#choose between Android and iOS

[mikestek]

Android vs iOS - Which OS is right for you?

Over the years, the debate between Android and iOS has intensified, making it vital for you to understand the unique features each operating system offers. Android provides a wide range of devices with customizable options, while iOS boasts a seamless user experience and consistent updates. Your choice can impact everything from app availability to device performance. Whether you prioritize…

[mobileappdevelopmentcqlsys]

React Native or Native: Which Is Superior for Developing Apps?

In today’s digital ecosystem, mobile applications are pivotal for engaging users and driving business success. One of the earliest decisions developers and business owners must make is choosing the right technology for their mobile apps: React Native or Native development. Each option brings distinct advantages and trade-offs depending on the project's needs, budget, and long-term goals. This blog explores the strengths and limitations of both approaches to help you determine which is superior for your app development journey in 2025 and beyond.

Understanding the Basics: What Is React Native and Native App Development?

React Native is a popular open-source framework created by Meta (formerly Facebook). It allows developers to build cross-platform apps using JavaScript and React. With a single codebase, developers can deploy apps on both Android and iOS, significantly reducing development time and cost.

On the other hand, Native app development refers to building mobile applications specifically for a single platform—Android or iOS—using languages and tools provided by the platform vendor. For Android, this usually means using Java or Kotlin in Android Studio; for iOS, it's Swift or Objective-C in Xcode.

Performance: React Native vs Native App Development

When it comes to performance, native apps generally have the upper hand. Because they’re built using platform-specific languages and APIs, native apps offer smoother animations, better response times, and faster execution. This is especially important for apps that require heavy processing, advanced graphics (like AR/VR or gaming apps), or deep integration with the device hardware.

React Native apps, while impressive in reach and flexibility, rely on a JavaScript bridge to communicate with native modules. This can introduce latency and performance bottlenecks in high-performance applications. However, for many standard use cases—such as e-commerce, social networking, or booking apps—React Native performance is sufficient and increasingly optimized with tools like Hermes engine and JSI (JavaScript Interface).

Keyword tip: Businesses often search for terms like React Native vs Native performance, making it a core comparison factor in decision-making.

Development Speed and Cost: Why React Native Wins

If you’re working with limited time and budget, React Native app development services may be your best bet. With a single codebase for both iOS and Android, developers can create apps faster and cut costs significantly, sometimes up to 40–50% less than building two native apps.

Furthermore, code reusability, live reloading, and modular architecture in React Native enhance development speed and team collaboration. For startups or MVPs aiming for rapid time-to-market, React Native offers a compelling solution without compromising on functionality.

In contrast, native development requires separate teams, toolsets, and codebases for each platform, effectively doubling the effort and cost. While this might make sense for enterprise-grade or mission-critical apps, it can be overkill for simpler projects.

User Experience and UI: Native Still Leads

Native apps are known for delivering a superior user experience. Since they’re built for a specific operating system, native apps can take full advantage of the platform’s UI guidelines, gestures, animations, and components. The result is an app that feels more integrated and intuitive to the user.

React Native tries to replicate native UI components but can sometimes fall short, particularly with platform-specific design elements or highly customized interfaces. While libraries like React Native Paper and NativeBase offer prebuilt components, native still excels in creating pixel-perfect, fluid UIs.

That said, React Native UI is constantly improving, and for many common use cases, it provides a satisfactory and visually pleasing experience. However, for apps where the user interface is a core differentiator, native development has the edge.

Maintenance and Updates: React Native Simplifies It

From a maintenance perspective, React Native simplifies updates due to its unified codebase. Bug fixes, feature updates, and performance improvements can be rolled out simultaneously across both platforms, streamlining app management.

Moreover, tools like CodePush allow for over-the-air (OTA) updates without requiring users to download a new version from the app store. This is a major advantage for agile teams that need to iterate quickly.

Native apps, however, need platform-specific maintenance and updates, which increases the workload and risks inconsistent feature parity between platforms.

Access to Native APIs and Device Features

If your app requires extensive use of native APIs, sensors, or background services (such as Bluetooth, GPS tracking, biometric authentication, or background video processing), native development offers direct access and better control.

React Native, while offering access to many native modules through libraries or custom bridging, can sometimes lag in supporting the latest native APIs immediately. In such cases, native development provides a smoother path to integrate cutting-edge features.

However, React Native has made significant progress in this area with tools like React Native Reanimated, React Navigation, and community-driven modules that support a wide range of native features.

Community Support and Talent Availability

React Native benefits from a massive and active open-source community. With thousands of contributors and extensive documentation, finding React Native developers is relatively easy, and solutions to common issues are readily available.

While native app development also has strong community support, especially for Android and iOS individually, it may require more specialized expertise, which can increase hiring costs and development time.

From a talent acquisition perspective, React Native offers broader flexibility. Developers familiar with JavaScript and React can transition into mobile development more easily than native development, which demands platform-specific knowledge.

Long-Term Scalability and Security

For apps requiring high scalability, robust security, and tight hardware integration—such as banking, fintech, or healthcare apps—native development is often preferred. The performance stability, access control, and OS-level security features make native apps better suited for enterprise-grade solutions.

React Native apps can scale well too, especially with proper architectural planning and the use of native modules. However, security can be a concern if the JavaScript layer isn’t handled properly. Obfuscation, secure storage, and regular audits are essential when using React Native in sensitive domains.

When to Choose React Native

Choose React Native app development if:

You need to build apps for both iOS and Android quickly.

Budget and time constraints are important.

The app doesn't require complex animations or high-performance hardware access.

You're building an MVP or prototype to test the market.

You want faster iterations and simplified maintenance.

When to Choose Native App Development

Choose native app development if:

The app requires maximum performance, such as 3D games or AR/VR apps.

You need to integrate deeply with device hardware or native APIs.

Security and scalability are top priorities (e.g., in fintech or healthcare).

UI/UX customization is a critical part of your user engagement strategy.

You have the resources to maintain separate codebases for iOS and Android.

