When I try to get people on Nostr, the vast majority of them find the UX experience trash, on nearly all clients. Nostur.com is one of the few people aren’t immediately disgusted by. But most people without a Mac quit. User retention on Nostr is extremely low because nearly all the clients are confusing for both normal people and even the technically inclined, and the common search results for “Nostr client” refer people to dozens of clients, most of which are barely functional and have a terrible user experience, others which are actually broken on some platforms with no warnings to users that their OS won’t function. I’ve seen multiple people try multiple Nostr clients and talk about their experience, and quit. This is the vast majority of people I refer to Nostr. The clients are hot garbage.
Discussion
All you’ve given me is it’s confusing and terrible, without any other details.
“Normal people are referred to dozens of clients with questionable usability by a simple search” is enough to know that the user retention is trash. It’s a detail in itself. There’s no encouragement for people who are the top ranked search results for “Nostr client” to be actually referring people to specific clients. Gossip, for example, is functionally broken for any normal user on Mac, in that you have to read documentation, open a terminal, and run a chattr command to get it to work. How many people are going to do this? Yet it is still generally referred to people who are Desktop users. Nostur.com is a good client that people like for Mac, but it generally is not present in these pages referring people to clients, or is listed as a Desktop client and not a Mac client. How many clients are normal people expected to try? Hint: few try more than one. When they are told to use Gossip, and they run the Application package and it returns an error with no indication of how it may be solved, they are going to quit immediately. The user retention of Mac desktop users is likely a single digit percent.
You are describe a search result issue not a Nostr client issue (except with gossip). Client devs can’t fix what a searcher sees. We need to know which website they come across to know what they see. Then we can approach that website to try to recommend better clients.
If Gossip has remained broken on Mac all for years and the dev is completely unwilling to make his app conform to the normal unsigned app security exception workflow of MacOS, demanding users read a README file they have no indication they should read and execute a terminal command, that means that glaring usability issues are considered no big deal for user onboarding. There is zero effort to make an onboarding experience that makes sense from someone doing a web search for “Nostr” or “Nostr client”.
This screenshot is the first DDG result for Nostr clients, nostr.com — it specifically recommends Gossip of one of only 5 clients to Mac web browsers. Gossip is glaringly broken for any normal Mac user. The most usable client for Mac users, nostr:npub1n0stur7q092gyverzc2wfc00e8egkrdnnqq3alhv7p072u89m5es5mk6h0, is the fifth result, right after the client that throws an error on execution with no hint of solving it. This is normal in the Nostr ecosystem.
I understand that a dev can’t solve this, but “follow me on Nostr” always leads to a massive, multi page long chatlog of people saying “this client doesn’t work, this client doesn’t work, I can’t figure out how to follow you on this client”.
We can try to curate better client recommendations on nostr.com
Maybe nostr:npub1c878wu04lfqcl5avfy3p5x83ndpvedaxv0dg7pxthakq3jqdyzcs2n8avm can help?
As specifically for Gossip - I agree that if what you describe is still the current process then we should not recommend this client. But I don’t know if nostr:npub1acg6thl5psv62405rljzkj8spesceyfz2c32udakc2ak0dmvfeyse9p35c is even getting further funding to make it easy to use … a lot of this depends on developers ability to continue working on clients.
I’ll look at nostr.com closer soon to see what can be done - but ultimately depends on nostr:npub1c878wu04lfqcl5avfy3p5x83ndpvedaxv0dg7pxthakq3jqdyzcs2n8avm
Normally when I go to get some kind of client software in any category, it uses my browser’s user agent to make an immediate suggestion of what I probably want to download. Number of pages for a search for Nostr client that do this: 0
Yeah we should implement this nostr:npub1c878wu04lfqcl5avfy3p5x83ndpvedaxv0dg7pxthakq3jqdyzcs2n8avm
Pretty please 🙏
We should probably not recommend “other stuff” clients and limit to timeline use case otherwise it’s too confusing. 🫤
It has a terrible onboarding flow I got a feed first time I tried but have no patience for the unclear ui. I know from experience native apps are a huge pain and radically different between platforms.
My suggestion is consider organizing to donate an old but current enough MacBook or Mac mini. I'm open to that too. Building for windows can be done on Linux, but neither macos or iOS. You must have a Mac to test and build properly. I'm pretty sure Mike doesn't have one. Neither do I but I have less options for ui libraries as I refuse to use c/rust
Gossip developer here. I mostly agree with you. I've stopped developing nostr things because I've gotten busy with other parts of my life, but also I'm less hopeful about nostr's future. Nostr devs don't flock together, they scatter like cats, and argue that the people will choose. Well, it is likely that the people will choose none of the above because of the lack of compatibility and clean experience.
