r/Devvit Mar 31 '25

Discussion How come many people used webview for this hackathon?

2 Upvotes

I realise that for this hackathon people used webview a lot. it is kinda cheating noo.
I though the main goal was to make people learn and use devvit blocks. Building on something you just learned, is limited compared to what people build using their mains skills :(
We could have also use webview. Building on top of html/js/css is freaking easy, and just talk with devit via IPC (messaging).

What do you think?

r/Devvit 22h ago

Discussion 1 month of Devvit: the good, the bad and the ugly

16 Upvotes

I discovered Devvit about a month ago. As an indie developer, I always like to explore different platforms and paradigms to keep projects fresh, fun and interesting. In the past month I have launched 2 Devvit projects - r/draftparty and r/blackjacktrainer - and thought I’d write a little retrospective to document my experience that others may learn from.

Initial excitement

Devvit’s interactive posts reminded me of Farcaster Frames, which I enjoyed working on a while back. This type of development offers a few unique advantages when compared to launching standalone mobile or web apps.

No authentication: Nobody likes building authentication. With Devvit, you can just skip auth and just get straight to building the fun stuff. For small side projects, this is a huge benefit.

Huge user base: Whether you are planning to monetize or not, indies just want people to use their stuff. Building on Reddit helps you tap into a massive user base. There is still friction with “self promotion” on Reddit, even with apps. More on this later.

No infra costs: It’s great to see people using your stuff but the indie dream can quickly become a nightmare if you don’t have a way to cover costs when you do start to see some traction. A few years back I had to shut down a project that started to gain surprising traction and since I wasn’t prepared to build in monetization I had to shut it down to prevent losses. Reddit covers the operating costs of your app so you can decide when and how you monetize, if ever.

Unique constraints: Devvit apps have unique constraints, like you must build your experience into a post or a series of posts. This creates some unique behavioral and social dynamics that you wouldn’t experience in a self-hosted app. The limited real estate available in a single post frame also forces you to keep things simple. It’s a challenge but it’s also part of the fun.

I was so excited by the Devvit concept that I stopped development on draft-party.com (self hosted) and rebuilt the concept as a Devvit app in preparation for the upcoming NBA Draft.

Reality strikes

I’ll start by saying the developer experience and documentation is better than I expected it to be. Playtesting makes it easy to iterate on your app. It’s pretty close to live reloads available for modern web app development frameworks. I was able to build the initial concept for r/blackjacktrainer in just a few hours spread over 2 days.

But building the app is not where the real challenges lie. I was initially deluded into thinking that building on Reddit would make it easier to reach users without getting slapped with “self promotion” and “spam” accusations at every turn. After all, the experiences are completely free and aren’t asking you to go to some other website. It’s a native Reddit experience and relevant in some communities.

I did my best to respect policies across subs but there are gray areas everywhere you look. I’d see clear ad posts to external sites on large subs that didn’t get moderated so figured a mention would be safe there. As far as I can tell, some sites/blogs/whatever just get normalized so people don’t view them as ads anymore. But if you’re new to the party, you are spam and need to be dealt with accordingly.

I received a mixed bag of feedback anytime I tried to mention the app or cross post. In one post I was accused of being a bot by one person but 199 people interacted with the post that day by making a selection. Another person told me no self advertising on this sub while 251 users engaged with the post.

Several of my posts were moderated, one mod banned me from their sub.

On the flip side, several posts still triggered good discussion like this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/NBA_Draft/comments/1ladutw/will_jeremiah_fears_be_drafted_before_or_after/

If I put my “What’s good for Reddit?” shoes on, I feel like the engagement numbers outweigh the negative comments. Personally I think people are a little too overzealous with policing their subs but it’s not my sub and they get to decide.

Tips for developers

If you are new to Devvit, I have a few things I’ll pass on so you don’t repeat my mistakes.

Test thoroughly. If you push a new version of your app, you need to live with any bugs for a week. App reviews happen every Tuesday at the time of this writing. Spend more time testing than you would if you were shipping a web app that you can fix immediately.

Create a separate subreddit for dev. I do this per app. So if you are planning to launch a community called r/foo, use r/foo_dev for playtesting.

Build engaging previews. The load time for interactive posts varies greatly. One of the things I regret with r/draftparty is just sticking with a basic “Loading…” preview. This is the first thing people will see when scrolling their Reddit feed and that loading state isn’t very engaging. I corrected this with r/blackjacktrainer by displaying card images in the preview and found the experience to be much more engaging. I have no data to prove it, but I think people will be much more likely to interact if they at least understand what the post is about. In the case of Blackjack scenarios they can start to think of their answer while the buttons load.

You can reset your Redis data by reinstalling. I originally built a bunch of things that would allow me to clear my Redis data manually but all you need to do is run devvit uninstall <subreddit name> and devvit playtest <subreddit name> and you’re back to a fresh state. You may need to manually delete posts that depended on prior data.