Final Verdict: Which Is Superior?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. The superior approach—React Native or Native—depends entirely on your project’s goals, complexity, and constraints. React Native is a great choice for startups, cross-platform solutions, and rapid development. Native development, on the other hand, remains unbeatable for performance-critical, secure, and UI-intensive applications.

Partnering with the right mobile app development company is key to evaluating your needs and choosing the best technology. Whether you opt for React Native or native app development, ensure that your chosen team has deep expertise and a clear understanding of your industry requirements.

[englishotomegames]

Love and Deepspace (恋与深空)

Release date (Android, iOS) English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean: January 18th, 2024

"As the brand new installment of the popular Mr. Love series, Love and Deepspace allows you to step into a sci-fi world where love knows no bounds. With immersive cutscenes, 3D storylines and interactions, love is truly within reach!

[First-Person Perspective] Dates via 3D cutscenes. Step into a 3D world from a first-person perspective, where romance and adventure unfold before your eyes. The unique viewpoint design brings you closer to those heart-pounding moments you share with your love interest, blurring the line between reality and fantasy.

[3D Interactions] Interact with him all you want. Real-time 3D rendering ensures lifelike interactions. Experience intimate moments like never before, watch as your actions provoke unique responses, and savor unforgettable dates, sweet voice messages, and more.

[24/7 Companionship] He's always there for you. Each day with your love interest is brimming with intriguing intimacy. Snapshots, Claw Machines, Kitty Cards... It's never a boring day in Linkon City.

[Fight Together] You can fully trust each other in battle. As a Deepspace Hunter with the superpower of 'Evol', you will fight against the onslaught of mysterious alien creatures, together with love interests. Along the way, your paths intertwine, and the secrets about your fates and humanity's future will be revealed.

[Profound Immersion] Choose your voice and look. Delve into an array of customizable features, from dozens of appearance details and hundreds of makeup choices to personalized timbres, all yours to explore."

This is a freemium mobile 3D visual novel / action rpg / gacha game! You can download it for Android or iOS here.

[boringkate]

whats the secret of good self butt photography how do i capture there glory and not throw out my back

1) Get something to hold your phone. Dollarama (if you're canadian) has these like $4 goose neck phone clip things that you can clip onto a chair or whatever and are pretty great, but if you can spare a little more money (and you expect to use it enough to justify it) then get a proper tripod (I use a couple 60 inch amazon basics tripods, but it seems like they've gotten more expensive and other brands are probably no worse) and pair it with a screw on phone tripod mount (aliexpress has them for a couple dollars and you can even get rotating ones that'll let you film in portrait mode).

2) Use a free auto clicker app (I'm on android, but I assume ios has them too) to automatically tap the button to take a photo every 4 or 5 seconds. You're gonna end up with a lot of wasted photos where you're just getting into position, but that's fine (just delete em). I wildly prefer this over using a bluetooth remote because it keeps your hands free and something about not needing to choose to snap the photo makes it easier (the time passes faster and you'll end up with more usable pics which is dope even if you just want one good one because the way to take a good pic is to take a lot of bad ones untill you get lucky).

3) Set up a way for you to see what the camera sees. You could plug your phone into a monitor or tv using an hdmi adapter or use a free screen streaming app to watch your phone's screen on a laptop.

4) Use the camera on the back. It's always higher quality. The selfie camera is only for when you don't wanna deal with those first three steps.

5) Natural light is your BFF. Take your pics while the sun is out and your curtains are open.

6) Filter your pics. I use an app called MIX (specifically an old build of it bc they changed some stuff like their payment model for the batch image filtering feature) (which is definitely on both Android and iOS), but I imagine there are a ton of others that do all the same stuff. I loath smoothing for face pics, but it can be alright for butt pics. Noise can further obscure stubble. You're probably gonna wanna raise the temperature and maybe even the tint (people look unwell when their skin is more blue or green than it should be). Lowering the contrast can be nice too. Beyond that it can be fun to just experement and see what looks nice.

That's my process anyways. You do you. I know a lot of hotties are more into the pink blue lighting thing for example (you can get colored bulbs at the dollar store and stick em on a couple cheap thrift shop lamps) and I could especially see that being appealing if you aren't getting much natural light (pls don't just be taking nudes at night under the harsh light of your apartment's one shitty ceiling lamp lol).

Bonus protip: If you are using a lamp or lamps or softboxes and you want extra brightness then you can get E27 lamp bulb splitters online for a couple dollars that'll let you plug multiple bulbs into a single lamp.

Bonus bonus protip: Keep an eye out for selfie sticks with a screw on the base. I use a gimbal extension rod with a 1/4 inch screw paired with a hinge (and had previously been using a selfie stick with a screw on the bottom which was cheaper although it eventually broke) and screw it in between my tripod and my phone clip so that I can get my phone hovering over my bed (without the instability that comes from actually putting your tripod on your bed). It's very optional, but it does rule.

[ataleofcrowns]

New UI and dark theme!

Between writing CH11, I've been working on a new UI for the game. It's a sleeker layout with settings to choose between a light and dark theme, as well as font style and font size options. 

It also has a reactive mobile layout so that you can play the game in portrait mode/vertically as well!!

Note: In some mobile browsers, the pop-ups for the settings options don't seem to work - or maybe it's specific to Android/my phone. Like, they'll briefly pop open and then immediately close again before you can select anything.

I managed to get it working on Firefox, but as always, itch io is very finicky, so if the pop-ups don't work for you, try opening the game in desktop mode, or try using a different browser.

Hope you enjoy 💖

[choiceofgames]

New game! “Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names” — Unleash Rage and wield spirit to heal the land and rebuild your fallen pack

Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names is now available on Steam, iOS, and Android!

It’s 25% off until May 2nd! Furthermore, as a special offer, if you purchase "Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names" by 11:59pm PDT on April 26th, we'll give away the "Wardens and Furies" DLC, featuring the options to play as a member of the Black Fury tribe or the Hart Warden tribe, for free.

