New Clear beta feedback from a long time classic Clear user

[balsalmo]

Hi, happy to see that you guys started working on the new version of Clear again. Original Clear has been living on my homescreen for more than a decade now, so I care a fair amount about the New Clear since it seems like you are planning to replace the original one with the new version.

Also quick aside before I continue. I consider original Clear to be a perfect example of an app that is done. Sure, it is starting to show its age in some places, mostly lack of haptics and integrations with newer parts of the iOS, but even if it stays like it is I think there is a high chance it would still be on my homescreen another decade later. And it is going to be a real shame if it just disappears. I believe classic Clear deserves to be preserved and accessible to everyone somehow. Everyday apps of such quality don’t come by that often.

Anyways. I’ve been testdriving the beta for some time now, so I’m going to list the things I’m not so keen on here. In no particular order:

Personalisation tweak for the impatient. Switching between lists feels slooooooow. Eyeballing the list zoom out/in animation duration, it’s at like 700-800ms. For reference, in the original Clear I think the list “zoom in” animation only takes about 300ms or so. I would love to have the option to at least halve all animations durations.

Classic Heatmap theme header. Make the headers background in the classic Heatmap theme black as well. Right now the headers look too similar to an active item, which they are not, and the screen looks too top heavy and the list harder to parse if I checked off everything. Basically I think this theme should look like the right one, not the left one:

Thinner strikethrough line for completed items. Why? I have a shopping list where I don’t clear completed items and instead revert items I need to buy this time to active. The items in this list are more or less constant so recreating the list every time is a waste of time. But because the strikethrough line over the completed items is now too thick it is hard to read the text underneath it. I’m using the regular SF font and tiny spacing, though it seems the strikethrough thickness is the same regardless of the font selected.

Switch lists with screen edge swipe gesture. With this gesture switching between lists was a breeze in the classic Clear, in the new one it feels like a chore.

Visible status bar. Please show it, sometimes knowing the time is handy when adding items.

Swipe down to add an item gesture. Another gesture from the old Clear that is missing in the new one is pull down to add an item above the item currently being edited. This one is my favourite gesture when adding items to a list. I know I can tap below or above to add an item, but it is way less fun. Also to add a new item you have to tap above the currently focused item. Awkward even on the smallest screen. And the keyboard spazzes out when you do this.

List item count badge. Bring back active list count for app badge feature from old clear.

Item delete animations seems bugged. For starters, items just seem to disappear halfway thru when deleted. The abruptness of it feels out of place compared to the rest of the animations. Also with Heatmap theme sometimes the background lags behind when quickly checking off items. See:

RPReplay_Final1689406753.MP4

And a couple of feature suggestions:

• Dictation input where each new word turns into a new list item
• Stronger/longer haptics and louder sfx. Why? When out and about, like grocery shopping, when checking off items I want additional indication that I marked the item

But all in all, good work so far!

[Dragon]

+1 on the visible status bar. More often I find that I need to see at least the time.

[thenorthfork]

@balsalmo

Switching between lists feels slooooooow. Eyeballing the list zoom out/in animation duration, it’s at like 700-800ms. For reference, in the original Clear I think the list “zoom in” animation only takes about 300ms or so. I would love to have the option to at least halve all animations durations.

+1 - old Clear feels snappier than new Clear and I prefer old. The new animations and UX interactions in new Clear are lovely, just feel a bit too slow

[phillryu]

I’ll note that we have a branch with snappier in/out animations and more dialed in checking off animations, but it needs some system redo.

@balsalmo thank you for the detailed feedback. Without getting too much into the weeds some notes:

• Status bar, yeah I agree on this. We wanted to reboot to a more zen/minimal place but you can probably expect a setting at least for this. Similar with the app badging though that might be more update roadmap.

• Edge swiping is a more difficult one, but mostly because I keep thinking there must be a better version of this for Clear. Not a huge fan of how the interaction actually feels (sharp corner), how it overlaps with some side swiping in our app, and how it is horizontal instead of our vertical lists organization. Realize it is frustrating but I want to give this a little more space in case we have some inspiration.

• Classic Heatmap adjustment is an interesting proposal, I will try to remember this when we are doing more bonus polish before release.

• Thinner strikethroughs, yeah it should match your font selection overall. Definitely doable but it may not make the cut for initial release depending on the rest of our polish list.

• Item deletions do seem like they regressed, will look into this as we shift to more polish/fixes

[JoeyPasco]

Have to agree that the old Clear feels much snappier every time I open it to compare. I’m happy to hear there’s a version in the works that may address this.

Legacy Clear still feels like a perfect app, just missing a little bit of functionality like moving items between lists. I appreciate all the work going into New Clear but I hope it can match the feel of the original.

