Terry Yiu's avatar
Terry Yiu _@tyiu.xyz 11 months ago
Nothing is wrong with nsec.app, but it’s suboptimal. It requires a server. iOS is sandboxed and only one app can be in the foreground at a time, so push notifications are needed when a signer request comes in to be able to switch to the signer each time to approve it. It requires nsec.app to be up all the time to be able to sign your events, unless you self-host. One benefit is that you can use nsec.app to approve signer requests that didn’t originate from that same device. @brugeman Please let me know if I interpreted how nsec.app works incorrectly. My proposal is to have my signer be operational offline, and not need you to switch from your Nostr app to the signer. Everything can be done through the signer action extension in the sheet while the Nostr app is in the foreground the entire time. This would work only for same-device signer requests. It’s a non-optimal UX to do this for each action, but I would also argue that the nsec.app approach is also non-optimal in slightly different ways. Anyway, iOS makes it difficult to have an on-device signer if you want it to work on the same device as your Nostr app, regardless of approach.
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brugeman's avatar
brugeman artur@nostr.band 11 months ago
Yes you interpreted nsec.app's architecture right, it depends on a server that detects unanswered requests and sends push notifications to wake up. iOS is actually broken with a PWA, the issue is that PWAs don't receive push messages on time after the last iOS update, which makes nsec.app basically unable to work in the background. Offline signer like Amber using native inter-app comms is obviously a much better approach, but it doesn't work on iOS or across devices, so if you're using desktop you'll still need something like nsec.app. Confirming every action is a UX nightmare for active daily use - people complain very hard here every time Alby popup shows up without much necessity. I think it's inevitable for iOS to come up with inter-app comms API someday, so maybe all we need is just wait a bit. It's great that you're exploring options on iOS and I bet there will be useful building blocks created as a result, so please keep doing it and sharing your learnings!
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