My personal opinion is that while the software should be very strongly distributed and censorship resistant, there should still be a centralized group that maintains a centralized standard that evolves very slowly. Sure, that centralized group could become captured...in which case people should leave nostr for whatever replaces it. And it probably wouldn't happen for a very long time. Sure, there will be people that bitch about such a thing (I wont name names, you know who I'm talking about) but they can just be ignored... if they don't like nostr they can just start another protocol (like I am doing in my spare time).
As for gossip on Apple, I'm not the right person to sign my soul away to the late Steve Jobs. And because I won't sign their developer contract, by law I can't make the user experience smooth. At least I made it available. I might have simply said "sorry, it doesn't work on Apple".
Gossip shouldn't be the go-to nostr application for Apple, or honestly, for any platform. I'm just one guy with developer-centric sensibilities. Devs like all the settings and feedback, and a big-screen interface. But it doesn't offer as much hand holding or simplicity that normies are going to want. I have nothing to do with any lists of clients, though. If gossip is demoted or removed from such lists, my feelings won't be hurt. Like I say, I'm not even developing it anymore.
> Gossip shouldn't be the go-to nostr application for Apple, or honestly, for any platform
Unsure of this statement, it is still the best native client for Linux desktop users.
Try to recall specific problem areas if you can. Constructive feedback is welcome! 🙏
I can't confirm that at all! There are certainly confusing clients (I still don't understand Yakihonne, I can hardly even remember the name!). But Primal, for example, is almost identical to the classic Twitter client. Everyone should be able to get along with that!?!?
Primal is a special edge case, in that it is a centralized client. The feed of posts comes from Primal’s servers — that’s why in the recent AWS outage, Primal stopped working entirely.
I specifically want my followers using any client but Primal, because using Primal is essentially anointing them with the permanent power to censor people’s timelines forever (whether willfully, or more likely forced to by regulators and App Store operators). It is recreating the problem of the fediverse, and a centralizing attack on Nostr.
Maybe this is a kook position, but I am on Nostr because I specifically do not want a central authority being able to shape discussions.
I will admit that Primal has a very nice user experience. But it is easier to write centralized clients than decentralized clients. Making a centralized client for Nostr makes it much easier to spend resources making a very compelling UI. But it is also two steps back with that step forward.
yes - Primal serves a special purpose also - is much needed too. similar ones - 80% human npubs doesnot understand or practice decentralization - so need smooth on-boarding experience 1st
1% of 15k daily users HERE host own client app - aka self suffocient decentrialized
I tried Coracle and it doesn't really work. It doesn't seem to let you interact with anyone else's posts. Primal isn't perfect, it takes you back to the top of someones feed when you return from an individual post, but it's more functional in general
I'll probably try some more
Try x21.social if you’re on desktop!
Will give it a go, thanks
Would love your feedback if you come across any funkiness 🙏
You’re a sick pedophile.
The leftside tray bleeds over the post feed on Safari (screenshot attached). Otherwise very nice looking. Works great in Firefox.
What resolution or device are you on here?
2025 15 inch M4 MacBook Air, Tahoe, default text sizing and display settings
Ok ty I’ll troubleshoot!
This should be fixed now.
Yeah the site seems to work a lot better than on Primal
The main problem with Nostr is that almost all of the posts are by Crypto Bro schemers and Low IQ Neo Nazis, not exactly appealing to the general public.
There's also the fact that most people who aren't already in these spheres don't want to fuck around with public and private keys etc. I know it's incredibly simple but it's a barrier to entry. I guess they're required rather than a normal login due to the decentralised nature of Nostr.
What about Damus?
I really like Damus, but I notice that when I refer new users to it they find it confusing and quit in the face of the unclear UI. I think if you aren’t previously exposed to Tweetdeck that it is a confusing experience. I loved Tweetdeck but it wasn’t a wildly successful product. Old Tweetdeck was the best Twitter client, but I had tons of complicated search columns. Normal users don’t need these features.
Have you used Primal?
Primal is a special edge case, in that it is a centralized client. The feed of posts comes from Primal’s servers —Nostr’s why in the recent AWS outage, Primal stopped working entirely.
I specifically want my followers using any client but Primal, because using Primal is essentially anointing them with the permanent power to censor people’s timelines forever (whether willfully, or more likely forced to by regulators and App Store operators). It is recreating the problem of the fediverse, and a centralizing attack on Nostr.
I will admit that Primal has a very nice user experience, but it is easier to write centralized software than decentralized software. Making a centralized client for Nostr makes it much easier to spend resources on UI/UX, but it is two steps forward with that one step back.
Primal didn’t stop working for me during the AWS outage. Did that happen to you? If you don’t use Primal, I’m not sure how you would know.
And why does using Primal give them power to censor? I still control my nsec. My posts are still sent to multiple relays (afaik). If they started to censor my posts, I would use another client. Just the fact that other clients exist is a strong deterrent against censorship.
Maybe Primal isn’t the *most* sovereign way to use Nostr, but if the alternative is that people leave because these “pure” clients have shit UX, then perhaps Primal is a necessary tool to bring people into Nostr.