Reddit is one of the most popular social media platforms, with over 50 million daily active users. The official Reddit app does a decent job, but many iOS users prefer third-party Reddit apps that offer a better experience. One of the most popular third-party Reddit apps is Apollo – a feature-rich Reddit client made specifically for iPhone and iPad.
In this post, we’ll explore some of the standout features that make Apollo the best Reddit app for iOS.
Why Choose a Third-Party Reddit App Over the Official iOS Client
Here are some of the core reasons you may want to use Apollo or another third-party Reddit app rather than the first-party option:
- Frequent bugs and crashes – The official Reddit iOS app is notorious for bugs, glitches, and overall poor stability, leading to frequent crashes. Apollo offers far more reliable performance.
- Clunky interface and navigation – The official app’s UI and UX feel unintuitive and clumsy compared to iOS interface norms and gestures. Apollo better optimizes the Reddit experience for iOS.
- Lack of customization – The Reddit app provides minimal options for customizing the visual design, layout, gestures, and other aspects. Apollo enables personalizing the Redditing experience.
- Missing or broken features – Key Reddit features like user flair, awards, and others are often unusable or completely absent from the official iOS app. Apollo incorporates them seamlessly.
- Excessive ads and suggestions – Too many ads and “suggested post” clutter make browsing tedious and disruptive in the first-party app. Apollo offers an ad-free experience.
- Slow pace of improvements – Updates to fix problems and add new features crawl along in the official app. Apollo sees frequent enhancements based on user feedback.
- Mediocre performance – The official app struggles with smooth scrolling, quick loading, and asset caching, especially on cellular connections. Apollo is highly optimized.
By contrast, Apollo provides a smoother, customizable, and ad-free Redditing experience tailored for iPhone and iPad users. Let’s explore its standout features.
Top 10 Features That Make Apollo the Best Reddit App for iOS
So, what exactly makes Apollo stand out as the top iOS Reddit client? Here are 10 of its best and most differentiating features:
1. Intuitive Gesture Support
One of Apollo’s most acclaimed features is the intuitive and customizable swipe and tap gestures for quickly taking actions:
- Swipe right to left to upvote a post or comment
- Swipe left to right to downvote
- Swipe diagonally to reply
- Tap to expand previews and images
These gestures make navigating Apollo faster and more fluid than tapping tiny buttons. You can fully configure the gestures to match your personal Reddit usage habits.
For example, you can set a short swipe left to collapse comment threads rather than the default downvote. The adaptability to your own Redditing style makes Apollo’s gestures incredibly convenient.
2. Face ID and Passcode Locking for Privacy
You can lock Apollo with Face ID or a custom passcode to keep your Reddit account secure if others access your phone.
Enabling this privacy feature in Apollo’s settings requires biometric or passcode authentication each time you:
- Launch the Apollo app
- Switch back to Apollo after using another app
- Change accounts within Apollo
This prevents friends, family members, or co-workers from snooping on your Reddit activity if they pick up your phone. Passcode locking gives you privacy and peace of mind.
3. Powerful Built-In Media Viewer
Consuming Reddit’s endless stream of photos, GIFs, and videos is seamless with Apollo’s built-in media viewer.
Tap any image or video post, and Apollo will open the media directly in the app. This allows:
- Quick loading of gifs and images
- Smooth video playback with native iOS controls
- Zooming into photos and gifs
- Viewing full resolution images
- Swiping between media posts easily
- Saving media to your Camera Roll
- Entering immersive full-screen viewing
This makes engaging with visual Reddit content a pleasure compared to the clunky, disjointed experience in the website and official app. Smooth media integration is essential for power Redditors.
4. Handy GIF Scrubbing Feature
Unlike static images, GIFs can’t be skimmed by quickly scrolling through them. But Apollo provides a clever solution to navigating animated GIFs with its scrubbing feature.
Scrubbing lets you slide your finger back and forth on a GIF post to go frame-by-frame and find the perfect moment. Just like you can scrub through a video timeline.
This little feature makes browsing the many GIFs on Reddit much easier. No more waiting through entire clip durations or awkward tapping to pause/unpause. Just scrub straight to the ideal frame.
5. Fun Custom App Icons
While the official Reddit app uses the basic alien mascot Snoo as its home screen icon, Apollo goes above and beyond by providing over a dozen stylish alternate icons.
The developer keeps adding new icon options in app updates. Current choices include colorful variations on the Apollo mascot, retro tech logos, and popular geeky characters like Batman, Spiderman, Pikachu, and more.
It’s a small but fun way to customize the aesthetics of Reddit. Swapping icons makes Apollo feel more personal and gives your iPhone or iPad’s home screen a bit of flair.
6. Color-Coded Comment View
Trying to follow the convoluted flows of comment threads is headache-inducing in the official Reddit app and website. But Apollo simplifies it with color coding.
Comments directly replying to the original post are shown in one shade, while nested comments are shown in a different shade. This makes it far easier to distinguish replies to the post vs replies to other comments.
The visual hierarchy transforms chaotic comment walls into structured conversations that you can follow linearly. This feature alone is a huge comprehension and usability boost.
7. Powerful Content Blocking Tools
Apollo provides incredibly robust controls to block and filter specific content you don’t want to see, both site-wide and on individual subreddits.
