Floatplane

I'm glad the iOS version exists at all, and I genuinely like the layout of the app itself, but man, it's really missing some features that are pretty crucial to how I watch videos on my phone. There's no background playback, and no Picture in Picture support, which are both compounded by the fact that the app doesn't remember how far into a video you've watched when you need to put the phone down for a bit. AirPlay support is extremely rudimentary when trying to play to a different platform to avoid the phone problems. The comments section doesn't even scale to use the whole display when watching a video! Additionally, there are occasional strange technical hiccups -- right now, for example, all recent videos are showing as having a length of 0:00. The app just feels rough around the edges and unfinished, which is unfortunate because the service itself is fantastic. Being able to directly support creators and get a video feed in return is lovely, the actual video is high bitrate to a point where 1080p sometimes looks better than the competition's 4k, and I've had zero issues with buffering or failing to load. I just wish they could improve the app experience to bring it up to par with even other small services like Nebula.

On the iPhone and iPad, closed captions are small and difficult to read. I can’t use the spacebar to play/pause with a keyboard. Orientation is very… confusing. I want it to stay in landscape if my iPad is in landscape. It’s difficult to read posts (not videos), as they take up most of the screen. It would be great if the video continued playing in the little window when the app is switched away from. Finally, simple navigation needs a lot of work. I’m not sure how to qualify it, but it really needs to work properly.