I setup what I want to be seeing.

Finally, it tried to connect without asking permission to a site called revenuecat that seems to manage app subscriptons. I didn't sign up for any subscriptions and any connection to a server should be with my explicit permission only. This is Trojan horse behavior.

by Scott XD

I love the customization and options in IceCubes, and I love open source software, but without a unified timeline, using Mastodon is worthless. I don’t need to see every reply from every second single person I follow. I should only see replies in my feed when someone I follow replies to someone I don’t follow. Otherwise I should only see the original post in my feed giving me the option to dig into that post to read the replies. Getting notifications for every reply from people I follow makes sense. But no one can piece together a timeline for every single follow they have in some puzzle cluster eff of replies to make sense of things in their feed, especially when it shows them out of order, which is often the case. Twitter and others have this right. Until I get a feed that makes sense, Mastodon and it’s 3rd party apps aren’t worth anybody’s time and attention.

by Disambiguated

App remains in ‘add a new account’ context even after successfully adding an account; it will then obligingly add the same account to the client as many times as the user presses the ‘Authorize’ button, while giving no feedback to the user that the account was successfully added to the client.

Why allow the same account to be added multiple times?

Once the user discovers that the account has been added multiple times to the client, there is no discernible way within IceCubes settings to remove the extra instances. It is astonishing that IceCubes was released with no apparent facility for removing accounts.

by VI Lenin

looks very polished, supports most masto features, works with glitchsoc, customizable app icon and almost everything else. i do wish notification grouping were per day vs per unspecified time period because it still clutters up the notification tab that way. long-standing bug in which IceCubes crashes when closing the reply editor after tapping the post you are replying to is still there. would be good to have IceCubes load the *newest* 100 posts when going to a timeline that you haven’t been to in a while, then, if you *dont* immediately scroll to the top, begin loading posts as it is currently. as it is it loads increasingly more recent posts in batches of 100, which can be terrible in terms of performance, bandwidth, and even server usage if you don’t visit that timeline often. i have gotten rate limited a few times on my instance after accidentally going to the federated timeline for the first time in several months, leading to +2k posts loading for no reason.

by Ggirton

IceCubes is good, it’s alive and in constant development. I just brought up the iPad app, and it was totally synced up to date with the phone app. This is what we need in a client! Also, amazing to me, what a good job job the captioning is in describing photos you post. This is a thing on mastodon, to always provide a caption for the visually impaired to be able to know what you have posted. The captioning is SO GOOD that it made me wonder why the visually impaired person wouldn’t have a captioning capability as good. But then I realized it does pause a bit. And also, I can usually improve the caption slightly & make it more human. So. … that’s photos.

There is a new thing called hashtag groups. I have no idea how to use it, yet, but look forward to learning. The magnifying glass search icon leads to something called “explore”, but does not seem to let you actually search the timeline. I know that’s on the list, though!

Thank you, creator of Ice Cubes App! Much appreciated!!

by Anhric

This is a great app. It’s UI is pleasing to look at. Well designed as just about anything you’d want to do is generally no more than one or two taps away. It’s stable. Fully featured. Or almost so.

There are two things that bug me. 1) videos auto-play, and I can’t find a setting to disable this behavior. 2) The timeline behavior feels weird. It’s when you refresh it jumps to the newest posting, and then I get lost.

I’m used to another app where when you refresh it keeps your current position, and you can just scroll up from there reading the newly loaded posts. And it has a feature where if you tap the timeline button it will jump to the newest post. Then tap it again and it jumps back to the last post you read.

If you could at least add a auto-play disable option it would be a five star app. As it is, it is in my top 3 favorite Mastodon clients.

by MarinasideSteve

This is a great and powerful client for the Mastodon social network and is IceCubes I use for this on my iPhone and iPad. Ice Cubes is open source and completely free to use, although it includes an optional tip jar to support the main developer.