You and your shattered werewolf pack must save the living Earth with Rage and spirit! In this interactive novel with hundreds of choices, can you defeat a Wyrm Spirit who manifests as a lie that you want to believe?

Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names is an interactive novel by Kyle Marquis set in the World of Darkness. It's entirely text-based—1.8 million words, without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Shapeshifter. Mystic. Hero. Monster. You are a werewolf, and you are all these things. Werewolves are the living earth's last guardians, created by Gaia, given the gift of shifting between human and wolf forms, and called to stop humanity from destroying the world.

But you have failed.

Three years ago, packs of werewolves worked together as a Sept in Broad Brook, Massachusetts, battling the Wyrm, the enemy of Gaia. While other Septs fell to the Wyrm or tore themselves apart with fratricidal Rage, Broad Brook thrived. Some said they would be the ones to stop the Apocalypse.

But in one night, a Wyrm Spirit called "the Answering Tiger" destroyed the Broad Brook Sept and defiled its caern. In fact, Broad Brook had never been thriving at all. The Tiger had deceived their senses, disordered their thoughts, and turned them against one another. Where the different tribes saw trust, in truth there was resentment and growing Rage. Where the different packs saw safety, there were security flaws that could be exploited. Where they saw the Wyrm, there were innocents that they massacred, before reporting to other Septs about another glorious victory.

Their cruel pride allowed the Wyrm Spirit to deceive them, and they mostly destroyed themselves. The Answering Tiger had servants, too, monstrous Banes and fomori, and even werewolves sworn to the Wyrm. But they were only there to pick off whoever was left.

Now, the Stormcat, once the Patron Spirit of the Broad Brook Sept, has called upon you to rebuild a pack from the survivors and fight back against the Answering Tiger. In the savage woods and decaying towns of New England, you will forge your own legend.

Build Your Pack. Human and werewolf survivors haunt the woods and hide in the cities: find them to learn what happened and to rebuild the werewolf nation. But not all werewolves can be trusted: shun those wolves consumed by Rage, and pity those who have lost the Wolf and become empty shells.

Survive the Wilds. A desperate exile, shunned by those of your old pack who have abandoned their oaths to Gaia, you'll have to survive by your wits. A winter night can kill as surely as any monster: find shelter, seek allies among spirits and humans, and learn how far you'll go to survive.

Unleash Your Rage. You are one of Gaia's monsters, a living weapon, herald of horror and death. Now the Apocalypse is here: wield your Rage with savage cunning and keen discretion, or it will swallow you whole.

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; befriend or romance werewolves and humans of all genders.

• Shapeshift among five forms to slaughter your enemies, or outwit them to take what you need.

• Choose your auspice (moon-sign) and your werewolf tribe: Bone Gnawer, Child of Gaia, Glass Walker, Shadow Lord, or Silver Fang

• Claim your territory and heal the spirits there to unlock Gifts that let you summon animals, see into the past, or enter the spirit world.

Buy it now!

[wendigovertigo]

Magia Exedra Info: Performance

Magia Exedra’s official X/Twitter’s account posted this:

https://x.com/madoka_exedra/status/1900366270773571920?s=46

The photo itself:

Translated (once again translated and corrected it for you. Thank me later.)

First row, phone version: iOS: iOS 13 or later; Android: Android 9.0 or above

Second row, device: iPhone 8 Plus and later for iOS; Snapdragon 845 Equivalent or above for Android

Third row, RAM: iOS: 3GB or more; Android: 4GB or more

Fourth row, app capacity upon installation or the bytes you’ll need to download the app (estimated): iOS: 600MB extent (549MB at App Store), Android: 850MB extent

Fifth row, app capacity at start of play or assets and data needed for the game to run (both iOS and Android): Approximately 2.5 to 3GB

* Even if the above requirements are met, the app may not function properly depending on the device’s performance and communication environment.

* App capacity will increase as you progress through the game.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

A-Q’s section:

You can play in an energy-efficient manner by reducing battery consumption!

Choose from three image quality levels: high, standard and energy saving!

You can switch between high-definition mode when you want to play at home and energy saving mode when you’re outside.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

We got A-Q caring for us… still keeping an eye out of him…

[towniehuyendo]

HII, just wanted to share this! i figured out how to put live time translations on for streamers who dont have it set up on twitch

this is mostly for mobile (I'm sure it can be done on computer too, but i haven't tested it out, i literally discovered this like 30 minutes ago)

im also on android so i have no idea how to do this on ios

it also only works for THESE languages

(including spanish, but i already have it set up which is why it doesn't show up here)

1. start by going to your settings and scrolling till you find the "accessibility" button and clicking it

2. now under the "accessibility" tab, scroll till you find "live captions"

3. here you find "language & translations" go ahead and hit that

4. next you'll wanna go into "add a language"

5. and after you've downloaded a language (it took about 2 minutes to download for me) you can choose whichever settings you want. i chose for it to automatically translate, but you can do whatever, it's also very easy to switch between settings too.

6. finally press any volume button (just one to bring up the sound bar) and under the sound bar should be this symbol, all you have to do now is click on it and it should work

this is how it should look

i don't know how the translations will work on people with less common accents and also THIS IS GOOGLE, so the translations might be a bit off, but since i can't get qsmp tv to work on my phone and quackity is out to get ME specifically, this is the best i can do, and hopefully someone else finds this useful 😭😭😭

also you dont just have to use this for qsmp or streams in general so that's nice 😭😭😭

hopefully Google updates to have more languages too, for now that s it byyyeee

[ikemenfangirl]

Promise of Wizard : Boys Maid (JP) mobile game

🪄 Game: Promise of Wizard

🪄 Event: Drunken service with Crossdress

🪄 Start: February 19

SSR cards

◾️ Owen CV: Asanuma Shintaro #浅沼晋太郎

◾️ Shylock CV: Tachibana Shinnosuke #立花慎之介

R cards

◾️ Oz CV: Kondo Takashi #近藤隆

◾️ Mitile CV: Murase Ayumu #村瀬歩

Sample Voice : https://x.com/mahoyaku_info/status/1891065254878306369

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Title: Promise of Wizard

By: coly

Language: Japanese

Platform: iOS, Android

Website: https://mahoyaku.com/

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

X : https://x.com/mahoyaku_info

Promise of Wizard (Mahotsukai no Yakusoku)

👤 You can choose protagonist’s gender between Male or Female (training game)

Go to the magic kingdom, make friends, surviving and finding a way back to the original world.

