It is garbage. I've tried many times. Every time, my disappointment with the experience mirrored many of the complaints others have with it.

It may have been a "fine" experience for you, but that does not give you the right to attack ad-hominem others who did not have the same experience. If you want to attack their position, attack their arguments. Show us how the official app is at least barely usable. Or how navigation and search aren't like children's toys. Or how the iOS app actually got better instead of worse after Reddit Inc. bought it. Or how the Android app got any of the features the iOS app deigned to retain post-acquisition. Or how the YouTube-esque ad-pushing makes for a good UX. Or how comment scores and user karma aren't totally infuriating to look for.

If you can't argue on merits, you cannot participate in discussions of any kind except primary school 'no u'.

I installed it today and uninstalled it. I also used 2 days a few years back, it was garbage so I deleted. Did that again today. It's not hyperbole to say the app is garbage.

In the Android app, audio in GIFs (that have audio in the target link) have only infrequently worked for years.

I agree, it's not garbage. It's designed and optimized to provide a primarily image/video experience, and focus the app more on the endless scrolling / low information density, skinner-box experience that has infected nearly all social media. The de-emphasis placed on comments and discussion is clear from the design. The app is indicative of the direction where Reddit would like to take the site.

Needless to say, there are many people (such as myself) who enjoy what Reddit is/was, and would prefer it to stay that way. Emphasis was not placed on posts themselves, but rather the discussion surrounding the posts. This design goal is clear in the layout of the old.reddit.com layout, which is optimized for information density, back and forth conversation, and parallel conversational threads (quite unique compared with modern social media apps).

So long as third-party apps and the old.reddit front-end exist, Reddit can still exist as a discussion-board focused site that (in the minds of some users) keeps the site unique. With the death of third-party apps, we are forced into the vision that Reddit has for the site instead. I'm sure that model gets more "engagement" (the skinner-box formula certainly makes a lot of money for other social media), but it also ruins what makes Reddit, Reddit.

Therefore for older users, it's not a matter of being "picky" that the app is "garbage". It's actually much worse than that. If the app was merely "garbage" there would be a holdout that the app could improve. Instead it's a fear that Reddit is changing the site dramatically to be more in line with modern social media. Those who like Reddit for being Reddit, and would rather Reddit stay Reddit than try to be Instagram/TikTok are obviously not happy with what they see as what Reddit is all about changing. There will be a similar outcry when old.reddit.com is inevitably sunsetted.

As a user who likes the old discussion board format of Reddit, I am obviously going to be unhappy when my personal favourite third party app (Sync in my case) dies. I don't need to doomscroll through skinner-box style feeds, getting a dopamine hit everytime a Twitter screenshot confirms my political biases, or strawmans opinions of those who believe differently than myself. Maybe I'll just go "touch grass" as the kids say these days.

This is my thoughts exactly. The app design and usability are fine enough, even pleasant in reference to using other modern social media apps. But what makes me sad is that I don't use any of those other social media apps for a reason. Specifically, I enjoy discussion and being part of a community, not just blindly consuming content and mindlessly scrolling. It seems like the era for that has passed though, at least in a centralized way.

Have you tried any third party app and compared the experiences? If you have not, you will not understand how crappy it is compared to third party apps.

have you tried other apps ? Just try relay for reddit, for one day and tell me reddit's app even compares. Being able to just choose galleries, image views, or cards, and have many other aesthetical features is priceless. Reddit's app is hardly usable in my opinion, not the way I use reddit anyhow.

You're in minority who enjoy garbage software. There's a good reason why people want to use alternatives and not reddit app and why so many Reddit users make so much fuss about it.