What different Stack Exchange apps are available for the iPad?

Question

I am looking for iOS apps for the Stack Exchange network that support the iPad. This is very similar to this question, but the difference is that I'm looking for apps that run on the iPad (not in 2x mode). What different apps exist for browsing the Stack Exchange network on the iPad?

Answer 1

I have used 2 for iPhone, and have eventually gone back to the Mobile View as it was considerably better than either:

Six-to-Eight: Free. Worked OK, but you can't actually log in, you can merely track yourself as a user without being able to actually do anything

StackMate: $.99. Looked great, but soon worked out that by Stack Exchange it actually meant just SO, and not the SE network - wasted dollar.

As for iPad, there are only 2 available that work on iPad:

• Answers for Stack Exchange
• FullStack

And they both suck (imho).

For a start, FullStack only supports the Trilogy sites and Ask Ubuntu, so not the whole network. And while "Answers for" covers all sites, it shares a further letdown with Fullstack in that neither of them allow you to actually log in and do anything other than browse. This (as per the comments) may be because the API calls do not allow posting, but there is no reason why an App developer cannot use the APIs where they are available, and also put in a normal HTML webview of the actual site to finish of the missing parts - using the API does not limit you to only using the API if you are writing an app.

The mobile web view is far superior in every respect unless you are looking for non interactive bedtime reading. One noted problem with the mobile view is that Chat does not seem to recognise the fact that you are logged in, meaning that while transcripts are available, you cannot enter a room and participate.

In addition to the above, a quick hunt about StackApps yeilds the following results, which are either deprecated, or were never fully released and may be interesting to read up on.:

• StackUp
• Stack Reader
• iStack

If you are wanting a native iOS app for reasons such as getting push notifications, you can easily bodge up a system for allowing push notifications for your inbox to be sent to you iOS device. You will need the following:

• An account with IFTTT
• An account with Boxcar
• Your Boxcar account linked into IFTTT
• A task within IFTTT that says IF RSS - New feed item from apple.stackexchange.com/feeds/user/9495/responses (change to your own user ID) THEN Boxcar - Send a message to my inbox
• The Boxcar app downloaded and installed on your iOS device.

Then, whenever you get a notification (an answer to your question, a comment on your answer, a shout in Chat etc) in your SE global inbox, it will send you a message into Boxcar, that may look something approaching the following:

You can customise the wording in the notification,but I have stuck to the defaults in this example. Note, that the IFTTT feed checks currently run every 15 minutes.

Answer 2

You can use George Edison's StackMobile to access the SE network on your iPad. Of course, you could argue that it is not an "app" in the true sense, but rather a web-app, but it serves the purpose.

"FullStack" is an app (proper this time!) that lets you browse SO/SU/SF and AskUbuntu sites only. Screenshot uploaded by the author:

Answer 3

Note: This requires ruby 1.9.x, Mac OS X ships with 1.8.7. So unless you're really big into it, this won't work.

This one is a little hackish, and I'm going to (eventually, someday) make it a little not so hackish. I promise.

Ever wanted to get notified of SE notifications? Going away from the computer for the weekend, but really want to make sure you don't miss anything "important"? Well, this is for you!

First, install and sign up for Boxcar, if you haven't already. (and if you haven't, I highly recommend it! Works very nicely for notifications of all sorts - Twitter, email, Facebook, etc.)

Next, you'll need to head over here and do two things:

1. Change your user ID to whatever yours is. To find out what it is, take a look at the number in your profile URL: Mine is http://apple.stackexchange.com/users/1739/jrg, so my user ID is 1739.

2. Get an access token. Head over to here and request one like below:

And then after you've gotten an access token, you can copy it and then paste it into the part where it says "FILL_ME_IN".

Now, you need to install two libraries - serel, and boxcar_api.

Run sudo gem install serel boxcar_api and then wait until they are installed.

Next, copy and paste this file into notify_me.rb (or whatever you want to call it). I'm going to assume its in ~/bin. Before you save, change the "your_email@domain.com" part to whatever you used to sign up for boxcar.

Now, lets go and hop into cron.

Run crontab -e in a terminal, which will edit your crontab.

It should ask you which editor you want to use, I suggest using nano unless you know vim or emacs really well.

I'm going to assume you aren't that busy on the site, so we'll have it run every two hours.

Paste the following into the bottom of your crontab:

0 */2 * * * ~/bin/notify_me.rb

And then you should be good to go.

Enjoy, and if you find bugs, feel free to send me an email:

james@jamesrgifford.com

_{Eventually, someday, somehow, I'll move this into its own proper project, rather than a crazy hax}

Known bugs/issues:

• Only checks every 2 hours. If possible, I'll change it in the future to check every 20 minutes or so.

• Notifies you regardless of if you have a new inbox message or not. Again, not ideal.