This is the Apple app's specification, carried over as the product contract for Android. Where it names an Apple mechanism, read its Android counterpart from the table below; where it states a server fact, the facts below, verified against a live Nextcloud Social 0.26.97 instance, win.
| Topic | Android |
|---|---|
| Platforms | Phone, tablet and foldable in 1.0; Android TV in 1.1, Wear OS in 1.2. No watch or TV target ships with 1.0. |
| Design | Material 3 (1.4 stable) instead of the iOS materials; the navigation suite is a bar, rail or drawer by window size. |
| Dependencies | Jetpack and a short list of libraries instead of "Apple frameworks only"; no analytics or crash SDK in either flavor. |
| Distribution | Two flavors: generic for F-Droid, gplay for Google Play. |
| Toolchain (§3) | Kotlin 2.4 with Compose, Android Gradle Plugin 9.4, JDK 21; compileSdk 37, targetSdk 36, minSdk 26 (Android 8.0). See 01-architecture.md. |
| Runtime dependencies (§8.6) | Not zero: Jetpack (Compose, Room, DataStore, WorkManager, Media3, Glance, Navigation 3) and Hilt, plus OkHttp, kotlinx.serialization, Coil, the UnifiedPush connector, MaterialKolor and AboutLibraries. None reports anything to anyone. |
| On-device AI (§5) | Translation only: the server's, else the system's on-device translation. Rewrite, alt-text drafts and summaries are not built; see 10-intelligence.md. |
| App Intents, Shortcuts, share extension (§5) | Launcher shortcuts, Direct Share, the share target and "Open in Aloha"; see 09-platform-integrations.md. |
| Handoff, Spotlight (§5) | No Android counterpart is built. |
| Live Activities for uploads (§5) | An ongoing progress notification while an upload runs. |
| Widgets, deep links (§5) | Four Glance widgets; web+ap and alohasocial://open links. See 09-platform-integrations.md. |
| Dynamic Type, VoiceOver, Reduce Motion (§5, §8.4) | Font scale up to 200 % with non-linear scaling and TalkBack. Of Reduce Motion, only animated emoji follow the system: they stand still when animations are off. |
| String Catalogs (§5) | strings.xml with a translator comment on every string; English only so far. |
| Startup budget (§8.3) | The first timeline row from cache (TTFD) within 1.2 s, and the first frame (TTID) within 800 ms, at the median on a Pixel 6a class phone, instead of 400 ms on an iPhone 15; see benchmarking.md. |
| Shorts frame rate (§8.5) | Frame overrun P90 ≤ 0 ms and P99 ≤ 8 ms, measured on the Home timeline scroll; Shorts has no benchmark of its own. |
| Cloud sync (§6) | None. Android's own backup carries the accounts list and the settings, never a token; see 04-data-model.md. |
| Status | What is built and what is not: 14-status.md. |
Aloha Social is a native client for the fediverse, built for Apple platforms only, targeting the 2026 OS releases and nothing before them.
It talks the Mastodon client API. That makes it work against Mastodon, GoToSocial, Akkoma, Pleroma and anything else serving that protocol. Its primary target is Nextcloud Social, which serves that API plus a set of extensions — video ladders, story carousels, Pixelfed and PeerTube route translations, per-reader watch positions — that no other server has in one place. Aloha Social uses them where they exist and degrades cleanly where they do not.
The product thesis in one line: the fediverse's four content shapes — text, photo, long video, short video — deserve four idiomatic experiences inside one app, not one timeline that renders all four badly.
Nextcloud-first, Mastodon-compatible.
- Any server advertising the Mastodon client API can be added as an account.
- Feature availability is decided by runtime capability detection
(
/api/v2/instance,/api/v1/instance, probe results), never by hardcoding a server list. See 02-server-api.md §4. - Nextcloud-specific extensions are allowed and encouraged, but every one of them must be behind a capability flag, and the app must be fully usable with every flag off.
- Onboarding names Nextcloud Social first and explains what it is. Other servers are equally reachable, one field away.
All six, all at the 27 line. No backwards compatibility with 26 or earlier.
| Platform | Minimum | Role |
|---|---|---|
| iOS | 27.0 | Primary. Full feature set. |
| iPadOS | 27.0 | Full feature set, multi-column, pointer, keyboard, multi-window. |
| macOS | 27.0 | Full feature set, native SwiftUI (not Catalyst), menu bar, multi-window. |
| visionOS | 27.0 | Reading, browsing, composing. Media in a volumetric context. |
| watchOS | 27.0 | Companion: home timeline, notifications, quick actions, short replies. |
| tvOS | 27.0 | Video-focused: Video mode and Shorts mode only. No composer. |
Toolchain: Xcode 27, Swift 6.4, Swift 6 language mode, strict
concurrency complete, default actor isolation MainActor.
