Android app

The Android app supports guest reading, signed-in feeds and social actions, reading lists, a writer dashboard, notifications, and local or federated profiles. The instance you choose must use HTTPS.

Choose an instance

1. Open the app and enter your instance address, such as https://omicron.blog.
2. Select Continue after the app confirms the instance.
3. Select Change instance at any time to connect to another server.

The app keeps each instance’s session separate. Changing instances never sends an existing session to the new server.

Sign in or create an account

Use your email address or username and password to sign in. A username may be entered with or without its leading @.

To create an account, select Create an account and provide a username, email address, and password. Usernames use 3 to 30 lowercase letters, numbers, or underscores. Passwords must be 12 to 128 characters.

If you need another account on the same instance, sign out first, then sign in with the other account.

Confirm your email

An instance can require new accounts to confirm their email address. In that case, the app shows Check your inbox after registration or an unverified sign-in attempt. Open the confirmation link in your email, then return to the app and sign in.

The confirmation link opens the instance’s web verification page. Android App Links are not currently available for this handoff.

Navigate the app

The top bar provides Search and a theme toggle. When signed in, it also shows a notification bell with an unread count and an account menu. The bell opens a recent-notification preview; opening it marks unread notifications as read. Select See all to open the full notifications screen. When signed out, use the top-bar gear to open Settings.

Signed-in readers also have a bottom navigation bar:

Destination	Opens
Home	The For you, Local, and Global feeds
Lists	Your reading lists, including Read later
Write	A new post in the composer
Stats	Your writer dashboard
Profile	Your profile

The account menu links to Profile, Write, Your posts, Lists, Stats, Settings, and Sign out. Guests can read the public Home feeds and use Search, but do not see the signed-in bottom navigation.

Read posts

After connecting, browse Global and Local as a guest. When signed in, the For you feed adds posts from writers you follow and posts they recommend. Select a post’s title, summary, or image to read its article, then continue to related posts below it. Author names open profiles, and topic tags open their tag pages.

If your session expires while using For you, the app switches to Global and shows a sign-in action. After signing in again, select Continue reading to return to the screen you were using.

Returning to Home

After you have loaded Home, later launches can show its saved feed cards while the app checks your session and refreshes posts in the background. Saved cards remain readable during a connection problem; retry the session or feed update from the message shown on screen. Account actions stay unavailable until the app confirms your session and loads a fresh feed. A rejected session or feed request removes the affected saved account cards rather than treating them as current content.

Home data is encrypted on the device and kept separate for the selected instance and account. It holds up to 30 card previews (within a 1 MiB limit); feed previews expire after 24 hours and cached account details after 30 days. Signing out clears the saved Home data. A new installation or a Home feed that has not loaded before still needs a network connection to show posts. These startup previews are separate from Settings → Offline reading and do not include full article text.

Interact with posts and comments

Use the actions on a feed card or open a post to Like, Recommend, or Save for later. Recommendations are reposts that federate to followers; see Recommending. Save for later adds the post to your private Read later list. Select an active action again to unlike, remove the recommendation, or remove the saved post.

Responses and replies

1. Open an article and select its comment-count action to move to Responses.
2. Sign in, then enter a response in What are your thoughts? and select Respond. Responses are plain text, support multiple lines, and can contain up to 2,000 characters. Wait for the initial responses list to finish loading before submitting.
3. Select Reply on a comment to move to the response composer. It shows Replying to the selected author and focuses the reply field. Select Respond to send the reply, or Cancel reply to return to a top-level response. Changing or cancelling the reply target keeps the unfinished text.

While sending, the field and reply-target controls are disabled. The new response shows Posting… and has no action controls until the server confirms it. The field clears after a successful submission. Replies to replies stay in the same top-level thread.

Select a response’s heart to like it; select the active heart again to unlike it. Your own responses also offer Edit and Delete. After editing, select Save. Deleting asks for confirmation. Deleting a top-level response also removes its replies and cannot be undone.

Failed actions and retries

If an action fails, the app restores only that action’s previous state and count; another successful like or recommendation stays active. Article errors appear beside the affected action, comment, or editor.

Feedback	Recovery
Offline or failed request	Restore your connection if needed, then select Try again beside the failed action.
Expired session	Select Sign in, authenticate again, and return to the article.
Action not allowed	The account is not permitted to perform the action; the error has no retry button.

A failed response keeps its text and reply target so Try again sends it to the same thread. A failed edit keeps the edited text ready to save again. Retrying a failed deletion asks for confirmation again. Try again for a failed Read later save or removal repeats that action.

Response drafts and retry state are held in memory. They are not saved as offline drafts or queued to send automatically when connectivity returns.

Open profiles

Select a writer’s name on a post, or Profile in the account menu or bottom navigation, to open a profile. Profiles include Articles, Recommendations, and About. On an unlocked local profile, the Followers and Following counts open a separate people screen. Switch between the counted tabs, then select a person’s avatar or name to open their profile. Remote profiles show the follower and following counts available from the remote instance, but do not have member lists. A private local profile keeps its counts visible, but its member lists stay hidden until you are an approved follower.

Each person in a member list has a Follow action. Sign in to follow someone; the button then shows Following or, for a private local account, Requested until the writer approves you. Selecting Following asks you to confirm before unfollowing. Cancelling a pending Requested follow also asks for confirmation. On your own Following list, a successful follow or unfollow updates the list and count. Open More actions (the ellipsis button) on another writer’s profile to mute or block them. A block also ends the follow relationship. Links in About open outside the app. Remote profiles and actions require federation to be enabled on the instance.

