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← darkroom
Introducing AniDroid (Android App)
Hey, it's back: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jurasdev.anidroid
Important 2024 Update 2:
I've recently begun working on the app again. I am going to try to get it re-listed on the Play Store as soon as I can. Additionally, I am moving the repository to a new location, and will update this thread with those details Soon™.
Important 2024 Update:
As some of you may have noticed, AniDroid is no longer appearing on the PlayStore. The reasons behind this are some app changes that I haven't been able to make which caused Google to pull it (don't worry, nothing nefarious, just typical PlayStore stuff). In addition, the current version of the app shows a lot of errors (some related to AniDroid, some related to the ongoing AniList API rate limiting). I have been unable to care for AniDroid these past couple years as much as I'd hoped to (three small kids will really destroy your free time).
Because of this, I will have to recommend that users go elsewhere for their Android AniList app needs. I have serious doubts that I'll be able to regularly update this thing in the near (or distant) future. TO THAT END: if anyone wants to help maintain it, please reach out to me either here or on Github. I'm happy to accept PRs, and would be happy to give an overview of the codebase for anyone who would like to help (spoiler: its disorganized trash).
I have loved working on this thing over the years, and have been very happy that it has been helpful to anyone besides myself. If I do end up starting development again, I will post an update on here.
Original Post:
Hey all. For the past couple years or so, I've worked on and off on an Android app designed to interface with AniList. Today is the day that I release the "open beta".
I'll go ahead and say right now that the functionality isn't complete, and it is still plenty buggy, but I'd appreciate it if anyone who wishes would download it and let me know what you think. Feel free to be brutal with your criticisms. I am looking for suggestions on content to add, look and feel changes, bug reports, etc.
As of right now, there are few "helpers" (aka on-screen help for you to figure out functionality). I imagine most of it will be fairly obvious, but if you have any questions, please let me know.
In addition to providing a decent amount of the functionality of AniList's site, I've also enabled torrent searching on Nyaa.si. At some point in the future, I'm going to add in a feature that allows for creating RSS feeds from Nyaa.si and linking them to your shows to give immediate updates when a given episode is available to download.
Anyway, below are a couple screenshots and the link to the store.
If it doesn't show up in the store for you, please send me a message so I can check the listing!
Updates will come Frequently™, as working on this is typically what I do when I'm not watching toons or playing vidya.
Also, if anyone has concerns about the larger than normal app size, that would be due to the fact that I used Xamarin to write this (I'm a M$FT whore). A large chunk of the apk is the runtime, so worry not.
Edit 1: As a quick overview of some of the functionality, tapping a list item (whether anime or manga) will take you to the given page. Long pressing will bring up the edit window for said item. Additionally, the icon to the left of the "refresh" icon in the menu bar allows you to change your sort preference (currently this affects all lists on both manga and anime, but could be more granular in the future).
Edit 2: The new version of AniDroid has been released! The entire app has been rewritten from the ground up, and should be much faster and reliable. On a sad note, versions of Android below 5.0 are no longer supported. It is possible that I may add this support back in the future, but for the time being, it was proving to be too much of a hassle.
It says that the app isn't avaible in my country (Italy). Can you release the .apk maybe?
Here you are! Sorry about that, I must have accidently kept the release countries to just 'murica. I'll get on changing that. You should be able to update from the store once that happens, even if installing via that APK.
Thanks for the helpfulness :) the app is already awesome, it has the main features. Good job!
Only one request: it is possibile to add the custom list? I explain, the animes that i put in a custom list and that i "hide from default" doesn't appear. Meanwhile i continue to test the app :)PS: Another personal advice, if you can change the icon app is better. Personal opionion btw
Changing the icon is definitely on the todo list. I'm not much of an artists, so I'm at a loss, but I'll give it some good thought.
As far as the custom lists are concerned, I'm currently working on that now, and should have more of an update shortly. I just published a version (downloadable from the second link in the OP) that should display custom lists. Still working out the kinks, though.
I tried it, good job. If i found any bug i'll tell you. Thanks for your job ^^
EDIT: For example i think that you could add the possibility to add the anime on the custom list and hide them from default as in the website. Another personal opinion, i personally prefer "watched out 4 of 11" or a simply "4/11" than the "currently on 5 of 11 episodes". And that's all i finish with the advice for now, sorry xD btw very good job
Couple years? My god, that really is some effort put.