DOWNLOAD (Japanese store)

🍎 iOS: https://apps.apple.com/jp/app/id1481949790

🤖 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.colyinc.mahoyaku

Characters design: ‪Dangmill

(https://x.com/dangmill_11)

[allthegeopolitics]

Telegram has quietly edited its FAQs to remove language stating that it doesn't moderate private and group chats, as reported by CoinDesk. A section with the heading "There's illegal content on Telegram. How do I take it down?" previously stated that content in chats and group chats remains between participants. Now, though, the section says that "all Telegram apps have 'Report' buttons" that will give a way for users to flag illegal content for the app's moderators. Users only have to tap the message on Android, or press and hold it on iOS, and choose the Report option. They can also take note of links to the content they want to report and send an email to the service's takedown email address (abuse@telegram.org). The change comes after Telegram chief Pavel Durov published his first public comment following his arrest on his channel. Durov was arrested at an airport in France in late August as part of authorities' investigation into the lack of moderation on the app and its failure to curb criminal activities. He was already released from custody, but he was charged with "complicity in distributing child pornography, illegal drugs and hacking software" on the messaging app, as well as "refusing to cooperate with investigations into illegal activity on the Telegram."

Continue Reading

[moonlit-tulip]

What's your favorite ebook-compatible reading software? Firefox EPUBReader isn't great, but I'm not what, if anything, works better.

Very short answer: for EPUBs, on Windows I use and recommend the Calibre reader, and on iOS I use Marvin but it's dying and no longer downloadable so my fallback recommendation is the native Apple Books app; for PDFs, on Windows I use Sumatra, and on iOS I use GoodReader; for CBZs, I use CDisplayEx on Windows and YACReader on iOS; and I don't use other platforms very often, so I can't speak as authoritatively about those, although Calibre's reader is cross-platform for Windows/Mac/Linux, and YACReader for Windows/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android, so they can serve as at least a minimum baseline of quality against which alternatives can be compared for those platforms.

Longer answer:

First off, I will say: yeah, Firefox EPUBReader isn't great. Neither, really, are most ebook readers. I have yet to find a single one that I'm fully satisfied with. I have an in-progress project to make one that I'm fully satisfied with, but it's been slow, probably isn't going to hit 1.0.0 release before next year at current rates, and isn't going to be actually definitively the best reader on the market for probably months or years post-release even assuming I succeed in my plans to keep up its development. So, for now, selection-of-ebook-readers tends to be very much a matter of choosing the best among a variety of imperfect options.

Formats-wise, there are a lot of ebook formats, but I'm going to collapse my answers down to focusing on just three, for simplicity. Namely: EPUB, PDF, and CBZ.

EPUB is the best representative of the general "reflowable-text ebook designed to display well on a wide variety of screens" genre. Other formats of similar nature exist—Kindle's MOBI and AZW3 formats, for instance (the latter of which is, in essence, just an EPUB in a proprietary Amazon wrapper)—but conversion between formats-in-this-broad-genre is generally pretty easy and not excessively lossy, so you're generally safe to convert to EPUB as needed if you've got different formats-in-this-genre and a reader that doesn't support those formats directly. (And it's rare for a program made by anyone other than Amazon to work for non-EPUB formats-in-this-genre and not for EPUBs.)

PDF is a pretty unique / distinctive format without any widely-used alternatives I'm aware of, unless you count AZW4 (which is a PDF in a proprietary Amazon wrapper). It's the best format I'm aware of for representations of books with rigid non-reflowable text-formatting, as with e.g. TTRPG rulebooks which do complicated things with their art-inserts and sidebars.

And CBZ serves here as a stand-in for the general category of "bunch of images in an archive file of some sort, ordered by filename", which is a common format for comics. CBZ is zip-based, CBR is RAR-based, CB7 is 7-zip-based, et cetera; but they're easy to convert between one another just by extracting one and then re-archiving it in one's preferred format, and CBZ is the most commonly distributed and the most commonly supported by readers, so it's the one I'm going to focus on.

With those prefaces out of the way, here are my comprehensive answers by (platform, format) pair:

Browser, EPUB

I'm unaware of any good currently-available browser-based readers for any of the big ebook formats. I've tried out EPUBReader for Firefox, as well as some other smaller Firefox-based reader extensions, and none of them have impressed me. I haven't tested any Chrome-based readers particularly extensively, but based on some superficial testing I don't have the sense that options are particularly great there either.

This state of affairs feels intuitively wrong to me. The browser is, in a significant sense, the natural home for EPUB-like reflowable-text ebooks, to a greater degree than it's the natural home for a great many of the other things people manage to warp it into being used for; after all, EPUBs are underlyingly made of HTML-file-trees. My own reader-in-progress will be browser-based. But nonetheless, for now, my advice for browser-based readers boils down to "don't use them unless you really need to".

If you do have to use one, EPUBReader is the best extension-based one I've encountered. I have yet to find a good non-extension-based website-based one, but am currently actively in the market for such a thing for slightly-high-context reasons I'll put in the tags.

Browser, PDF

Firefox and Chrome both have built-in PDF readers which are, like, basically functional and fine, even if not actively notably-good. I'm unaware of any browser-based PDF-reading options better than those two.

Browser, CBZ

If there exist any good options here, I'm not aware of them.

