Reddit acquires Alien Blue, relaunches iOS app with free upgrade

By Mike Flacy October 15, 2014

reddit acquires alien blue relaunches ios app free upgrade — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Rather than developing an iOS application internally, Reddit purchased the most popular third party application for iPhone and iPad, Alien Blue. Branding and relaunching the application as the official Reddit client, Alien Blue’s sole developer, Jason Morrissey, will now work internally for the company. The previous version of the Alien Blue application has been removed from the App Store and the new version of Alien Blue is now available for download on both iPhone and iPad.

When speaking about the acquisition, Reddit Head of Strategic Partnerships Ellen Pao said “Our whole philosophy has been to give our users choice. We’ve got the reddit AMA app, and Alien Blue coming out… but we really want users to use whatever they want. We think Alien Blue is great, and it’s the most popular reddit app on iOS. We wanted to be able to offer it as a reddit app, and we wanted to help Jase with additional resources to do everything he wanted to do with it.” Reddit representatives did not disclose any financial information related to the acquisition of the application.

Recommended Videos

Interestingly, anyone that downloads the new Alien Blue iOS application over the next week will be able to unlock premium features for free. The iPad version, previously $3.99, is completely free to download and the Pro features on the iPhone version, previously $1.99, can be unlocked for no charge.

alien-blue — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Pro features on the iPhone include options such as switching between multiple user accounts, discovering new subreddits using specific keywords, blocking posts based on keywords and expanding all images posted as a standard URL in the comments. Anyone that’s already upgraded to the Pro version in the previous iPhone app needs to upgrade within the first week, otherwise the limitations of the app transfer system won’t allow users upgrade for free.

Regarding future Android compatibility, Reddit representatives are apparently hiring for other versions of Alien Blue. Approximately one month ago, the company launched a slick first party application for browsing the popular IAmA posts. The mobile application, available for both iOS and Android, help Reddit users sift through thousands of comments to see the best responses to questions.

Topics

Contributing Editor

By day, I'm the content and social media manager for High-Def Digest, Steve's Digicams and The CheckOut on Ben's Bargains…

Mobile

Best iPhone 15 deals: How to get Apple’s latest iPhone for free

The display on a green iPhone 15.

The iPhone 15 has been one of the most popular iPhones Apple has released, and even with the recently released iPhone 16 shaking up the lineup it could still be considered among the best phones on the market. It can be difficult to find Apple deals on newer Apple products but the iPhone 15 is also one of the best phone deals you can shop. With up to $730 in savings available at multiple carriers right now, you can walk away with a free iPhone 15. We’ve rounded up all of those details below, but if the Apple software ecosystem isn’t of particular interest to you there are plenty of Samsung Galaxy S24 deals, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra deals, and Google Pixel 8 deals available as well.
Today's best iPhone 15 deals

: Get the iPhone 15 for $580, down from its regular price of $730, with three free months of Apple TV+ included.
: Get the iPhone 15 128GB model for free with a new line and 36 months of bill credits.
: Get the iPhone 15 128GB model for free via 24 monthly bill credits when you trade-in an eligible device on a Go5G Next plan.
: Get the iPhone 15 128GB model for just $6 per month for 36 months (regularly $21 per month).

Mobile

Apple quietly nixed this Apple Intelligence feature from iOS 18.2

Image Playground on iPad.

One of the most highly anticipated features of Apple Intelligence, Image Playground, has finally launched in the iOS 18.2 developer and public betas. This artificial intelligence tool, announced in June, enables users to create cartoon-like images from text descriptions. Unfortunately, at least in the beta version, one of Image Playground's announced features is missing.

As first noted on X (formerly Twitter) by @nicolas09f9 (via MacRumors), Image Playground was once expected to feature three design styles: Animation, Illustration, and Sketch. For whatever reason, the latter isn't a choice in the beta.

Mobile

iOS 18.2 may make charging your iPhone even easier. Here’s how

A close-up view of the App Library page on the iPhone 16.

We've all been in a situation where we need to charge our phone quickly, but it can be hard to gauge just how much time it needs to spend on the charger before it gets a usable amount of juice. A feature coming to iOS 18.2 will tell you how much more time your phone needs, although we aren't quite sure yet when it will be released.

On Monday, iOS 18.2 beta 2 was released to developers. 9to5Mac spotted the codebase for this feature in their breakdown, stating that it will calculate the amount of time needed to reach a certain charge threshold based on how powerful the charger is. The framework was dubbed "BatteryIntelligence" within the code, but although it was present, the feature isn't finished. That likely means it has been added in for testing purposes, but won't be ready for full deployment for some time yet.