What I first noticed is how I can edit manga list too. And to be honest, this is all I need. Both in Anilist and MAL I never saw any app that can edit a manga list. Font and design all seem perfect, I couldn't ask for more.
Thank you so much for making this app, I love you <3
Thanks! I'm not much of a manga/LN reader, so I hadn't actually added that feature for a good bit. If you have any thoughts on how to make the experience better, let me know! I didn't add a "plus" button to increase chapters or volumes, because i'm not really sure how that should be implemented (for instance, katanagatari has 12 volumes and no chapters, while most manga has many chapters and few volumes, and still others have no volumes and some chapters. which values should be increased?)
Thanks again for the kind words!
there are actually MAL apps which can edit your manga list, same thing about anilist (atarashi)
Thanks! I'm not much of a manga/LN reader, so I hadn't actually added that feature for a good bit. If you have any thoughts on how to make the experience better, let me know! I didn't add a "plus" button to increase chapters or volumes, because i'm not really sure how that should be implemented (for instance, katanagatari has 12 volumes and no chapters, while most manga has many chapters and few volumes, and still others have no volumes and some chapters. which values should be increased?)
Nice looks good :) Will try it out once its available on the UK store
Excellent! Side note: I've been planning on adding Tag related stuff sometime soon, but noticed that you haven't updated the API docs to reflect these changes. As an enterprising sort of individual, this doesn't really matter to me, as I'm normally just looking at the traffic between the site itself and the API and making design decisions based on that, but I wanted to make sure that it was cool with you if I started implementing some of that stuff.
Yeah that sounds good. I held off adding tags to the api docs when they were first out as we ended up making a lot of changes to how they worked shortly after their release. At this point I don't see any breaking changes with tags but just forgot to propperly document them
Hi, looks good - Installed just now so I'll maybe run through it more later.
Running 4.4 on an N5, I can quickly say the menu bar backgrounds don't appear for me, although I can still use it, unsure if it's the same for other devices.
As for suggestions, custom lists may be a priority, as a lot of users have them and not having them visible in apps can make them pretty unusable (there's other apps with the same issue).
I'm unsure if this is intentional but the + option used for anime (watching) doesn't appear to be available for manga which is kind of a hassle. May be nice to have that on all watching/publishing/custom lists.
Additionally a more compact view may be useful just to cut down on wasted space for longer lists. Could shrink img/plus icon and show title only?
It's definitely targeted at 5.0 and up, and my testing on 4.x yielded the same results you're seeing. Now that I know people might actually need to use it on 4.x, I'll look into fixing that ASAP.
As far as customs lists, that has definitely been a thought in the back of my mind the whole time. I personally don't use them, but I think they'll be pretty easy to implement. Do you think they should be included in the same area that the normal lists are (the view pager), or should there be a separate screen?
As far as the plus button for manga, yeah, it is intentional, but more so because I'm not really sure how to implement it more than anything (see my reply to Deerman's post) Do you think it should just try to implement chapters if the work has a "total chapters" value, and volumes if there is a "total volumes" but no chapters?
As far as a compact view, that would be pretty simple to add. I'll look into that!
It's probably best for custom lists to be treated the exact same as any of the others, as it really is just an extra part of a user's list.
In response to implementation for manga, having + for chapters only and manually editing volumes would suffice, as that's how it currently works on the site. A lot of crap might be chapterless but all updates themselves are based on chapters with volumes just being a kind of extra value.
Cool. That should be decently easy enough to implement. (famous last words).
As far as the manga incrementing, that seems fine to me. My only thought would be things like Katanagatari. Should the app detect when a work has no chapters whatsoever, but does have volumes, and increment those instead?
The logic pattern I percieve would be something like (has total_chapters?) -> increment chapters. (doesn't have total_chapters or total_volumes?) -> increment chapters. (doesn't have total_chapters, but does have total_volumes) -> increment volumes.
Sound good?
I'd still base it entirely off chapters, It's more the case of that specific entry just happens to not have the total amount. So what happens is when it gets marked as complete on anilist, the volume count automatically fills but chapters won't do anything.
Really somebody should find out how many chapters it has and add it in there...