Windows, EPUB

Calibre's reader is, unfortunately, the best on the market right now. It doesn't have a very good scrolled display mode, which is a mark against it by my standards, and it's a bit slow to open books and has a general sense of background-clunkiness to its UI, but in terms of the quality with which it displays its content in paginated mode—including relatively-uncommon sorts of content that most readers get wrong, like vertical text—it's pretty unparalleled, and moreover it's got a generally wider range of features and UI-customization options than most readers offer. So overall it's my top recommendation on most axes, despite my issues with it.

There's also Sigil. I very emphatically don't actually recommend Sigil as a reader for most purposes—it's marketed as an EPUB editor, lacks various features one would want in a reader, and has a much higher-clutter UI than one would generally want in a reader—but its preview pane's display engine is even more powerful than Calibre's for certain purposes—it can successfully handle EPUBs which contain video content, for instance, which Calibre falls down on—so it can be a useful backup to have on hand for cases where Calibre's display-capabilities break down.

Windows, PDF

I use SumatraPDF and think it's pretty good. It's very much built for reading, rather than editing / formfilling / etc.; it's fast-to-launch, fast-to-load-pages, not too hard to configure to look nice on most PDFs, and generally lightweight in its UI.

When I need to do fancier things, I fall back on Adobe Reader, which is much more clunky on pretty much every axis for purposes of reading but which supports form-filling and suchlike pretty comprehensively.

(But I haven't explored this field in huge amounts of depth; plausibly there exist better options that I'm unaware of, particularly on the Adobe-reader-ish side of things. (I'd be a bit more surprised if there were something better than SumatraPDF within its niche, for Windows, and very interested in hearing about any such thing if it does exist.))

Windows, CBZ

My usual CBZ-reader for day-to-day use—which I also use for PDF-based comics, since it has various features which are better than SumatraPDF for the comic-reading use case in particular—is an ancient one called CDisplayEx which, despite its age, still manages to be a solid contender for best in its field; it's reasonably performant, it has most of the features I need (good handling of spreads, a toggle for left-to-right versus right-to-left reading, a good set of options for setting how the pages are fit into the monitor, the ability to force it forward by just one page when it's otherwise in two-page mode, et cetera), and in general it's a solid functional bit of software, at least by the standards of its field.

The reason I describe CDisplayEx as only "a solid contender for" best in its field, though, is: recently I had cause to try out YACReader, a reader I tried years ago on Windows and dismissed at the time, on Linux; and it was actually really good, like basically as good as CDisplayEx is on Windows. I haven't tried the more recent versions of YACReader on Windows directly, yet; but it seems pretty plausible that my issues with the older version are now resolved, that the modern Windows version is comparable to the Linux version, and therefore that it's on basically the same level as CDisplayEx quality-wise.

Mac, EPUB/PDF/CBZ

I don't use Mac often enough to have opinions here beyond "start with whatever cross-platform thing is good elsewhere, as a baseline, and go on from there". Don't settle for any EPUB reader on Mac worse than the Calibre one, since Calibre works on Mac. (I've heard vague good things about Apple's native one; maybe it's actually a viable option?) Don't settle for any CBZ reader on Mac worse than YACReader, since YACReader works on Mac. Et cetera. (For PDFs I don't have any advice on what to use even as baseline, unfortunately; for whatever reason, PDF readers, or at least the better ones, seem to tend not to be natively cross-platform.)

Linux, EPUB

For the most part, my advice is the same as Windows: just go with the Calibre reader (and maybe use Sigil as a backup for edge cases). However, if you, like me, prefer scrolled EPUB-reading over paginated EPUB-reading, I'd also suggest checking out Foliate; while it's less powerful than the Calibre reader overall, with fewer features and more propensity towards breaking in edge cases, it's basically functional for normal books lacking unusual/tricky formatting, and, unlike Calibre, it has an actually-good scrolled display mode.

Linux, PDF

I have yet to find any options I'm fully satisfied with here, for the "fast launch and fast rendering and functional lightweight UI" niche that I use SumatraPDF for on Windows. Among the less-good-but-still-functional options I've tried out: SumatraPDF launched via Wine takes a while to start up, but once launched it has the usual nice SumatraPDF featureset. Zathura with the MuPDF backend is very pleasantly-fast, but has a somewhat-unintuitive keyboard-centric control scheme and is hard to configure. And qpdfview offers a nice general-purpose PDF-reading UI, including being quick to launch, but its rendering backend is slower than either Sumatra's or Zathura's so it's less good for paging quickly through large/heavy PDFs.

Linux, CBZ

YACReader, as mentioned previously in the Windows section, is pretty definitively the best option I've found here, and its Linux version is a solid ~equal to CDisplayEx's Windows version. Like CDisplayEx, it's also better than more traditional PDF readers for reading PDF-based comics.

iOS/iPadOS, EPUB

My current main reading app is Marvin. However, it hasn't been updated in years, and is no longer available on the app store, so I'm currently in the process of getting ready to migrate elsewhere in anticipation of Marvin's likely permanent breakage some time in the next few years. Thus I will omit detailed discussion of Marvin and instead discuss the various other at-least-vaguely-comparably-good options on the market.

For general-purpose reading, including scrolled reading if that's your thing, Apple's first-party Books app turns out to be surprisingly good. It's not the best in terms of customization of display-style, but it's basically solidly functional, moreso than the vast majority of the apps on the market.

For reading of books with vertical text in particular, meanwhile, I use Yomu, which is literally the only reader I've encountered to date on any platform which has what I'd consider to be a sensible and high-quality way of handling scrolled reading of vertical-text-containing books. While I don't recommend it for more general purposes, due to awkward handling of EPUBs' tables of contents (namely, kind of ignoring them and doing its own alternate table-of-contents thing it thinks is better), it is extremely good for that particular niche, as well as being more generally solid-aside-from-the-TOC-thing.

iOS/iPadOS, PDF

I use GoodReader. I don't know if it's the best in the market, but it's very solidly good enough for everything I've tried to do with it thus far. It's fast; its UI is good at getting out of my way, while still packing in all the features I want as options when I go looking for them (most frequently switching between two-page-with-front-cover and two-page-without-front-cover display for a given book); also in theory it has a bunch of fancy PDF-editing features for good measure, although in practice I never use those and can't comment on their quality. But, as a reader, it's very solidly good enough for me, and I wish I could get a reader like it for desktop.

iOS/iPadOS, CBZ

YACReader has an iOS version; following the death of my former favorite comic reader for iOS (ComicRack), it's very solidly the best option I'm aware of on the market. (And honestly would be pretty competitive even if ComicRack were still around.) I recommend it here as I do on Linux.