[balsalmo]

@phillryu

• Thinner strikethroughs, yeah it should match your font selection overall. Definitely doable but it may not make the cut for initial release depending on the rest of our polish list.

But thats the thing, they don’t. Strikethrough line thickness is the same (2.5pt by the looks of it) for SF, SF rounded, Courier new and Yeseva (they’re the only ones I have). In fact the thickness is the same regardless of typography size setting as well. It is the same 2.5pt for tiny and huge sizes, covering a great deal of letter shapes in tiny one. That’s not how it should work. Line thickness should be tied to the typography size at the bare minimum. Ideally it should adjust per font and size selected.

@phillryu

Not a huge fan of how the interaction actually feels (sharp corner), how it overlaps with some side swiping in our app, and how it is horizontal instead of our vertical lists organization.

I think for new Clear list switching similar to how you can switch between apps by swiping the homebar will work nicely, basically zoom out and then zoom in to the next list. Also to sidestep overlapping with other gestures, list switching can just be one of the options for side swipes. Oh, and you’ve got plenty sharp corners right here

@phillryu

I’ll note that we have a branch with snappier in/out animations and more dialed in checking off animations, but it needs some system redo.

Happy to hear that, because I swear to god the hardware we have now is the fastest it’s ever been, but the UIs just keep getting slower and slower and slower for no good reason. Nothing annoys me more than the software that can’t keep up.

[mdtolic]

Wow. I agree with all of this. I’d like the black header for all themes, like classic Clear does. I prefer contrast of the classic colors. Although I usually keep it very simple: Heat Map and Small or tiny SF font for everything. What is the OG Clear font? It’s not in New Clear is it?

[phillryu]

Oh yeah to be clear I meant the lines in the app should match fonts, but currently do not, and is definitely on the polish list.

The performance will get to a snappy place ahead of launch. We have not done a single performance pass yet, so there really should be some low hanging fruit to pluck there. (Starting to shift to this stuff as we get closer to release now.)

[balsalmo]

@mdtolic

What is the OG Clear font? It’s not in New Clear is it?

It’s Helvetica in the old Clear. I believe new one has it too, but as an unlock. I think San Francisco is fine, it is very similar to Helvetica.

[balsalmo]

@phillryu

The performance will get to a snappy place ahead of launch. We have not done a single performance pass yet, so there really should be some low hanging fruit to pluck there. (Starting to shift to this stuff as we get closer to release now.)

Just to clarify, I’m not talking about actual performance when it comes to New Clear, it’s the animations themselves that are too long. Almost 800ms to animate opening a list is simply too much imo. And switching between two lists will make it 1.6s before UI settles down.

The overall UI smoothness is quite great actually, I haven’t noticed any weird slowdowns or lags throughout the whole beta test. If this is how it runs without any performance passes, then I’d like to tip my hat to you, very good work.

[KVA]

Hi Phill and team, figured this would be the place to list my feedback:

Positives:

• I am a huge fan of the large amount of themes in the Clear Beta! So fun.
• I love the wide array of app icons as well.

Preferences:

• Rewards unlocks from the new beta version are wonky. I unlocked two so far, but since I already had the themes unlocked, there is a broken blank space in the themes section.
• I really, really dislike the discrepancy of font sizes from list of lists to individual list. The personalization per list helped with that, but it is gone. I would really prefer them to be the same size but as of now the list of lists font is significantly larger.
• Again on the “list of lists”, I much preferred how in the original it would show how many items all the way on the right ex: Today (11).
• I read this mentioned somewhere but I really miss seeing the time on the top left, and service/WiFi/battery at the top right.
• I might sound psycho, but a huge pain point, probably the largest for me, is the lack of black at the end of a list and at the list title. I much prefer the simplicity of black at the end of a list and for the title.
• I need Theme Noir. Minimalist Dark is great and my go-to with Tangerine, but please, I beg you to include OG Theme Noir in release (think I read somewhere you will include for older users).

Thanks for reading. I appreciate you and your team. I have used this app daily for what seems like a decade and I felt I needed to share some thoughts. You guys are awesome.

[mdtolic]

Not the same

[phillryu]

Yeah the list opening animations specifically seem to be a bit of a hot spot, at least in that it keeps getting longer the more lists you have or older device. But we had additionally been testing internally it tuned to complete faster separate from that bottleneck as well. It actually felt TOO fast last pass, we are going to return to that in a week or so.

List completing felt like 2x better in our internal pass… things like the row snapping back into place before dropping down, and also staying highlighted adds a back a lot of satisfaction.

But yeah hopefully this stuff is a couple weeks or so out. We want to get the performance bottleneck more under control so we can get the reliable precise timing we need for the animations pass.

