Mobile users of the popular image hosting service Imgur have long bemoaned the difficulty in browsing on their devices. The website was notoriously tough to navigate and loading gifs took so much time that the user could grow a full beard from waiting.
Imgurians, as the site's community prefers to be called, can finally rejoice and keep a clean face. The service has just released its own native application for Android users.
The app, according to Imgur's lead mobile developer Andrew Shu, was "built completely from scratch."
"We wanted to create a better mobileâ€first experience, so you can quickly and easily tap into Imgur from your commute, when you need a laugh or some support, when you're bored, and anytime you get an itch for Imgur," Shu said in a press statement.
The new Imgur application has a redesigned gallery that gives users easy access to the images and gifs. Users can also browse the gallery by topic so finding interesting posts is effortless. The developers have also made sure that the upload allows quick posts from the mobile camera.
Imgur was founded by Alan Schaaf in 2009 and gradually overcame other hosts like Photobucket with its dedicated community. As of 2014, the website boasts of 1.5 million daily posts and 5 billion monthly page views.
Imgur's official mascot is a giraffe in a top hat and matching monocle called Imguraffe. The mascot was introduced as an April Fools' Day joke but ended up being "too cute to give up." Imguraffe is one of the several community inside jokes, which includes "banana for scale" to prove size and paying "cat tax" for gratuitous posts.
In March 2015, Imgur released its native iOS app, but developers have promised to release an updated version which is currently being reviewed by Apple.
As required, here is some cat tax for Imgurian readers.
The Imgur native Android app is available on Google Play.