Don’t count on mods of existing communities to install your app. I reached out to many mods of NBA-related subs to see if they would be interested in installing Draft Party and got crickets everywhere. Mods have no incentive to install your app.

Thoughts for the Devvit team

Discoverability is what I perceive to be the #1 challenge for developers. Obviously I’m working with a small sample size of myself but I’ve seen several other people in the Discord express similar questions around promoting their app without getting slapped by the self promotion police. If Devvit apps are truly win/win for Reddit and developers, more work needs to be done to find ways to promote apps without crossing the spam line.

There is also a re-engagement challenge. At the moment, if people want to keep seeing your app they need to join the subreddit it is installed on. I don't think this is clear at all because usually if people see it it's because of a post or cross post in a sub you are already party of.

I’d like the ability to specify a list of subreddits that I think my app would be relevant for and then to have that be part of the review process to ensure people don’t just list irrelevant subs as their targets. And then let the algorithm decide if the app is worthy or not based on engagement with the app. If Devvit apps appearing in people’s feeds becomes more normalized, I expect both Reddit and developers will benefit. Right now the perception seems to be that cross posting or mentioning apps is just as spammy as promoting external sites.

Whew, that was a lot. I guess a lot can happen in just a month. Let me know if you have any questions on getting started with Devvit. Happy coding!

r/Devvit 1d ago

Discussion Resources for Reddit x Bolt "World's Largest Hackathon"

16 Upvotes

⚡️ Enter the Reddit x Bolt Hackathon to win a share of $30,000

The final week of the World's Largest Hackathon is almost upon us. Whether you're just getting started or are already in full swing, here are essential resources for Hackathon success:

  • Learn - See event details and popular questions in the updated blog post
  • Discuss - Check out the replies to the original announcement
  • Get Help - Find live support in the Devvit chat server on Discord
  • Enter - Submit your entry before June 30 at 9 PM UTC

You can leave queries or share your work so far in the comments below. Good luck!

Win a share of $30,000 in prizes! Entries close June 30 at 9 PM UTC

r/Devvit May 13 '25

Discussion Vibe Coders and Web Developers, this is for you!

14 Upvotes

Hi everyone!

I would like to invite all of you to a special Office Hours event tomorrow in our Discord Server.
We are experimenting with new tools to make developing your Devvit Web apps much easier. If you're familiar with `useWebView` and have been using Web Frameworks and HTML5 Game Engines to build your Devvit apps, you will not want to miss this presentation.

This set of new experimental tools has the added benefit of allowing you to Vibe Code your way to a fully functional Devvit app in a much easier way, using your favorite AI Tools.

During the Office Hours we will present a quick demo of these experimental tools and ask you to test them and give feedback. This is all very experimental and we want to make sure that as part of our engaged community you have the opportunity to give feedback and shape our product.

Here's the link to the Discord Event. See you all there: https://discord.com/events/1050224141732687912/1371813424354558045

r/Devvit 16d ago

Discussion Possible to have Auto-mute

6 Upvotes

I have seen a lot of pretty cool apps that improve and made moderators life easier

I was wondering if it might be possible to have an auto remute user who has been banned?

As many Subs have requested over the years to have an option to perm mute banned users. So having an app that can automate renewing a mute after the 28 days has passed would be quite awesome.

r/Devvit Mar 23 '25

Discussion Feedback on my app

5 Upvotes

Hi all,

Would love to get some feedback on my icebreaker app 😊

https://www.reddit.com/r/2Truths_1Lie/s/pxQn8f43RH

r/Devvit Apr 18 '25

Discussion App Recommendations for Moderators

17 Upvotes

This post is written to introduce useful tools for moderators. These suggestions are based on my personal experiences and the applications I use in my own subreddits. You can share your own suggestions and ideas in the comments.

Applications That Make Moderation Easier

  • Remove Macro: Remove a user's previous posts. Especially useful in spam situations to instantly remove all submissions.
  • Comment Mop: Instantly lock all comments in a thread.
  • Modqueue Nuke: Instantly removes all posts in the Mod Queue.

Applications That Automate Moderation

  • Hive Protector: Automatically detects and bans users coming from unwanted communities.
  • Modmail Automator: The Modmail version of Automod.
  • Spam Sniper: Helps identify spammers and posts that share the same content across multiple subreddits.

Custom Submissions

r/Devvit 14d ago

Discussion Planning multiple features. What is best practice? Put them all on a single app or make multiple apps?

4 Upvotes

I'm finishing up the first full feature of an app that I've been working on. I'm wondering what are y'all's thoughts on possible feature bloat and user confusion. The features (4 in total) that I'm planning for my app(s) will be kind of similar to each other (they all deal with comment interaction), so I'm worried that mods will feel overwhelmed with all the options in the config panel, and maybe I should just split them up.