While IceCubes is quickly evolving and always being improved, it is missing one of the most critical features for me: timeline synching between my devices. Other then that, it has everything I would want and is intuitive and wonderfully designed with excellent performance. I look forward to future versions and especially, hopefully, that one big missing feature.

by 14112

I like IceCubes the most out of the iOS clients I've tried so far. However, there's no way to upload a new icon or header image and that's super annoying. I have the option to save my own icon or even use markup on it (???) but not to upload a new one. Very weird. Another issue is that most of the time (probably 70%) when I go to another user's profile, IceCubes force quits. Doesn't matter what instance the user is on. I also just noticed, when I am able to view another user's profile and I tap on their Followers or Following list, IceCubes will only show me users on the same instance as me. This is the weirdest thing. I want to see everyone my friends are following, not just users on the same instance as me. This happens even if my friend whose Followers list I'm viewing isn't on the same instance as me, which is just weird. I looked everywhere for a setting on this issue since I didn't see this occurring on any other client but I don't see one anywhere. I do like that I can change IceCubes icon but it seems weird to have that option when I can't even change my own profile icon.

by Mabel Fox

IceCubes overall is very solid and stable, especially in comparison to the “official” Mastodon client that hangs and locks up while uploading toots/posts on occasion. It’s also very fast and responsive with an intuitive interface that’s easy and straightforward to navigate. The only other Mastodon clients that outclass this one have paid subscriptions.

The only nitpick I can make is how clunky it is to switch between different profiles/instances. That’s the one thing the official app gets right.

by CarloInTX

Since MetaText looks like it will be abandoned, I am on the lookout for new client. This one looks pretty nice. There are lots of new features. I never knew I was missing. However, one feature I do like in Metatext is the OCR feature that detects text in images. This is very helpful when you’re sharing a meme that is an image or a sign in a photograph that you’ve taken. It isn’t present in the official app either that I can see. Maybe reach out to the MetaText author to find out how they did it.

by Adventure_tense

It works so well and all the features are thought out. IceCubes has come a long ways. There is so much commitment by the developer to do it right. Now I can feel the fit and finish coming together. I still enjoy the edge to edge feel of the official mastodon app, but here I can edit my misspelled post, or go over and stick my toe into the Fediverse for a while. There are still a few bugs here and there, but they don’t get into the way of a great user experience.

by BirderKin

This would be easily my favorite Mastodon iOS app, and I've been trying them all. The big issue for me is, IceCubes can be very stuttery and unresponsive, and timelines can take up to ~30 seconds to update/refresh. Can't be my phone or network as other apps are nice and snappy. The worst issue I have is the Home timeline locking up constantly when scrolled to the top while IceCubes hitches every time the unread counter increments one

by EdiPhone

Great start to IceCubes nice to use. Still stutters esp at slow scroll speed, images frequently pop in and disturb the user’s place in the timeline, seems like it caches very little of the images/timeline so keeps having to reload them. Handling of new posts needs to be improved - there’s no way currently to load all new posts without losing place in the timeline. “Just do what Tweetbot used to do” would be the easiest way to say it :).

by Bioman222

IceCubes finally has the features missing in other Mastodon mobile clients: choosing post privacy, expanded explore page, more account settings, viewing lists, and even things the web client doesn’t have, like following local timelines of other instances! Still no moderator dashboard or more advanced user settings, but I would assume that’s an API issue not an Ice Cubes issue. If you like Mastoot, it’s layout is similar but just more feature rich

by Alice_renee

Ice Cubes is the best Mastodon client I’ve found, and I love all the customization settings. Awesome app!! My only complaint is that, since the most recent update, it’s gotten a lot harder to accurately touch the icons underneath each post. I used to easily tap on favorite, reply, etc., but now it’s highly inaccurate. Feels like the calibration is off somehow, but only in this one app. Unfortunate – I hope there’s some kind of fix for it? Thank you for reading! UPDATE: That was fast, thank you!!

by Nosillacast

I’m not an icon or font snob, but some other Mastodon apps have gotten cute with their icons and I keep hitting the wrong buttons! I originally gave Ice Cubes a try just because the icons are more representative of what they do.

