Friendly Plus Social Browser 17+

UPDATE: The very latest update seems to have resolved the issues I reported below and reverted the app to the wonderful less-crowded and more-sane interface. I’m guessing perhaps Facebook’s latest update stymied the devs for a bit? Anyway, happy to be back up and running!

Genuinely unfortunate: this has been the app I’ve recommended for *years* to friends and family looking to escape the mess of Facebook’s invasive tracking and awful UI. Unfortunately the latest update has removed everything successful about this app (the clean & usable UI, the filtering and ad blocking, the custom filters) and replaced it with a broken encapsulation of the Facebook mobile UI, which is a mess-and-a-half on its own. If I wanted that, I’d load Facebook in Safari. One hopes this is temporary or I guess I’ll need to find a replacement for Friendly.

One last update (December 2023). I still can’t recommend this app as none of the issues I’ve described have been fixed by any of the most recent updates. Updating this review to note that the most recent update (summer 2023) has further broken this app. Instagram won’t load at all and Facebook loads incorrectly 9/10 times. (The good news is that I’m now finally deleting my Facebook.) It’s a shame because it was once the perfect app. Now it’s unusable. I loved this app (paid version) because it let me sort Facebook posts by most recent instead of letting an algorithm direct my attention. And I love the ability to block ads. But lately it’s become increasingly buggy. Sorting by most recent no longer shows every post. And, as of today, I can no longer see groups (which I prefer to check manually instead of following). I hope they update it. I will probably keep it since I’ve already paid, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone searching for a functioning way to manage social media accounts.

I switched many moons ago and have not looked back; however, I am getting tired of the problems that occur after many updates. The most recent problem occurs when I change orientations of my iPhone either intentionally or usually unintentionally. The app loses my place and starts over at the top of the stream. This is highly annoying when I am down in a stream and want to read a document that is wider than the screen. I rotate the device and instead of showing the page I was reading it snaps back to the top. I scroll back to the page to read it. When I am finished, I turn the device back to vertical and once again the app snaps back to the top of the screen. Guess I’ll use another app until you get the latest screw up corrected.

I really wish you would take more care with your updates. You have a good app, but it seems that nearly ever other update something infuriating like this happens.