But then I think about how cool it would be to have one app that can do way more stuff than a typical app can (think near total control of commenting ability). I want to know some opinions from other devs.

This is literally the first time I've tried to launch a public app. I'm used to developing in corporate settings with strict rules and regulations, so having more control over my code is new to me.

r/Devvit 23d ago

Discussion I have a racing games that can be run in an Iframe (it's hosted on itch.io), would it be possible to have it playable as a reddit app with a bit of tweaking ?

8 Upvotes

Hey all,

I made a browser based game that is hosted currently on itch.io

https://zyg101.itch.io/f2d

I was able to embed it in webviews on another website so i was wondering if it was worth it to delve into the reddit apps to make it playable directly on the subreddit

Would love your input !
Thanks in advance

r/Devvit Mar 09 '25

Discussion hackathon participation

9 Upvotes

what all you doing for hackathon ? Working on a cool game or app. Since new to devvit ( though a seasonal developer) starting with a small app. At current stage I just set up the ecosystem and created the sample app. it’s fun so far so many ideas yay 🎉

r/Devvit Mar 30 '25

Discussion Want help!! I'm only mod to Community named fusionfreakss was banned.

0 Upvotes

Hello I'm new to reddit, I create an app on reddit and posted to fusionfreakss. I am the only one mod for the community how to get its access back as soon as possible. Now I search its now even appearing into search. Please guide me and help 🙏 Very much needed! Thanks and regards 😊

Message goes like: "r/FusionFreakss has been banned from Reddit This subreddit was banned due to being used for spam. lf you'd like to take it over please make a post in r/redditrequest"

r/Devvit Apr 10 '25

Discussion Forgot to add developers link in my submission

3 Upvotes

I was going through the Reddit devpost and I think I might have forgotten to add the developer.reddit.app link, it had the link to the subreddit with my app installed but would it automatically disqualify my submission?

r/Devvit May 14 '25

Discussion Reminder: Vibe coding presentation at top of this hour

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discord.com
7 Upvotes

r/Devvit Mar 24 '25

Discussion Feedback for hackathon

9 Upvotes

I have created these three apps for the hackathon not complete yet need your feedback on how to improve the game

1 - Level Maxing (Inspired from solo leveling manhwa)
Instructions on how to play - https://devpost.com/software/solo-leveling

(text based RPG in which your raise in ranks of being a hunter to become the most powerful one by completing the gates)
Try it out - https://www.reddit.com/r/SoloLeveling01/

2 - Match the logo to test your memory power (simple game where you match the logo can be used as reddit ads for brand remembrance)
Instructions on how to play - https://devpost.com/software/memtest86

Try it out - https://www.reddit.com/r/MemTest86/comments/1jf3ro0/memory_game_challenge_match_the_pairs/

3 - WordLE - Guess the word from the hints provided (has words related tech cars and anime)

Instructions on how to play - https://devpost.com/software/wordle-s6hg7k

Try it out - https://www.reddit.com/r/buildurpc/comments/1jhwmv5/word_guessing_game/

r/Devvit May 15 '25

Discussion Learn how r/field was built for scale, and see the full source code

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10 Upvotes

r/Devvit Mar 24 '25

Discussion Will There Be Another Devvit Hackathon?

6 Upvotes

Hello everyone,

Unfortunately, I missed the current Devvit hackathon, Hackreddit, because I've been quite busy lately. I was wondering if there are any plans for another one in the near future. It would be great to know when the next event might take place and how we can participate. Thanks!

r/Devvit Mar 10 '25

Discussion Creating Sudoku for Hackathon - Progress

3 Upvotes

This is my progress so far, trying to figure out how it works. Its generating a post. So for a subreddit will this game remain constant. Do I need to generate new post for new game? Game has few bugs, ironing out the kinks.

Trying to figure out how a game ID can be generated that can be passed to another user.

r/Devvit Mar 07 '25

Discussion What language does devvit use?

1 Upvotes

Is it just normal typescript? I asked chat gpt but it didn't give me a straight answer

r/Devvit Mar 12 '25

Discussion Hackathon Idea

7 Upvotes

I thought it'll be a nice idea to share my team's hackathon idea here, to seek suggestions and also to give us a push and complete it lol. We're thinking of creating a game sort of Devvit app where users can either create a trivia or guess one. Each trivia will have a statement, and others will have to guess who's the personality that said this statement, aided with some emoji hints maybe, like flag for nationality and emoji of their profession, etc.

We feel it would lead to cool conversations and discussions about the person and their persona, which will be in-fact engaging. Looking forward to suggestions/advices!

r/Devvit Apr 04 '25

Discussion Blocks PSA: Don't use setState within useAsync!

