Is It Safe to Trust Third-Party Reddit Apps?
Absolutely. As your first consideration, most likely you are logging in to Reddit through your existing login. Because of that, you are not handing anything private over to these apps. In the case of Apple, the App Store tells you exactly what you can view and know about your user data. Generally speaking, you shouldn’t have any privacy concerns using the apps listed below.
1. Reddit
Available on: iOS | Android While third-party options are great, sometimes you just want to use Reddit the way it was meant to be used. In those cases, the official Reddit apps on iOS and Android are the best option. The interface is minimal and clean, albeit full of ads. The apps offer infinite scrolling, allowing you to never run out of things to read. In all fairness, the official app is fine for the majority of Reddit users. It will always get a first chance at the newest features or tools coming to Reddit. The app is updated frequently, as bugs are crushed quickly, and the developers introduce new features (some small, some big) often. If you want the most true-to-life Reddit experience on mobile, the official app is as good as it gets. You just have to tolerate all of the ads. So. Many. Ads.
2. Slide
Available on: iOS | Android For anyone who wants a Reddit app that does not look like other Reddit apps, Slide is the answer. Upon launching the app for the first time, you are given the choice of four separate looks. One of the favorites is the card style which focuses on image and video previews as you scroll through all of your subreddit subscriptions. Customizing the app can definitely be a little overwhelming, as nearly 12,000 different theme combinations are available. Overwhelming setup aside, Slide emphasizes an ad-free experience without compromising features like full offline capability as well as syncing all personalization settings through iCloud or Synccit on Android, so your devices are always synced. Pro subscribers even have the option of an ad block on websites that are visited from inside Slide. App parity between iOS and Android ensures that major updates to the app are arriving around the same time.
3. Apollo
Available on: iOS If you spend any time hanging around r/iPhone or r/iPad, there is a good chance you have already heard of Apollo. It is, arguably, the best Reddit client for iOS. Whenever anyone asks for a third-party app for Reddit, Apollo is almost always the majority of responses. One of the best aspects of choosing Apollo is its “supercharged media viewer.” Reddit is all about pictures and movies, and Apollo is unquestionably a content-first experience for consuming media. Markdown fans will love that Apollo takes full advantage of Markdown capabilities including italics, links, bold and more. Another major highlight of Apollo is the ability to “favorite” subreddits and jump to them directly from the “Posts” tab. It’s a simple thing but makes finding the content you want so much faster. The biggest downside? Its “Ultra” service is prohibitively expensive for a Reddit app; however, it does add push notifications, custom icons, and more.
4. Narwhal
Available on: iOS Narwhal has long been a staple of the iPhone and Reddit community. Anyone looking for Reddit clients for iOS that focus heavily on gestures to move throughout the app should look closely at Narwhal. This app may be one of the apps that feels closest to the official Reddit app in terms of looks but without the ads or “extras” that can cloud the official app. Gestures lead Narwhal’s feature set as you vote comments up or down with a swipe. Gestures are used again to mark posts for reading later or to hide them so they don’t appear in your feed again. Reading the comments is incredibly easy to follow, and since the comments are often the best part of Reddit, this is one area every app needs to nail down. If there is any reason to ignore Narwhal, it’s the dated look that makes it appear to be left out of the more modern experience competitive apps are going for. Even so, its feature set more than makes up for its poor UI.
5. Comet
Available on: iOS Focusing on a fast but sharp-looking interface, Comet for Reddit is another great option. Like Apollo, Comet offers full Markdown support, and like the official Reddit app, Comet offers infinite scrolling. The media viewer is top-notch, enabling you to see Reddit’s various GIFs and videos in all their glory. Five themes and four-post layouts ensure there is a customization option for everyone. That’s on top of more than 60 other app settings that can be personalized as well. Comet also stands out for its ability to add an unlimited number of accounts as well as uniquely show you all of your downvoted content. That’s a feature we don’t see on many other third-party Reddit apps. The unique user interface adds a fresh layer for anyone who uses Reddit daily. It’s this interface plus native Reddit features that help differentiate it from the rest of the third-party options. Where it falters is that it hasn’t been updated in a while and the developer has gone silent. With every new OS release, there is a chance features could break, so use cautiously.
6. Sync
Available on: Android Claiming a best-in-class image viewer and an uncluttered design, Sync for Reddit is a fan favorite for Android users. Free with ads is a bummer, but you can pay $4.99 for a premium account that removes ads, adds support for multiple accounts, and enables you to quickly move back and forth between different subreddits. The home screen immediately shows you the top five trending subreddits and allows you to subscribe to the continuously growing subreddit count. When you submit your own post, utilizing the advanced submission editor with built-in editing options helps Sync for Reddit differentiate itself on the Android platform. One major pro for Sync is that the developer commits to weekly updates to crush bugs and or introduce new features, and a dedicated subreddit allows users to report troubles, crashes, and bugs. That’s going to come in handy as the biggest user complaint focuses on the video player breaking pretty consistently.
7. Infinity
Available on: Android Adorable app icon aside, Infinity for Reddit is an Android Reddit client that deserves all of its praise. That’s especially true when you consider “Lazy Mode” or an automatic scrolling of posts so that you can enjoy Reddit content without having to move your thumb to swipe down. Every Reddit post is designed as a card that helps separate posts so that you can read and follow easier than on the official Reddit app where everything blends together. You can also switch to compact mode so that videos and image thumbnails become small squares. Multi-account support is of course present, as is switching between all of your accounts within seconds. Best of all, it’s entirely free, so get started with lazy mode right away. On the downside, media viewing is a pretty frequent complaint as the autoplay feature doesn’t work consistently.
8. Boost
Available on: Android Right away Boost for Reddit stands out from the pack of Android apps due to its integration of moderation tools for subreddit moderators. While nearly every Reddit app caters to the general user, few make it a point to enhance the user experience for the admittedly small(er) number of subreddit moderators. If for no other reason, Boost for Reddit deserves a download it’s for this – and maybe it’s in-app previews for nearly every type of media format. Another big pro is its built-in spoiler support so that you can avoid every Marvel movie spoiler in the future. Throw in color-coded comments, material design with 70 different colors to customize the look and feel, and it’s easy to see why Boost is so popular with the Android Reddit community. You can quickly filter posts by subreddit, domain, and keywords and even select to only show posts that contain gifs or videos. Like Comet for iOS, the biggest con with Boost is the lack of consistent updates, which makes going all in a tough decision. Image credit: Brett Jordan on Pexels Having said that, most clients offer certain common basic features – infinite scrolling, for example – designed to enhance your Reddit experience.
