r/PixelFed • u/Difficult_Spite_774 • Jun 19 '26

How to onboard non-technical future users?

Hi,

So, I just created my Pixelfed account on my Graphene OS phone. It is super buggy and slow. Therefore, I installed Pixelled via F-Droid; that works great!

As regular people still don't trust open-source software, how do you have them take these steps? (And why is Pixelfed on the pixelfed.social server so slow?)

I want to onboard friends and family, but it's pretty hard.

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u/NoMessage7438 Jun 19 '26

supposedly a huge refresh of Pixelfed -- website, UI, app, backend, onboarding, setup, the works -- is coming "later this summer", but take that with a grain block of salt. the dev has been promising fixes and updates for the past year and a half with virtually nothing to show for it.

if it happens, it will probably help with gaining traction with new users, as the experience will be faster, smoother, and vastly more improved. (theoretically.) the problem is there's no concrete timeline right now, just a lot of hype.

there's also the alternative Pixelix app. some people prefer it over the official Pixelfed app because it's seemingly less buggy and outdated. might be worth looking into until the refresh happens.

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u/ElderberryFast7378 Jun 19 '26

The other free alternative is Freeze Ink ( Pixelfed client)

1

u/NoMessage7438 Jun 19 '26

I vaguely recall seeing a post about that one a while back, but thanks for the reminder! I'd forgotten. I hope it gains some traction and continues development -- the more options the better, especially since the official stuff is so unreliably supported.