Just waiting for data changing to be added to the API :) My hope is that users might be able to submit corrections and what not from the app at some point.
And isn't the "filling in the correct number of volumes/chapters when completed" handled on the front end of the site? I only mention that because changing the list to "completed" doesn't have any effect for me other than just changing the list. I've designed the app to mimic the site's functionality of filling in those values.
The app keeps crashing for me if I try to do anything with it. It also won't refresh the data. Android 6.0, LG V10 with T-Mobile
Very interesting. It looks like the API is sending back a couple empty records (or at least there is no series_id or anime object) attached to your "watching" list. This seems like a bug with the API, but I'll go ahead and put in a fix for this. You should be able to use the second link in the OP above to download the APK itself, if you'd like to update quick. Otherwise, the store will be updated in a few hours.
I Imagine @Josh would like to know about this as well.
Those invisible entries are something I have been trying to get rid of for a while now. I don't know why they are there, but I can't get rid of them at all.
EDIT: I am a dumb, removing my CSS and deleting the entry got rid of both of them.
It looks pretty neat, I may use it once it is more advanced.
I just have one suggestion: long-pressing for editing anime data isn't very intuitive I think, a button should be added on the anime/manga page (the one on the third pic) that allows for list editing (took a while to find out).
With that, and the addition of the status feed (but I guess that's much harder to do), it could entirely replace the mobile site.
Keep it up!
I completely agree about the long pressing thing. That was more born out of a "i'm the only one who will ever use this so who cares" kind of mindset. I've considered adding an edit button to the anime/manga pages themselves before, so now I guess it is going on the todo list.
By status feed, do you mean the default page you're shown on logging into the desktop site?
Updated, looks good. I should be able to start using it now.
Would it be possible to re-sort the list section order itself and include that in the settings (eg. able to move custom lists to front)?
I don't know about adding the + button to custom lists too, a lot of users use it for ongoing stuff.Also, comic sans makes me want to cry, If you like I can mess around with something and throw a psd over, for example:
As for splash screen, simply the logo and a tagline/version/weeb comment should suffice?
Comic sans normally makes me cry, but I figured that, since its an app about manga, it should be looking something like comics...... or something.
I don't really know what I was thinking. The icon (and in a large part, look and feel in general) were never really a huge deal to me, since it originally was just going to be for my use, and completely utilitarian in nature.
That being said, I definitely do like the ones you've created above! If you don't mind sending me a psd, i would gladly change it to one of the above. Whatever you feel like creating, I will make it so.
Oh yeah, also: Re-ordering the lists shouldn't be a problem at all. I'll see what I can whip up.
Along those lines, in the settings section, there is an option to reorder the anime data sections. That is, to change how the data shows up on the page (characters before staff, etc.) Is this valuable? I want to get community feedback before implementing it app-wide.As far as adding a plus button for the custom lists, that shouldn't be a problem at all. In fact, I'll just make those lists render the list items however they would be normally rendered on a non-custom list.
Yeah I did see the ordering for entries themselves - as far as asking whether its valuable, is there any reason not to have it? Somebody would find it useful.
My thoughts exactly. Originally, I was going to change it to have the Characters up front first, as that's usually the first thing I want to see, but figured "eh, why not make it customizable?".
I think the location for switching the order should be on the pages themselves, though; not buried in the settings.
Really good job with the new update, One question: why if i put in "on hold" one anime that is currently airing, in the "on hold" list appear "show finished need to be marked as completed". What does it mean?
Edit: When i try to search an anime and i press on this one it give me an error. I send you the error report link
That should only appear when the number of episodes that you have marked as completed matches the number of episodes that AniList has for that show.
aka: if you have watched 11/11, it will say it "needs to be marked as completed" (since it thinks you have actually completed it and are just marking it with the wrong status). What specific show is this showing up for?
Oh, perfect I understand ^^
It give me an error with every show i search, it's strange with the 1.4 version it went all good, but with this new one i'm unable to visit the anime info page. This happen with the anime that are already on my list too, i can long press to change score,watched episodes ect but not to visit the "anime page".
It seems that manga list on anidroid doesn't update if there is no anime on anilist-list. Both pressing refresh button on the upper right side and using refresh service didn't help. Adding one anime (currently airing) on anilist anime list (by PC) solved this problem.