You can block:
- Specific subreddits
- Particular users and authors
- Posts with certain keywords or phrases
- NSFW and spoiler-tagged posts
- Certain domain links
- Specific flair tags
- Media types like images
The precise filtering allows personalizing your Reddit feed by removing annoying, irrelevant, or explicit content tailored to your tastes. This content curation capability is invaluable.
8. Markdown-Powered Text Editor
When composing comments or posts, Apollo supports rich text formatting via Markdown syntax support:
- Add bold, italics, lists, headings, and quotes
- Insert emoji icons
- Link media from Imgur or Gfycat
- Mention other users and subreddits
The text editor makes commenting much more powerful than the simpler official app. Formatting assists discussion clarity and visual expression in written conversations.
9. Configurable Real-Time Notification Support
No one wants to constantly manually check back on posts to see new comments. So Apollo provides real-time notifications when you get replies, or your content gets interaction.
The notifications settings offer deep configuration:
- Enable notifications on a per subreddit and per user basis
- Customize frequency and timing
- Set sound and vibration alerts
- Enable badge app icons
- Get notifications on Apple Watch
Stay on top of the best new comments and discussions without having to constantly manually refresh. Granular notification management ensures you only get notified about the relevant activity.
10. Beautiful, Refined Design Tailored to iOS
Above all else, Apollo simply looks and feels better than the official Reddit app thanks to its meticulous iOS-optimized design:
- Gorgeous custom typography and icons
- Soothing, legible color schemes, including dark mode
- Pixel-perfect UI with slick, fluid animations
- Intuitive layouts that make excellent use of space
- Clean navigation utilizing standard iOS paradigms
The polished UI provides a welcoming contrast to the official app’s cluttered and dated aesthetics. Using Apollo feels like an iOS app should – the result of thoughtful user-centric design.
Optional Apollo Ultra Subscription Unlocks Premium Power User Features
While Apollo’s core app is free to download and use, at $1.49 per month (or $12.99/year, or a lifetime unlock option is offered in the app), the Ultra subscription unlocks a suite of advanced power user features:
- Post Drafts – Save posts and comments as drafts to finish writing later.
- Submit Posts – Add new posts natively within Apollo instead of Reddit’s clunky mobile browser editor.
- Multi-Reddit Creation – Bundle subreddits together into customized feeds for focused interests.
- Custom App Icons – Design and upload custom icons and home screen widgets.
- Push Notification Filters – Highly granular notification customization and management.
- Share Filters – Remove recommended subreddit suggestions when sharing posts.
- Upload Images/Videos – Add images and videos directly from your Camera Roll to posts and comments.
- Third-Party App Actions – Configure external apps to open content, like having YouTube links open directly in LongTube.
While Apollo is extremely powerful already in free form, upgrading to Ultra takes it to the next level for power users who use Reddit daily and need the most robust feature set.
Why Apollo Beats Reddit’s Official iOS App
Given its features, design, and overall execution, Apollo provides significant advantages over the first-party Reddit iOS app:
- Smoother performance – Apollo offers far more reliable stability with less crashing, lag, or glitches.
- Customizations – Extensive options for tailoring gestures, views, color schemes, themes, and more to your preferences.
- Visual media – Powerful built-in support for quickly viewing and sharing photos, GIFs, and videos.
- Text clarity – Color-coded comments and adjustable text sizes aid readability.
- Multi-account support – Stay logged into multiple accounts and easily switch between them.
- Granular filtering – Robust blocking of content types, users, subreddits, keywords, and more.
- iPad optimization – Multi-column layouts and Slide Over/Split View support enhance productivity.
- Dark mode – System-wide dark mode support across all iOS versions.
- OLED black theme – On new iPhones, it enables true black for battery savings and infinite contrast.
- Ultra subscription – Unlocks premium advanced features for power users.
- Pixel-perfect design – Meticulously crafted aesthetics, from icons to animations, make the app a joy to use.
- Overall, Apollo outshines the official Reddit app on almost all fronts – making it the ideal choice for the best iOS Reddit experience.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are answers to some common questions about Apollo:
Does Apollo work on both iPhone and iPad?
Yes, Apollo is a universal app optimized for both iPhone and iPad.
Is Apollo fully free to use?
Yes, Apollo’s core functionality is free. An optional Ultra subscription unlocks advanced power user features.
Can I easily import my Reddit account details and subscriptions?
Yes, Apollo makes migrating your subreddits, preferences, and account information seamless during setup.
How do I subscribe to new subreddits within Apollo?
Use the search bar at the top of your Subreddits list. Tap “Join” on any subreddit to follow it.
Is there an Android version of Apollo?
No, Apollo is exclusive to iOS and iPadOS. Popular Android options include Sync, Boost, and RiF Is Fun.
Conclusion
With its refined interface, intuitive gestures, expansive features, and engaged developer community, Apollo stands as the top Reddit client for iPhone and iPad. The official Reddit iOS app simply can’t match Apollo’s attention to detail in enhancing and customizing the mobile Redditing experience.
If you want the absolute best and most feature-packed Reddit app for iOS, Apollo is highly recommended. Ditch the frustrating first-party app for Apollo’s beautiful, productive, and reliable Redditing.
