For a few years I was a happy and fulfilled user of the iPhone app Metatext, a client for the federated social network Mastodon. When Metatext stopped being developed, I spent days reading comparisons, trying other clients, and settled on two which eventually matched all of my criteria:
- Ice Cubes for Mastodon (free), an open source, collaborative, SwiftUI Mastodon client made by @dimillian
- Ivory for Mastodon by Tapbots (subscription), a Mastodon Client for iOS & Mac.
I donate 0,99€ per month to the developer of Ice Cubes for Mastodon, and I pay the yearly subscription for Ivory (which costs 1,50€ per month.)
There are a 8 features specific to #IceCubesApp and 7 features specific to #ivory that I am really keen about. Since neither implemented them all, I continue to use both.
| Ice Cubes | Ivory |
| Quote post transforms the quoted post into a card with embedded content | Boost/favorite from/as a different account |
| Add/edit filters via our own profile | App-integrated statistics for the rolling week, with bar graphs, directly in the tray |
| Private messages button in the tray | Ungrouped notifications |
| Filtering notifications in the notifications pane | Date format choice between relative & absolute (I’m a sucker for the latter) |
| Collapse long posts | Option to get a missing Alt text reminder |
| Auto-detect language when posting | Can send iPhone “stickers” |
| Displays all posts for a given followed hashtag (whereas Ivory apparently displays only a portion) |