I love Jerboa, but the default behavior of constantly refreshing feeds is quietly murdering battery and mobile data for a lot of users. Fediverse instances are chatty, images are heavy, and not everyone wants every community to behave like a live chat room. I have a capped plan and a 30 minute commute where I only care about three communities, but Jerboa treats my whole subscription list like it needs real-time updates.

Proposal: add a low-bandwidth/global power-save mode plus per-community refresh intervals and an obvious toggle in the community header. Practical bits: store prefs in DataStore, use WorkManager with network/charging constraints for background sync, implement stale-while-revalidate so UI shows cache instantly and pulls updates on demand, and reduce image prefetching on cellular. Make the main feed show a subtle “last synced” and a one-tap refresh. This keeps Jerboa lightweight, privacy-friendly, and respectful of user limits.

Dev reality: I know time is tight, so I’m asking for design feedback and small PRs rather than a big rewrite. Who wants to spike a minimal PoC that adds a per-community refresh interval and a global low-data toggle? Ideas on UX wording and where to put the toggle are welcome.