These are the product's organising idea. Each is a mode — a distinct top-level destination with its own navigation, its own idiomatic layout, and its own gestures. They are not filters bolted onto one list.
| Mode | Inspired by | Server support |
|---|---|---|
| Home (text) | Mastodon | Universal |
| Photos | Pixelfed | only_media=true on Nextcloud Social; client-side filter elsewhere |
| Video | PeerTube | only_video=true on Nextcloud Social; client-side filter elsewhere |
| Shorts | Loops | Client-side classification everywhere (see 06-media-modes.md §4) |
| News | — | only_news=true on Nextcloud Social only; hidden elsewhere |
| Audio | — | Client-side classification everywhere |
Full treatment in 06-media-modes.md.
- Unlimited accounts across mixed servers, fast switching, per-account settings.
- All Mastodon timelines: home, local, federated, list, hashtag, account, favourites, bookmarks, conversations/DMs.
- Full thread view with ancestors and descendants, edit history, quote posts where the server supports them, emoji reactions where the server supports them.
- Profiles: view, follow/unfollow, notify bell, hide-boosts, block, mute, report, lists membership, featured tags, endorsements, account notes.
- Notifications: v2 grouped where available, v1 otherwise, policy and requests inbox, markers, unread counts.
- Search and Explore: accounts, hashtags, statuses, trends (tags/statuses/links), suggestions, directory.
- Composer: text with autocomplete, content warnings, visibility, language, replies, threads, polls, media with alt text, video and short-video capture and upload, drafts, scheduled posts.
- Four media modes with idiomatic UI, plus a shared full-screen media viewer.
- Stories where the server serves them.
- Filters (v2), domain blocks, blocked/muted account management.
- Opt-in on-device AI: rewrite, alt text generation, summarise, translate.
- Widgets, App Intents/Shortcuts, share extension, deep links, Handoff, Spotlight, Live Activities for uploads.
- Full Dynamic Type, VoiceOver, Reduce Motion, Increase Contrast support.
- String Catalogs, English complete, structurally ready for translation.
- No account creation. Nextcloud Social's client API cannot create an
account (
registrations: falsealways) and Mastodon sign-up flows differ per server. Onboarding links out to the server's own sign-up page. - No instance administration console. Nextcloud Social serves a full admin API; its moderation half — the reports queue, silencing and suspending an account, and what may trend — is in scope and described in 11-safety-privacy-appstore.md §7. Instance configuration — storage, retention, relays, blocklist subscriptions, setup checks — is not: it belongs in the Nextcloud administration page, which is where an administrator already is when they are doing it.
- No Nextcloud Files browser, beyond the single "attach a file already on my Nextcloud" picker described in 07-composer.md §6.
- No PeerTube upload. Nextcloud Social's PeerTube routes are read-only. Video is posted through the Mastodon media + status routes instead.
- No custom server-side feed algorithm. Ordering is the server's.
- No cross-account merged timeline in 1.0. Deferred, noted in 14-status.md.
- No cloud sync of app state. Settings and drafts are device-local in 1.0; iCloud sync is a post-1.0 consideration.
Used consistently across every document and expected in the code.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Instance | A server, identified by host. |
| Account | One authenticated identity on one instance. The app holds many. |
| API base | The URL prefix Mastodon routes hang off. Not always the root — see 03-auth-and-accounts.md. |
| Capability | A runtime-detected server feature. See 02-server-api.md §4. |
| Status | A post. Mastodon's word; used in code and never in UI. |
| Post | What a status is called in user-facing text. |
| Boost | Mastodon's reblog. boost in UI, reblog in wire types. |
| Mode | A top-level content destination: Home, Photos, Video, Shorts, News, Audio. FeedMode in code — ContentMode collides with SwiftUI's. |
| Short | A video classified as short-form vertical. See 06-media-modes.md §4. |
- A person adds a Nextcloud Social account and reads their home timeline in under 30 seconds from app launch, including on an instance that has not applied the root-rewrite rules.
- The same build, unmodified, signs into
mastodon.socialand works. - Cold launch to first painted timeline row, from cache, under 400 ms on an iPhone 15-class device.
- Every screen usable at Accessibility XXXL text size with VoiceOver.
- Shorts mode scrolls at 120 Hz with no dropped frames on a 5-item preload.
- Zero third-party runtime dependencies.