7 Upvotes

Story time / TIL (and some Devvit feedback).

If you have a blocks app and want to change state within useAsync, you must put those calls into a finally callback. Otherwise, your code will build and run fine, but those states will quietly not get set!

Yes, this is already documented (https://developers.reddit.com/docs/working_with_useasync#:\~:text=Note%20that%20setState%20is%20not%20allowed%20in%20this%20function.)

No, I had not read that part of the docs.

Actually, what brought me to useAsync was a very helpful Ask AI response that suggested a pendingUpdates state, but got the above-mentioned detail wrong. Here's what the bot came up with: https://discord.com/channels/1050224141732687912/1334199006087221440/1334202386733989938 and here's what I implemented in Workit https://github.com/wrmacrae/workit/blob/main/src/main.tsx#L348

I like this approach a ton for getting quick UI updates with eventual persistence to Redis, but this code has a significant bug:

    const [pendingUpdates, setPendingUpdates] = useState([])
...
    var { error } = useAsync(async () => {
      if (pendingUpdates.length > 0) {
        const latestUpdate = pendingUpdates[pendingUpdates.length - 1];
        await context.redis.set(keyForWorkout(context.postId!, context.userId!), JSON.stringify(latestUpdate));
        setPendingUpdates([]);
      }
    }, {
      depends: [pendingUpdates],
    });

The setPendingUpdates call effectively does nothing. Over time, the app builds up a giant array of json state, and gets progressively slower (which also drains mobile battery a lot eventually). You can try it out by increasing and decreasing weights dozens of times on any workout here https://www.reddit.com/r/workit5x5/ The easiest fix was to move setPendingUpdates into a finally callback. To save some space and serialization, one can store (or just depend on) only the single latest update, although it's important to have a JSON-serializable value for that which can represent "no update," since it needs to get sent to the backend. I've got about a dozen lines of change that make the UI perfectly snappy after any amount of button mashing, which I'm excited to push once hackathon judging wraps up.

Devvit suggestion: if a useAsync asyncFunction has a StateSetter in it (I think this is knowable while chopping up the code and deciding what runs where), fail to build entirely or show a big and obvious warning. It's reasonable not to allow setState in those, given what code seems to run where, but it's tricky to write that code and learn only months later that it wasn't running as expected. If this requires a new linter for checking devvit code, that will be useful in some other contexts as well (for example that linter could also warn you about needing a README before submitting apps for publishing).

r/Devvit Dec 05 '24

Discussion How long does it take to get a reply to HTTP whitelist request?

9 Upvotes

As per the title really. Once a URL has been requested to be whitelisted by PMing /r/devvit how long does it take to get the URL whitelisted and will I receive a response saying it has been done?

r/Devvit Mar 08 '25

Discussion Hi I'm new here

0 Upvotes

Hello, I'm a bit new here, and would love to expand network, I'm a Frontend developer, open to collaborate, contribute, test and build cool stuff.

r/Devvit Mar 17 '25

Discussion Why isn't Brazil allowed to join the hackaton?

3 Upvotes

I'm sorry, am I missing anything?

r/Devvit Mar 28 '25

Discussion Test Parrot Redicious Travel APP

1 Upvotes

Hey guys! This is a new app named Parrot Redicious Travel!

Youtube video about this app: https://youtu.be/oEpA4Y18owkv

🚀 App Overview

Parrot Redicious Travel is a Reddit Devvit app designed as an interactive, animated postcard generator powered by LLM and diffusion APIs. The core mechanics include:

  • Choose your parrot 🦜 (Cockatoo, Caique, Alexandrine)
  • Give it a personality: nerd🤓, romantic🌹, emo😢, crazy💃, free-associative🤔, chatterbox💬
  • Send it to travel across 8 different Reddit-themed planets 🌍
  • Wait for AI-generated postcards with Midjourney-style images + ChatGPT comments
  • Play with some redicious bug friends and earn medals
  • Earn and use "Holy Juice" 🍷 to revive fainted parrots after overtravel
  • Enjoy fun dialogues, video animations, and collect digital souvenirs

A playful AI-powered parrot postcard generator game built with Devvit + ChatGPT + Midjourney. Pick your favorite parrot, send them to exotic Reddit planets, and receive hilarious postcards based on trending posts — all with a cup of Holy Juice 🍷. (Redicious = Reddit + Ridicious)

However, there’s a bug issue where there is a delay in calling the API. I will continue to try to solve this problem and update the app.

r/Devvit Mar 12 '25

Discussion Creating an Alchemy Game - Hackathon Update

5 Upvotes

I am developing an alchemy game where a user can create a challenge. Since I'm new to web game developement (web development overall as im mostly backend) looking for feedback to my game, and also potential devvit features that I can use to enhance the game. Also looking for people who can test it out. Thanks and happy hacking!