App if I use it often, website for everything else. The UI is usually better in the app. Many mobile websites are a pain to use. Plus I have a system-wide ad blocker

i tend to only use the mobile version or desktop-in-mobile on firefox, because it works 90% of the time without me having to worry about yet-another-fucking-app

one big exception is banking… but social media? im not using an app for a generic website.

Mix of both. Messengers, Mastodon and YouTube, mostly apps (except when I want to listen to YT in the background). Maps and games, also apps. But for Lemmy I use the web frontend because I haven’t yet found a convincing app and the web frontend is good enough.

Voyager app. Free, no ads

If its open source and privacy respecting then I’ll use the app. If its not and I have to use the service then website

For the fediverse I currently use Voyager and Raccoon for browsing and web for moderation.

As the mod tools becomes better over time I’ll likely see myself primarily using Voyager and Raccoon.

In general though it’s hard to say:

• Like my banking apps have become so enshitified with spyware level ‘features’ I deleted the apps and just use their webpages now.
• For Youtube and Peertube I primarily use Newpipe/Tubular/Peertube’s official app. I use Invidious as the webpage exception for sharing youtube links here as Youtube’s own links won’t properly load thumbnails for me.

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I usually use apps but I still block the creepy tracking and stuff with DNS and disable location permissions.

YouTube: grayjay

Twitch: grayjay

Odysse: grayjay

I have too many fucking apps on my phone already. I’d much rather use websites.

Websites wherever possible.

I will fight the dark patterns trying to manipulate me into using the app also.

If I cannot do anything without the app I will not use said service.

I generally prefer the app, in most scenarios. But it depends on what the platform is. Some will just perform better in the app because the app is the main focus of the platform, but others are just a web wrapper for the mobile site and just eat up space on your device for no discernible reason.

I find that it’s also generally easier to sandbox permissions on a per-app basis than a per-website basis. So even though a lot of times the app is meant to be a vector to harvest more data out of the user, in the right setting it can actually be more secure than just using the website. But that’s very situational.

Neither, I don’t use my phone for social media. I use the PC version of everything.

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Apps if I use the website enough to justify it. I have apps for all my favorite fast food places so I can order ahead.