Android, EPUB/PDF/CBZ

It's been years since I've had an Android device, and accordingly have very little substantial advice here. (I'm expecting to move back to Android for my next phone-and-maybe-also-tablet, out of general preferring-open-hardware-and-software-when-practical feelings, but it'll plausibly be a while, because Apple is much better at long-lasting hardware and software than any Android manufacturers I'm aware of.) For EPUB, I recall Moon+ reader was the best option I could find back circa 2015ish, but that's long enough ago that plausibly things have changed substantially at this point. For CBZ, both YACReader and CDisplayEx have Android versions, although I haven't tried either and so can't comment on their quality. For PDF, you're on your own; I have no memories or insights there.

Conclusion

...and that's it. If there are other major platforms on which ebook-reader software can be chosen, I'm failing to think of them currently, and this is what I've got for all platforms I have managed to think of.

In the future... well, I hope my own reader-in-development (slated for 1.0.0 release as a Firefox extension with only EPUB support, with ambitions of eventually expanding to cover other platforms and other formats) will one day join this recommendation-pile, but it's currently not yet in anything resembling a recommendable form. And I hope that there are lots of good reader-development projects in progress that I currently don't know about; but, if there are, I currently don't know about them.

So, overall, this is all I've got! I hope it's helpful.

[magicalyumeko]

🎀 Magical Girl Games - Part 2🎀

click here for Part 1 | Part 3 coming soon!

Bikkuri! Tobidasu! Mahou no Pen (3DS)

A drawing adventure that expands the world by drawing various things using a "magic pen" that turns what you draw into a real thing.

Using the stylus as a "magic pen", you can draw pictures requested by townspeople on the screen, and the drawn objects will pop out of the screen! You'll feel like a wizard!

MahoCole: Mahō ☆ Idol Collection (3DS)

MahoCole is a rhythm game for 3DS. You play as a very kawaii heroine named Plum Hoshikawa whose goal is to save the inhabitants of a magical world. To do this, she must thaw their hearts with her magical singing and dancing by correctly pressing the buttons that appear on the screen in time with the music.

Miitopia (3DS/NSW)

Miitopia is a quirky, lighthearted role-playing game where you create a team of Mii characters—customizable avatars based on yourself, friends, or anyone you like—and set off on a silly, whimsical adventure to defeat the Dark Lord who’s stealing faces. It combines classic RPG elements like turn-based combat with fun relationship dynamics, goofy humor, and tons of customization.

Pretty Princess Party (NSW)

Pretty Princess Party is a charming and relaxing life simulation game where you play as a princess restoring a magical castle to its former glory. You decorate rooms, learn princess skills like dancing and baking, and unlock outfits to customize your character. It's all about cute vibes, creativity, and living your best royal life!

Rune Factory 4 (3DS/NSW)

Rune Factory 4 is a fantasy farming RPG that blends farming, dungeon crawling, and romance. As a hero with amnesia, you manage a town, grow crops, fight monsters, and build relationships with charming villagers—including the option to marry and start a family. It’s cozy, adventurous, and full of magical charm!

Mika and the witch's mountain (PS4/PS5, Xbox One/X|S, NSW, PC)

Mika and the Witch’s Mountain is a cozy, open-world adventure game where you play as Mika, a young witch-in-training aiming to prove her worth. To complete her training, she takes on the role of a magical courier, delivering packages across a charming island using her broomstick. As you explore the island, you'll meet quirky villagers, uncover secrets, and upgrade your broom to enhance your flying abilities. 

The game draws inspiration from Studio Ghibli's Kiki’s Delivery Service and features a cel-shaded art style reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

Sun Haven (NSW, PC)

Sun Haven is a cozy fantasy farming sim where you grow crops, explore magical worlds, fight monsters, and build relationships. Play solo or with friends, and choose your own path—peaceful farmer or spell-slinging hero!

Genshin Impact (PS4/PS5, PC, Android/iOS, Xbox Series X/S)

Genshin Impact is an open-world action RPG where you explore the fantasy land of Teyvat, switch between elemental characters, and battle powerful enemies. With a rich story, stunning visuals, and real-time combat, it’s all about adventure, discovery, and building your dream team.

Calico (NSW, PC, Xbox One, PS4/PS5)

Calico is a whimsical community sim where you rebuild a magical cat café, fill it with adorable animals, decorate with cozy furniture, and bake delightful treats. It's all about creating a warm, fuzzy atmosphere in a pastel-colored world.

[heartschoicegames]

New game! Their Majesties’ Pleasure by Leia Talon

New game! Their Majesties' Pleasure by Leia Talon! is now available on Steam, and in the Heart's Choice app on iOS and Android. It's 33% off until June 22!

https://www.choiceofgames.com/hearts-choice/their-majesties-pleasure/

In this enchanted sexual escapade, will you revel with mysterious rogues, wily Fae, the Prince, or the Princess? Where will your heart and loyalty lead you as the kingdom trembles on the edge of war?

Their Majesties’ Pleasure is a 225,000-word interactive erotic fantasy novel by Leia Talon, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

As a member of the royal guard, it is your duty to protect the heirs to the throne: the rebellious, fun-loving brother and sister who lead you on a merry chase outside the palace. They open you up to a world that you never knew before: a secret network of assassins, corrupt city officials, and a cabaret brimming with songs, spirits, and sex. And when you are done carousing in the city, you can move into the dark of the magic-filled forest, where demigods and Fae throw jubilant, bacchanal revels, which include orgies for those so inclined.

