Roam Mobile 4+

Sadly this just doesn’t feel or behave like a native app. It just feels like the mobile version of the website inside of an app. The mobile site of Roam always had plenty of issues and many of them have been transferred over to the app, such as the judderyness of the UI and the slowness to launch. The slowness is okay on the desktop as once you’re ‘in’ Roam it stays live in your browser tab and you don’t have to relaunch it. On iOS however the Roam app often gets killed in the background – I’m guessing due to memory constraints – so relaunching is a common thing and the slowness becomes a burden. But the biggest problem remains just simply entering text. New bullet points don’t default to beginning with a capital letter, the toolbar that sits on top of the keyboard has a mind of its own and often hides what you’re writing and typing in general within the app just doesn’t feel pleasant in any way. Nothing’s smooth or responsive. Unfortunately the app offers few advantages over just having the Roam mobile site bookmarked on your Home Screen. That wouldn’t be a big issue if the mobile site was a joy to use, but it isn’t. I’m sure the Roam app will improve with time. But its current state and functionality is a bit disappointing :(

I’ve been waiting like 1-2 years for Roam to finally create an iPad / mobile app and when they finally do its unfortunately quite a disappointment. I’d be a lot less tough on them if they weren’t charging $11 per month but at that price you really would expect a first-rate software product.

This feels like a web-app inside a mobile app (and indeed doesn’t show up in the app list on iPad). It is a nightmare to use with magic keyboard because the keys constantly stop working and you have to kill and restart Roam. The design / UX doesn’t feel finished. It works ok I guess but very disappointing considering how much I am paying for it

I have been using roam web app for over a year now, it is by far the app I spend the most time in. If you have a lot of meeting notes to manage, if you are doing some research, if you are “thinking at loud”, Roam will feel like having a “development environments” for your thoughts. Can’t recommend it enough.

You’ll see a lot of similar apps (back links and outliners) but this is the OG - Roam introduced all of the primitives you now find in Craft or Obsidian.

The mobile app itself isn’t going to be your standard native app and I feel there is a lot to go to make it polish even if just used a companion to the web app on the go or - hopefully - for a native touch interface down the line.