I stayed because I really like the feature that allows you to follow other local timelines on other instances. It’s like attending one high school but being allowed to read (and respond) to another school’s newspaper.

The layouts are pretty and crisp and it allows customization. Currently using on iPad and Mac.

by Peyote.Jay

I rarely write a review, but IceCubes has been stellar thus far. Very snappy and smart with loads of cool features. If you’re looking for a good, strike that, great app for Mastodon, this is the one.

Update: Still love IceCubes . I do want to report an issue I notice while scrolling. It seems that as each new post is added to the timeline, scrolling seems to “skip” a little. It sort of hangs for a second. Wasn’t an issue early on, but as my follows approach 1k, it’s a real dang nuisance.

by Mls14

I don’t need to tell you how much better Mastodon is than eX-Twitter. Let’s get to IceCubes. I run it as one of the slide-over apps on iPad. It works perfectly… just swipe from the right and scroll through posts fast and easy. The latest version 1.9.1 fixed the only 2 minor issues I was having with it… talk about a great developer! And it’s free. What more could anybody ask for? Get this now; you won’t regret it for a second.

by Meat_Bucket

I’ve tried a number of apps so far, and this is by far the best Mastodon client I’ve found. The quote toot option alone makes it superior to everything else.

The look and design of it is more polished and the ability to customize the display settings is great.

My only (minor) gripes are that it doesn’t retain position in the timeline when new toots are loaded, and that the timeline still jumps around at random a bit for me when scrolling slowly reading toots.

Despite those little annoyances the features available and design aesthetics make it so much better than the alternatives that I’ll put up with them. Hoping both are fixed in a later update. I would gladly pay for IceCubes.

I also hope a future update offers a timeline sync so that timeline position can be picked up on multiple devices.

by OrganicallyGrown

This is at least the 4th app I’ve tried for Mastodon, and finally found one I really enjoy! It has all the features I want and more, like being able to separately follow the local instance for my city, while my account is on an interest-based (photography) instance. I appreciate being able to have a feed of each hashtag I follow; I didn’t see that in other apps. Whole thing is clean, functions well, and is a pleasure to use!

by Qunae

I love IceCubes a lot, a few bugs along the way but nothing earth shattering. i use it everyday and it’s better than a handful of matso-apps. however some changes that i could hope for that’ll definitely improve the quality.

background images have a black tint which kinda ruins the theme? if i put a white background it will finalize as grey.

markdown support. the ability to bold, italics, bullet point, quote etc. doesn’t work on IceCubes . at all. you can use those on the site but it won’t work on IceCubes . in fact, creating bullets in site will make the text jumble up in IceCubes which makes the layout look very bad. i’ve ruined multiple posts editing it in app for it to look differently on site.

gif emotes and images don’t move. at all.

i really wish to see these added over time!

by Human2nova

Loving IceCubes! It has everything I’ve needed so far, and pretty darn intuitive. It did take a bit of effort to figure out how to change my log-in when I moved servers (as I forgot to add the new account to Ice Cubes before migrating) due to everything being blurred out with my old account. I randomly long-pressed the empty circle on the top left of my screen and finally found the option though so I’m back in the game. Other than that, it has been smooth sailing. Great job!

by WantTheMail

The first Mastodon client app I used was Metatext, and I really enjoyed it. After IceCubes was discontinued I hopped around a bit trialing multiple clients. Among all the ones I tried, including those with features behind subscription plans, Ice Cubes felt the most at home, snappy, and was easiest to navigate.

Thomas is a very active developer who is improving IceCubes experience and feature set with every update. It's honestly a joy to use and the customizability adds that extra bit of fun and practicality.

Nothing is ever perfect, but Ice Cubes comes close. If I had any "issues", they would be:

* After editing a post, the change may not be apparent until backing out a level and re-focusing (selecting) the post.