If a local profile is private, you can still see its public header and counts, but its posts and member lists stay hidden until you are an approved follower.

Write and manage posts

Sign in, then select Write in the bottom navigation or account menu to open a new post. The composer supports a title and body blocks (paragraphs, headings, lists, quotes, code, and images), plus an optional description, tags, language, and banner. Save a draft, publish now, or schedule it for a later time. Scheduled times use your phone’s timezone.

The title and body are the main writing area. Use the Add block toolbar below the document to insert a paragraph, heading, quote, code block, list, divider, or image; each tool has its own icon and label. A new text block opens ready for typing. Use the block’s More actions menu to remove it.

Select Post details to add an optional cover, description, tags, or language. You can collapse this section while writing; its values stay in the post. Save draft and Publish stay above the document. To schedule a post, open Publishing options beside Publish and select Schedule. While the keyboard is open, the block toolbar remains above it and the bottom navigation is hidden.

To manage posts, open Your posts in the account menu or select Manage posts on your own profile. The screen has Drafts, Scheduled, and Published tabs with a count on each. Select Load more when a list has another page.

Tab	Available actions
Drafts	Continue editing, schedule, or delete. Deleting asks for confirmation.
Scheduled	Continue editing, reschedule, publish now, unschedule back to a draft, or delete. Deleting asks for confirmation.
Published	View, edit, unpublish back to a draft, or delete. Unpublish and delete ask for confirmation.

Drafts and scheduled posts autosave after you pause editing. Editing a scheduled post this way keeps its scheduled time; selecting Save draft explicitly unschedules it. Published edits are not autosaved: select Save changes to update the live post. It remains published, and the update is queued for remote followers. Unpublishing makes the post a draft and sends a deletion to remote followers, but remote servers are not guaranteed to remove every copy.

Reading lists

Select Lists in the bottom navigation or account menu to open your lists. Read later is pinned at the top. Select New list to create a public or private list, then select a list to browse its articles. Longer lists use Load more to retrieve the next page.

The bookmark action on a feed card or article adds or removes it from Read later. Open Settings → Offline reading to manage public articles cached on the device; offline copies are separate from reading lists.

Writer dashboard

Select Stats in the bottom navigation or account menu to open your dashboard. It shows aggregate views when the instance enables view counting, plus likes, comments, engagement, followers, a views-over-time chart, and per-post totals. The dashboard reports aggregate counts only; it does not identify readers. When view counting is disabled, the views metrics are omitted.

Notifications

The signed-in top-bar bell shows the unread count and a recent-notification preview. Opening the preview or the full screen marks notifications as read. Select See all to open the full list. Select a notification to open the related article or writer profile; use Load more to fetch older notifications.

Settings

When signed out, select the top-bar gear. When signed in, open Settings from the account menu. The screen remains available when signed out.

Setting	What it does
Instance	Shows the connected instance. Select Change instance to open the connection screen, then choose another address there.
Appearance	Choose System, Light, or Dark. The preference is saved on this device across restarts and instance changes. System follows Android’s current appearance. It is not synced with your web account.
About Omicron	Identifies the app and its license.
Offline reading	Opens public articles saved on this device for the selected instance.
Account	Shows the signed-in account and provides Sign out, or offers Sign in when signed out.

Signing out clears the saved session on this device even when the instance cannot confirm the remote sign-out. In that case, Settings displays a warning.

Offline reading

When you open a public article online, the app saves its article details on the device. Open Settings → Offline reading to see saved articles for the currently selected instance. Select Read to open one, Remove to remove an individual copy, or Clear saved articles for this instance to remove all of that instance’s copies. Switching instances does not mix or clear their saved articles.

Every article open checks the instance first. If a network connection fails, the app can show the saved copy, marked as possibly out of date. A server response such as Not found or a sign-in requirement is not replaced with cached content. This article library does not save drafts, scheduled posts, feed pages, comments, or account-specific likes and recommendations. The separate Home startup cache contains only the limited card previews described above.

Copies expire 30 days after their last online update. Across instances, the device cache is limited to 50 articles and 64 MB total; it removes the least-recently read copies first. Images use a separate 32 MB cache. An image may be missing if it was not downloaded before or has been evicted, and Android may clear that cache at any time.

Accessibility

The Android reading and Settings screens support TalkBack and follow Android’s font scale. Enable TalkBack in Android’s accessibility settings to navigate controls by focus and hear their labels and selected states. Top-bar actions, account-menu items, bottom-navigation tabs, and article controls have accessible labels. The For you, Local, and Global scopes and bottom tabs expose their selected state. In Settings, System, Light, and Dark are radio choices with the selected appearance exposed to TalkBack. Like, Recommend, and Save for later expose whether each action is selected. Comment hearts expose their like count and selected state. Comment action rows wrap on narrow screens and at larger font scales, with 48dp minimum touch targets.

Full-screen loading states keep progress centered and show a message describing what is loading. TalkBack exposes the same message on the progress indicator.

Article headings are available for heading navigation. Inline article images use their supplied description when one is available; cover images and decorative images are not announced.

Session security

The app stores the session cookie securely on the device and only uses it with the instance that issued it. API access tokens remain in memory and are renewed before they expire. If the instance rejects a session, its saved cookie is cleared and the app offers a way to sign in again. Signing out removes the current in-memory session and asks the instance to end its session.