This might not be a urgent problem to fix though, as most users would have at least one anime on their list xD
Edit: Then, as an experiment, I deleted that only one anime on the list by PC. The entire anidroid manga list disappeared again. When I pressed a refresh button, it sent a 'refresh operation time out' notification. Adding anime by PC again solved this problem.
Make sure you blur all images on Google play!
There are some cases where anime and manga applications were removed due the covers.
They had bad luck because a certain cover was displayed in the screenshots.Just a tip from a fellow developer ;)
Is there or will there be a way to sort anime/manga by progress made.
title - Currently 25 out of ? (unknown amount of episodes as its airing)
title - Currently 15 out of 22
title - Currently 12 out of ?
title - Currently 10 out 11
title - Currently 7 out 13
title - Currently 5 out of 25
title - Currently 3 out of ?Something like this and/or vice-versa. For me this is helpful so that I know what I can just finish because there is only so much left to watch/read and move on to other shows/manga I want to get to. The app is great but this is the only thing that's been bugging me that it doesn't do. I would appreciate it if I was able to sort my list like this, thanks.
This is a fairly trivial change (famous last words), so I should be able to push out a new build later tonight. Do you think it should be ordered by completion percentage (aka 10/11 would come before 20/30), or should it be purely off episodes watched (aka 100/200 would come before 23/24)?
My end goal is to allow for each list to have their own sorting mechanism (e.g. you can sort by "score" for completed and "progress" for watching, etc.). Not sure when I'm going to add it, but the mechanisms sort of already exist, so we'll see.
purely out of episodes watched.
After the last update i can say that the app works very well, no major bugs and it has all basic features that can be needed. So congratulations on a job well done!
One little bug that i found is that the app can't handle very well the different score method. For example for me that i use 10.0 points score method happening this:
Btw it is only a little situational bug not very annoying about that. Nice job mate! ^^
Yup, different scoring methods aren't really a thing (at the moment), but they are on the list! Yet another "i don't use it personally, so i won't add it yet" kind of thing. I think I should be able to start working on that feature fairly soon!
Yes as i said isn't very annoying just a tip. In the future you can start thinking to add forum support maybe not native support but through a built-in browser only for the "forum" page, but i don't know much about android app's programming so just an idea. Finally i reaffirm that as app to manage watched anime, ptw etc is just perfect, maybe i can think to release it ^^ thanks for your work m8! Have nice day
Sorry for the long silence people! I'm pushing out a new update tonight that includes a fix for "search all" functionality, as well as adding user-selected scoring mechanisms for Anime (Manga will come soon). As with previous builds, be sure to let me know if you guys see anything wrong, or if you have any suggestions on functionality changes or improvements.
Nice!
Installed it just now, and it may still have some minor bugs, the functionality of the app is really good! I also like how modernized the design is. Though is there no other way to search for some titles that are not yet in my anime/manga list?
Anyway, kudos! Looking forward for more updates of the app :)
The search button to the bottom right! (The blue one with the white magnifying lens icon).
Let me know if its not showing up for you or if it doesn't seem to be working. This button should perform a full search of AniList.
And updates are coming (someday soon)!
Oh your right, I only saw it when I'm on the anime/manga list and I thought it's only for searching what's in my list.
And is it normal when in first open of app, there's always an error saying "Refresh operation timed out"?
I suggest you make the Home as first one to boot. ^_^
Cheers!
There have been a few additions and updates made to AniDroid lately, and if you haven't tried them out yet, I would love feedback and thoughts!
I can't seem to decide whether the best course of action from here on out is to replicate as much site functionality as possible, or add new functionality that may or may not be present on the site (aggregating data and calculating more statistics, adding quality of life improvements, etc.) If any of you have opinions or requests for what comes next, please let me know!
Ok :) I'll give you feedback in the next days, once I'll have tried out all the new additions.
Btw, I would stick with replicating the site functionalities first.
Ah! It's not really a must feature, but the log-out is missing.You know, I was thinking about that the other day... I guess I could add that in the next build. Why would you ever want to log out?! :)
You're right :) that's why I said it's not a must.
I mean, I can think of a couple of reasons why someone could find it useful (separate hentai account, shared devices,...) but none apply to me.
I guess I would only need it, I dunno, if the app didn't sync properly. As a last resort useless workaround.
