Apollo Pro/Ultra iconography

Apollo Pro/Ultra

Apollo is a free app that you can use as long as you want in free mode, but there's two paid options if you'd like to support me, the sole developer (hi my name's Christian and I love blueberries), and Apollo's future development! There's also two other, optional in-app purchases that I'll detail below too.

Note that these options are also available in the free app at any time via the Settings tab.

I'll break them down below, but in short the first is Apollo Pro, a one-time paid (no subscription) option of $5 USD that unlocks a bunch of additional features in the app. The second is Apollo Ultra, the highest tier, which includes everything in Apollo Pro plus additional features. Apollo Ultra is a subscription offering of $1 USD per month (or $10/year, or a lifetime unlock option is offered in the app) and is a subscription due to options within it having ongoing monthly costs to me, the developer.

⭐️ Apollo Pro

One-time fee. "Pay what you want" to unlock, minimum $5 USD. Includes these additonal features:

Submit Posts

Create new posts in the subreddits you love, with an amazing built-in image uploader, Markdown text editor, and more. Some people are confused why posting is a paid feature, it's a combination of a few things. The majority of people on Reddit consume content rather than posting it (there's even a Wikipedia article about this phenomenon!)) so it's a nice feature to be like 'hey, if you're doing this, could you support the app'? Secondly, it was a common feature to make 'Pro' in other Reddit apps, like Alien Blue when it was around. Lastly, even though it might seem like a 'basic' feature on the surface, I put a lot of hours into designing and coding the feature in Apollo, and I hope it's not too harsh to ask to be paid to support my work.

Multiple Accounts

Add multiple Reddit accounts to browse, post, and comment from. You’ve heard of Horcruxes, right?

Face/Touch ID/Passcode Unlock

Add an extra layer of security to Apollo by optionally requiring FaceID / Touch ID or device’s passcode to unlock Apollo.

Customize Gestures

In posts, comments, and more, customize the swipe gestures to whatever actions best fit your browsing habits.

Content Filters

Filter all the things. Keywords to prevent certain posts from showing up, any number of subreddits in r/All and r/Popular, specific users, etc.

Comment Color Themes

Customize the colors of the organizers when reading comments to one of several different hand-picked options.

Homepage

Change your default homepage from Home to whichever subreddit or multireddit you please.

GIF Scrubbing

Like magic, slide your finger across GIFs in the media viewer to go backward or forward in time. It’s seriously awesome.

Indie Support

I’m just one guy building Apollo, and your support allows me to continue developing and bettering Apollo. It means the world! Oh and my cat appreciates it too!

Auto-Dark Mode

Have Apollo automatically switch from light to dark mode based on screen brightness, or triggered by local sunset and sunrise.

Custom App Icons

Stand out from the crowd with a custom app icon on your homescreen that best suits your tastes.

Better Media Data

Improved display and detection of certain kinds of media that require more work to decipher (great for albums).

Auto Collapse

Option to automatically collapse all the child comments to top level replies in comment threads. Can set to always, or per subreddit.

Auto Hide

Option to automatically hide posts that you've already read so your feed stays super fresh, also unlocks option to auto mark posts read as you scroll by them.

Local Subreddit Filters

Use local subreddit filters to filter more than the 100 subreddit filtering limit Reddit has.

Importing Reddit Enhancement Suite Filters

Import external subreddit filter lists from services like Reddit Enhancement Suite.

Search Saved

Trying to find that awesome post or comment you saved? With Apollo Pro, type a few letters and you can find through your saved items in a flash.

Live Comments Sort

Following an episode discussion, or a game thread as it happens? Manually refreshing a bunch isn't fun, so let Apollo automatically show new comments.

Remove 'Share as Image' Watermark

Keep the shared image more minimal by having the option to hide the watermark completely.

Smart Rotation Lock

Allows you to lock Apollo to portrait/vertical mode everywhere, while still allowing rotation in the Media Viewer. Also includes Portrait Lock Buddy.

🚀 Apollo Ultra

Apollo Ultra is a tier above Apollo Pro, and includes everything in Apollo Pro (you don't need to buy both) as well as extras. It is a subscription of $1 USD per month, or $10 USD per year. There's also a lifetime unlock option within the app for approximately $30 USD.

Why a subscription? The features in Apollo Ultra have associated monthly costs to me (the developer) in order to be able to offer, so I can't offer them under a one-time low fee payment. For instance the push notifications feature requires a server to work (the server is where the notifications are 'pushed' from), and servers have expensive ongoing monthly costs. For more details on how the iOS notifications system works at a technical level, here's a pretty interesting video of the announcement of the feature. The tl;dr is that checking for notifications all the time on your device consumes a lot of battery life, so making an external server do the work and then only involve your device at the final step saves a lot of battery. Ultra also includes a new really cool custom home screen app icon every month from talented professional designers, which also costs money to offer.

Push Notifications

Push notifications for all your inbox items such as replies to your comments, your posts, username mentions, and private messages. Arrives within the minute of the notification event occurring so you can stay on top of things. The notifications are fully interactive, and you can view them, upvote them, or even reply to them directly from the notification itself (long-press the notification).

Custom App Icons

A new icon every month from a variety of talented, professional designers. This is a really fun way to spice up your home screen with a fun and really cool Apollo icon every month from some crazy talented graphic designers like Michael Flarup, Louie Mantia, Alexa Grafera, and David Lanham, just to name a few. And you don't only unlock the ones from when your subscription started, you unlock all of them all the way back to October 2018 so you can choose whatever you like most!

Theming

You can theme the style of the app heavily as well with Apollo Ultra, with a variety of themes that beautifully tweak the background colors of the app, the button colors, and more, so you can use Apollo with your favorite color scheme and really personalize it.

💂‍♀️ Community Icon Pack

Another fun option in Apollo is the Community Icon Pack, which is a fun group of icons made by the minds of talented members of the r/ApolloApp subreddit submitted to the app and is updated regularly. A portion of the proceeds go to the community members designing the icons, and a portion goes toward supporting the app's development.

The Community Icon Pack is included in Apollo Ultra, but if you'd like to just buy it separately instead you also can for approximately $5 USD.

🐈 SPCA Icon

This is a fun, one-off icon for a good cause where 100% of the proceeds go to my local Nova Scotia SPCA Animal Shelter. Approximately $5 USD.

❤️ Thank You For Reading

For what it's worth the app is free to download and evaluate as long as you'd like, and you never have to pay for anything without you explicitly agreeing to support the app, so I'd encourage you to check it out, and these paid features are explained in even better detail in the app itself!

I'm just one guy building Apollo, and I try to price it very reasonably and walking a line between letting people use it for free but also hopefully support me so I can continue to build Apollo as my full-time job and make it better for everyone. Oh and so I can feed my two cats Hugo and Ruby. Thank you for considering supporting!

- Christian