* Unable to select multiple specific filters for the notification view.

* The new multi-post thread creation would be even better with a higher max post limit for users on instances with lower character limits.

* "Show Anyway" for filtered posts currently behaves like a no-op rather than revealing the post contents

by Soren Victoria

Easily recommendable, best client for Mastodon bar none. It’s got all the best beeps and boops for interactions, beautiful color scheming, and it’s extremely efficient. The community is very interesting in that nearly everyone is mentally ill in some way or other, which is pretty awesome if you’re also mentally compromised like most of us on the internet. If you think you’re not just give it time, you’ll get there. And when you do, the friendly community at Mastodon will be there, or on X, or Facebook or whatever poison you’re using. We’re all screwed, really. But IceCubes is pretty awesome. The dev posts bangers on Mastodon btw, give him a follow.

by Carlamatic

i was a little concerned about IceCubes , since all of the preview shots are of dark mode, which is unusable for me (i don’t care how cool it is; t dark mode gives me eyestrain and a migraine) but i am delighted to report it follows your system settings, exactly the way an iOS app should.

this might actually make me use Mastodon more. the web UI is clunky and difficult to navigate, but IceCubes is clear and easy to understand.

by Scotchua2000

Having use IceCubes for several days, I am incredibly impressed how polished and useful it is. The only thing that I would like to see is for IceCubes to remember where I’m at in my timeline while loading new posts and also when I launch IceCubes . I am a timeline completionist so whenever it jumps me ahead I get sad 🙂 absolutely recommend using IceCubes though.

by Roan A.

Coming from Toot! (iOS). There's the features I love (multiple signed in instances, tabs for different content, some visual elements) AND ADDS media control, dedicated Messages tabs, and slide-to-shortcut in the feed. Directly. I like the Twitter style, with the buttons under a post, but HEY this is nifty, cos you can turn off the buttons and only swipe-interact with the feed. You set them yourself, so you make it intuitive. DID I MENTION VIDEO CONTROLS?!

by Teaneedz

This is the power users choice for Mastodon. The dev is obviously a craftsman who loves his work because IceCubes has all the features that make Mastodon fun, with even a bit of chatGPT sauce. Design is spot on and deserving of tips (Settings > Support IceCubes ). This is one of those apps you actually feel good about tipping for, more than once! [update] This is open sourced. Follow hashtags. Follow timelines. Auto create hashtags. Only John Mastodon's friends use this.

by Scowltura

By far the best new mastadon app. No subscription or required purchase, but in less than a few hours using IceCubes I deleted all my other mastadon apps, and left a tip for the creator. Love the look, feel, and customizable options. Absolutely love the “local timelines” feature where you can follow local timelines from other instances. Instantly solved a big problem of mastadon for me… finding good variety of content outside my home instance.

by Jwd630

Been using Ice Cubes for several weeks now and really liking it over other alternatives I tried; including the “you must pay to get full functionality” ones that get mentioned a lot. I like it so much I just discovered the support setting and gave a tip. A bonus tip for other review readers: on M1 macOS, while IceCubes Store warns it is only for iPad, ice cubes does work. Same app on all my devices for the win!

by Euphorbia Monstrose

As a relatively new mastadon user (and twitter refugee) I’ve tried several clients and have found them all just generally OK. Ice Cubes is great. One of the best things is the ease of viewing content by list - I spent quite a lot of time sorting my follows into lists and was dismayed that the official client didn’t even show lists - it’s very easy in Ice Cubes. Very nice! The developer seems very responsive, too.

by Ryan M Smith

I’ve struggled to find the perfect client but after a few days using Ice Cubes, I think this is it. The UI is slick and fast, navigation is intuitive, and it even has builtin translation.

My only request is that you add the ability to filter replies/reposts in the home feed. Its handy to be able to toggle these to get to new content from my follows.

Thanks for making a great app!