Small update going out shortly that fixes a slight glitch with authentication.
Please note: You will need to clear the app data (an uninstall and reinstall would also work) in order to properly access AniList data once you install this update. I'm not sure what exactly happened, but the client ID used for AniDroid was no longer authenticating against the API.
If you have been able to use the app until now successfully, please disregard the part about reinstalling. I'm not sure how many people this would affect, but from my testing, I would guess everyone.
Been a while since I've updated this thread, but there have been a couple of neat updates to AniDroid in the past couple days (mostly dealing with the Anime page and other bug fixes).
After the preview of the API v2 rolled out today, I started noticing some wonky behavior with the preexisting refresh codes used by the app to get data. Due to this, when you update to the latest version (going out shortly) you will be required to log in again. Sorry if this causes anyone trouble!
Hope to have more and more updates in the next week or two!
This is my bad sorry, there was a bug for about 3 hours and any tokens generated in that time frame will be invalid. Users with the invalid tokens will need to revoke access and re-authenticate with AniDroid, tho it looks like you already have that covered. Any users who didn't use their refresh tokens in that time should be unaffected.
Would it be possible for you to add the ability to open anilist links in the app by default? so far, this is something that neither of the other anime list apps (pocketMAL, Atarashii) do, and it's super annoying having links always open in the browser.
Reading about it, there are various workarounds for users, but to really work it's something that has to be implemented by an app developer.
Yup, that is absolutely something I've been thinking about adding. From my understanding, it is fairly trivial to "make links redirect", but I'd need to make a couple internal changes to how AniDroid works to let it handle, say, you going to an Anime page right away (as opposed to opening to the main screen first). Shouldn't be too complicated though! I'll put that near the top on the priority list.
Thanks! also, you should carry over some of anilists color scheme into the app. The sidebar color (#1F2631) especially, should be used for the top bar and also the eventual splash screen background.
The “click on a link and go to the app” feature has been added! Currently only works for anime and manga, but I’m planning to add the rest tomorrow (or soon).
nice!
I just tested the update, and found a bug. I sent a bug report, but wanted to add some more info.
When I opened an anilist link, it would start opening in anidroid, but then anidroid would crash. I just discovered that this only happens if anidroid ISN'T running in the background. If it is, then the link opens just fine.
EDIT: I also just noticed that when you open a link, there is no way to go back to your main list (no "back arrow" in the top left)
Thanks for this report. I knew almost immediately what the problem was, and feel stupid for not thinking about it last night. I'm pushing out a new build in a couple minutes, so definitely grab that and try it out again when its available.
Additionally, the "no back arrow" is intended. This is due to how Android tracks activity changes with a "back stack", and since you are going straight into the Series view activity with no history, there is nothing to go back to! One thought I had was to open the app normally when clicking a link, and then immediately going to the series page (so you'd have a back arrow), but I think this would introduce a slew of new bugs and would take a while to get right.
Could you make it so that if there is no back history, it displays the hamburger menu for the sidebar instead?
- continue this thread →
So, disregard everything I said earlier about not "back button". After thinking about it for a bit, I realized that it should actually be pretty easy to add a back button that returns to the main screen, even if the app hasn't been opened yet. I'm pushing out a build now that has this functionality. It might be a little buggy, so be sure to let me know if you get random crashes.
Question: Is the forum section going to be added to the app in the future, or it is just meant to be an anime and manga list app?
So, ideally I would love to add the Forum stuff. The biggest problem I've had so far with it is rendering the "rich content" (think images, links, embedded videos, etc.)
I think it would be easy to add a basic text version that allows you to view, reply, etc. for the time being, though.
Also, side note: I'm hoping to get as much AniList functionality into the app as I can! If there are any other pieces that you really want to see added, be sure to let me know!
Really been enjoying all the updates over the last month. I know it's probably very low priority, but I thought I'd ask if a night/dark mode is coming in the future?
I'm actually a huge fan of dark (and really just true black) modes. Adding color customization is a thing that I'm planning on adding at some point, but I'm not sure exactly when it will happen. What I can probably do is start with certain screens and work my way up from there. I'll bump this up in the queue!
+1 for a black/dark theme! OLED screens don't use any power to display black, so any app I can get using a black theme, I do.