But the forest is not a peaceful neighbor, and as the enmities of generations past rise up, the realm begins to tip towards war. You are at the center of a tangle of intrigue, and your loyalty is tested at every turn. Your actions could spell the difference between a tentative peace or fierce battle on two fronts. 

Where will you find pleasure? Will you seduce the dark-haired Princess Lissa at a revel in the Darkwood, as she indulges her insatiable thirst for magical secrets? Or do you prefer her lithe, muscular brother, Prince Julian, entrenched with enemies of the Crown? Perhaps you'll have Javier, The Rogue King, the broad-shouldered crime boss who runs the the city's cabaret? Or Queen Edenia, the curvy Darkwood demigoddess who will let you taste her elixir of stardust? Or Galen, a golden-haired Fae prince whose warrior instincts are as honed as his skills in bed?

And what happens if your allegiance to the realm comes into conflict with the devotion of your heart? Which will you choose: loyalty or love? Can you find a way to have both?

• Play as male, female, or nonbinary; gay, straight, bi; asexual; monogamous or polyamorous.

• Romance a provocative prince, a feisty princess, a rogue king, a demigoddess, or an immortal warrior.

• Choose high-heat or sweet options, or avoid sex scenes entirely with lively conversation.

• Pledge your loyalty to the King, turn away from the Crown to side with its enemies - or become a spy to play both sides against the middle.

• Plunge into a steamy urban underworld full of assassins, criminals, and riotous taverns.

• Indulge in mysterious Fae revels, with magical food and drink to heighten your senses and otherworldly music to accompany your dances.

• Uncover the secrets of ages past to help prevent - or to incite - a future war.

Indulge your fantasies in Their Majesties’ Pleasure.

[amythetraveler]

Hello there,wonderful reader!!Welcome to my safe space!!

Ive decided to start an acc on tumblr to also share my shifting stuff and my journey to my dr here.

**This post will be updated as time goes on...

Also,More Information Below...

My youtube channel below:✨️👇🏽👇🏽✨️

My tiktok in case my tumblr gets deleted or smth:👇🏽👇🏽

🦋Realities i want to shift(not in an cretain order):

🦋Dune(yea i havent seen ppl talk abt shifting to this one,so i made this one mainly because of Leto Atreides...Yeah i wanna be his duchess,and he wont die on my dr,that man deserved better),

🦋Stranger Things(im currently choosing between season 1 and 3 because i want to get used to the dr before the events of s4),

🦋Big hero 6(yeah id admit it,im there mainly bc of tadashi and baymax),

🦋Harry Potter(maybe,or maybe not bc it involves war and idk if i would go there tbh),

🦋Berserk(yeah i wanna be guts sister and meet judeau,that man deserved better),

🦋Star Wars sequels(but my dr not being ruined with the whole palapatine thing,or making it better than what it turned out to be in the movies),

🦋Ballerina in 19th century(i wanna be a famous ballet dancer without the racism of that time and various mofifications without making it a 21st century modern dr)

🦋Twilight movies(yeah ik its sound dumb,but i like the 1st movie color pallette,it has SO much blue,and yes im aware of the toxicity of the main couple and jacob as a character)

🦋Game Of Thrones,(with various script ajustments from the shows that we all know)

🦋Castlevania but its 21st Century,(obv with dracula as my so)

🦋The Walking Dead Show,(ik this one is also pretty popular for shifters,but i wanna watch the whole show first),

🦋AND MORE Drs!!(imma updare soon on that)

Dni: Homophobes,rap11ts,anti shifters,ped00s,racists,more!!

ALSO,FORGOT TO MENTION:

Some codes i will use:

😐=Random cr Rant abt my daily life,

🤣=Random Rant i do Abt an movie,series,etc from this Cr,

😍=Random Motivation for u guys(yeah i wanna give motivation to the ones who arent motivated :')

😅=Stuff Abt My Drs Script,

These are "Codes" for when u know of wich dr im talking About or when im talking about an experience in a certain dr:

When im at Castlevania in 21st century=🫠

When im at my 2nd castlevania Dr(the og netflix show)=🎻

When im at Game Of Thrones=🎵

When im at Harry potter=🪽

When im At Dune=🏜

When im at Berserk=🌸

When im at Bh6=🧭

When im at Stranger Things=💥

Ballerina in 19th century=✨️

Twilight=💝

My youtuber and celebrity dr duo=��️

SOME STUFF ABT MY CR SELF(AKA ME):

🦋Gender:Female,

🦋Where im from:planet earth :),

🦋pronouns:She/Her,

🦋U can call me amy(i dont like to reveal private info abt me),

🦋I have been on shifting since maybe 2021-2022 and been between leaving it and returning to shifting due to various reasons(mainly bc i cant stick to one dr and keep going until i arrive there lol),

🦋I havent arrived to any of my drs atm(ill update when this happens),

🦋Where i have my scripts:Lifa app(its an app thats on the ios and android,its pretty useful TRUST ME),

Take care and enjoy my blog!!

[govindhtech]

Obsidian And RTX AI PCs For Advanced Large Language Model

How to Utilize Obsidian‘s Generative AI Tools. Two plug-ins created by the community demonstrate how RTX AI PCs can support large language models for the next generation of app developers.

Obsidian Meaning

Obsidian is a note-taking and personal knowledge base program that works with Markdown files. Users may create internal linkages for notes using it, and they can see the relationships as a graph. It is intended to assist users in flexible, non-linearly structuring and organizing their ideas and information. Commercial licenses are available for purchase, however personal usage of the program is free.

Obsidian Features

Electron is the foundation of Obsidian. It is a cross-platform program that works on mobile operating systems like iOS and Android in addition to Windows, Linux, and macOS. The program does not have a web-based version. By installing plugins and themes, users may expand the functionality of Obsidian across all platforms by integrating it with other tools or adding new capabilities.