[phillryu]

Thanks man. There are some here I cannot promise. But there are some I think I can mostly promise for initial new Clear release.

• Status bar option
• Will look into Theme Noir / other legacy themes, had generally planned that
• Will fix achievements of course, (the completed state we left to handle next pass, presentation is incomplete in that way and would be striked off/at bottom of list as you’d expect)

The font size per level I think we are pretty committed to… the reason behind it is we really like the new themes that can color every level of the app to your liking, but this means we need another visual identifier/anchor so you immediately obviously know what level you are on. I hope that makes sense. The amount of scaling per level though, we may bring down for launch.

[balsalmo]

@phillryu

Yeah the list opening animations specifically seem to be a bit of a hot spot, at least in that it keeps getting longer the more lists you have or older device. But we had additionally been testing internally it tuned to complete faster separate from that bottleneck as well. It actually felt TOO fast last pass, we are going to return to that in a week or so.

Ah, that makes sense, I’ve never had a lot of lists in Clear and it’s generally simple things like shopping, preflights and stuff.

Btw, can we try the TOO fast pass too?

Also, have another issue to report.

This ”go up a level” shortcut tap area interferes with scrolling and interacting with items. Especially noticeable on the SE iphone since reaching the bottom of the screen on this model is easy. I think scrolling and interacting with items should have the priority over the shortcut.

[Goyoz]

@balsalmo

Swipe down to add an item gesture. Another gesture from the old Clear that is missing in the new one is pull down to add an item above the item currently being edited. This one is my favourite gesture when adding items to a list. I know I can tap below or above to add an item, but it is way less fun. Also to add a new item you have to tap above the currently focused item. Awkward even on the smallest screen. And the keyboard spazzes out when you do this.

I fully agree with this one. It is not solved for now: add item, still in editing mode, pull down, nothing happens.

[allisonjp]

I’m also a very frequent and very long time classic Clear User. I fully agree with @balsalmo that classic Clear is perfect. It’s snappy and responsive and clean. I’ve had it on my iPhone’s toolbar since I downloaded it when it was first released, and use it almost every day.

I’ve tried to embrace New Clear but, even if I put all the clutter aside like achievements and whatnot, I just can’t use New Clear because of the transitions. There’s so much visual movement of the screen when I go up and down a level, that I feel nauseous. The image is being stretched, compressed and slid around, and it’s just horrible to me.

Please at least have the option to switch off the transitions, especially the stretchy up-level, down-level ones.

Please release New Clear as an independent download so we don’t have to overwrite our Classic Clear I’ve actually switched off all automatic app updates now, and I’m prepared to manually update apps now on to avoid it being overwritten! I’m prepared to do that to keep Classic Clear… :o(

[Dragon]

Folks, please don’t kill all the excitement that the new Clear brings. I mean, yeah, it would be great to have toggles to turn off animations and remove emojis and what not but please think of the people who enjoy new Clear more than the legacy one.

I still miss emojis from main Clear menu within all the settings and I still think that that menu now looks boring without emojis. I totally get that a lot of people like the simplicity of legacy clear but why not trying to embrace something new and fresh this time?

Or at least @phillryu if that’s not a big hassle - please implement simplifications to disable animations, transitions and emojis for the people who don’t like that. I cannot remember the last time an app (Clear) brought me such joy when using it and now all the fun is slowly being stripped…

[balsalmo]

@Dragon Personally, my issue is not with the animations themselves, actually, I think they fit in better with the current iOS now. What I am against is their quite frankly excessive length. I mean, almost 800ms for the same action compared to Classic Clear, thats what, a 2.5x increase and, at least to my eyes, for no good reason too, and there is no workaround like edge-swiping between lists.

The use of emojis I liked. They were used quite tastefully in my opinion, so I’m not sure why they were removed.

I don’t have anything agains new and fresh btw, but it also has to be better. I’d be happy to embrace the New Clear, it had quite a few neat things going a couple betas ago. But for that it needs to be just as good as the Classic Clear I have been using for 10 years. Unfortunately with excessively long animations, lack of badges, inconsistent or missing gestures, number of other small details, and a possibly another subscription to boot, I don’t think I can or want to. Especially since the choice will seem to be either switch to the new one or pound sand and start manually updating all apps from that point on.

[Dragon]

Ok, I totally agree on the speed of animations, and they are a bit slow. Could be quicker. And since you mentioned badges, I too miss that. All in all, my reaction was like that since I’ve read so many posts that go against all the new stuff being added into new Clear [which I honestly like] and I’m afraid they’ll go away. But totally agree with you on animation speed and no notification badges.