Obsidian distinguishes between community plugins, which are submitted by users and made available as open-source software via GitHub, and core plugins, which are made available and maintained by the Obsidian team. A calendar widget and a task board in the Kanban style are two examples of community plugins. The software comes with more than 200 community-made themes.

Every new note in Obsidian creates a new text document, and all of the documents are searchable inside the app. Obsidian works with a folder of text documents. Obsidian generates an interactive graph that illustrates the connections between notes and permits internal connectivity between notes. While Markdown is used to accomplish text formatting in Obsidian, Obsidian offers quick previewing of produced content.

Generative AI Tools In Obsidian

A group of AI aficionados is exploring with methods to incorporate the potent technology into standard productivity practices as generative AI develops and speeds up industry.

Community plug-in-supporting applications empower users to investigate the ways in which large language models (LLMs) might improve a range of activities. Users using RTX AI PCs may easily incorporate local LLMs by employing local inference servers that are powered by the NVIDIA RTX-accelerated llama.cpp software library.

It previously examined how consumers might maximize their online surfing experience by using Leo AI in the Brave web browser. Today, it examine Obsidian, a well-known writing and note-taking tool that uses the Markdown markup language and is helpful for managing intricate and connected records for many projects. Several of the community-developed plug-ins that add functionality to the app allow users to connect Obsidian to a local inferencing server, such as LM Studio or Ollama.

To connect Obsidian to LM Studio, just select the “Developer” button on the left panel, load any downloaded model, enable the CORS toggle, and click “Start.” This will enable LM Studio’s local server capabilities. Because the plug-ins will need this information to connect, make a note of the chat completion URL from the “Developer” log console (“http://localhost:1234/v1/chat/completions” by default).

Next, visit the “Settings” tab after launching Obsidian. After selecting “Community plug-ins,” choose “Browse.” Although there are a number of LLM-related community plug-ins, Text Generator and Smart Connections are two well-liked choices.

For creating notes and summaries on a study subject, for example, Text Generator is useful in an Obsidian vault.

Asking queries about the contents of an Obsidian vault, such the solution to a trivia question that was stored years ago, is made easier using Smart Connections.

Open the Text Generator settings, choose “Custom” under “Provider profile,” and then enter the whole URL in the “Endpoint” section. After turning on the plug-in, adjust the settings for Smart Connections. For the model platform, choose “Custom Local (OpenAI Format)” from the options panel on the right side of the screen. Next, as they appear in LM Studio, type the model name (for example, “gemma-2-27b-instruct”) and the URL into the corresponding fields.

The plug-ins will work when the fields are completed. If users are interested in what’s going on on the local server side, the LM Studio user interface will also display recorded activities.

Transforming Workflows With Obsidian AI Plug-Ins

Consider a scenario where a user want to organize a trip to the made-up city of Lunar City and come up with suggestions for things to do there. “What to Do in Lunar City” would be the title of the new note that the user would begin. A few more instructions must be included in the query submitted to the LLM in order to direct the results, since Lunar City is not an actual location. The model will create a list of things to do while traveling if you click the Text Generator plug-in button.

Obsidian will ask LM Studio to provide a response using the Text Generator plug-in, and LM Studio will then execute the Gemma 2 27B model. The model can rapidly provide a list of tasks if the user’s machine has RTX GPU acceleration.

Or let’s say that years later, the user’s buddy is visiting Lunar City and is looking for a place to dine. Although the user may not be able to recall the names of the restaurants they visited, they can review the notes in their vault Obsidian‘s word for a collection of notes to see whether they have any written notes.

A user may ask inquiries about their vault of notes and other material using the Smart Connections plug-in instead of going through all of the notes by hand. In order to help with the process, the plug-in retrieves pertinent information from the user’s notes and responds to the request using the same LM Studio server. The plug-in uses a method known as retrieval-augmented generation to do this.

Although these are entertaining examples, users may see the true advantages and enhancements in daily productivity after experimenting with these features for a while. Two examples of how community developers and AI fans are using AI to enhance their PC experiences are Obsidian plug-ins.

Thousands of open-source models are available for developers to include into their Windows programs using NVIDIA GeForce RTX technology.

Read more on Govindhtech.com

[choiceofgames]

New game

New Game! The third installment of the "Claw, Shadow, and Sage" series is here!

"Werewolves 3: Evolution's End" by Jeffrey Dean is now available on Steam, iOS, and Android. It’s 30% off until November 21st. Please reshare this with friends! The more downloads we get in the first week, the higher we’ll rank in the App Store and Steam.

https://www.choiceofgames.com/werewolves-3-evolutions-end/

After years of conspiracies, secrets, and escalation, the fight has finally come out into the open.

In one corner, there's the Human Sovereignty Movement (HSM), a paramilitary mercenary force, dedicated to eradicating all werewolves, led by your father, Colonel Williams, who is secretly a werewolf.

Opposing them, there's Packleader Sonoma, a werewolf supremacist who would gladly kill and even torture HSM operatives. She plans to deploy an experimental bioweapon to turn humans into werewolves (never mind that most humans don't survive the transformation), starting with the HSM.

The US military is fighting both sides, as high-ranking werewolf undercover agents inside the military try to stop the HSM and Sonoma's bioweapon, even if that means killing your entire pack.

And then there's Maker, the mysterious scientist who developed Sonoma's bioweapon, performing cruel and unforgivable experiments on humans and werewolves alike in her obsession with "accelerating evolution." When your pack fell prey to a mysterious disease that unleashes feral rage, Maker developed a weekly injection to suppress your inner beast. Now, the pack must protect her until she can discover a permanent cure for the disease. But Maker's true motivations are unknown. Is she your pack's last hope or its greatest threat? Will your greatest enemy turn out to be your own feral self?

What future are you truly working towards? Do you wish to bring about peace between humans and werewolves, or to destroy humanity so that wolves can reign in the ashes? Choose your friends carefully, and keep your enemies at bay, because the ultimate battle is coming.