Pachli
A Nivenly Foundation project
Pachli 2.8.3 released
Pachli 2.8.3 is now available. This release includes a number of fixes and features for people who use accessibility services like Android Talkback, simplifies sharing, provides additional options to control how tabs are displayed, and much more.
Pachli 2.8.2 released
Pachli 2.8.2 is now available. This release saves your reading position in more situations, allows you to put downloaded media in sub-folders, and adds an experimental preference to control what happens when you tap a tab.
One year on
It’s been a year since launching Pachli on Mastodon, so it’s a good opportunity to do a quick review of what’s been achieved so far, and what’s still to do.
Pachli 2.8.1 released
Pachli 2.8.1 is now available. This fixes a crash when uploading media and corrects two UI problems.
Pachli 2.8.0 released
Pachli 2.8.0 is now available. This release introduces experimental support for reading the timeline in reverse order and significantly improves notification reliability, as well as the usual bug fixes and other small improvements.
Anti-harassment controls in Pachli 2.9.0
I am planning on including features in Pachli 2.9.0 to help users manage and reduce the harassment they may encounter on Mastodon.
I need feedback on the features described in this post before I start the implementation.
Pachli 2.7.1 released
Pachli 2.7.1 is now available.
A change in Pachli 2.7.0 could mis-format the preview cards in posts with links, if the image in the preview was in portrait orientation (taller than it is wide).
This is fixed in Pachli 2.7.1.
Thank you to Kalle Kniivilä for reporting this.
Download Pachli 2.7.1 from Google Play, F-Droid, or the GitHub release page.
Pachli 2.7.0 released
Pachli 2.7.0 is now available. This release makes it easier to use Mastodon’s search operators, prompts you if it looks like you’re posting in a language other than the one you’ve specified, improves the UI when a post is filtered, as well as the usual bug fixes and other improvements.
Privacy policy update for Pachli from Google Play
A new feature launching in Pachli Current now requires a small update to the Pachli privacy policy.
Read on for details.
More about Pachli and the Nivenly Foundation
Last month the Pachli project was accepted to join the Nivenly Foundation.
Read on for more information and what this means for the project.
Pachli 2.6.0 released
Pachli 2.6.0 is now available. This release allows you to find new people to follow with a “Suggested accounts” feature, and has the usual bug fixes and other improvements.
Read on for more details about these.
Pachli 2.5.2 released
Pachli 2.5.2 is now available. I’ve been away for most of May, so the primary focus of this release is bug fixes rather than new features.
Read on for more details about these.
Pachli joins the Nivenly Foundation
Since the Pachli project started the goal has been to provide a “provide a first class organisation to manage the development of the application under the 7 cooperative principles”.
The project is now a step closer to that goal, as the Nivenly Foundation membership and board have voted to accept the project’s membership application.
This news drops just as I’m about to leave for vacation, so there’ll be more updates in late May / early June with concrete changes.
Sincere thanks to everyone who helped make this happen.
Pachli 2.5.1 released
Pachli 2.5.0 2.5.1 is now available. This version refreshes some of the UX, simplifies tab management, fixes security certificate issues for Android 7 devices, continues improvements to the left-side navigation, has assorted bug fixes, and continues support for non-Mastodon servers.
Version 2.5.1 contains a fix for a potential crash when viewing notifications.
Read on for more details about these, and other changes in this release.
Pachli 2.4.0 released
Pachli 2.4.0 is now available. This version contains improvements for managing lists, modifications to the left-side navigation, new poll features, UI improvements, assorted bug fixes, and continues support for non-Mastodon servers.
Read on for more details about these, and other changes in this release.
Pachli 2.3.0 released
Pachli 2.3.0 is now available. This version contains UI improvements, assorted bug fixes, and continues support for non-Mastodon servers.
Read on for more details about these, and other changes in this release.
Debugging notifications
Note: Some of this post has been superceded by Pachli 2.8.0.
Pachli started as a fork of Tusky so has inherited some of Tusky’s bugs, which are now being fixed.
One of those is users reporting they never receive Android notifications for Mastodon events; when someone follows you, or replies to one of your posts, or a poll you’ve voted on closes, etc.
The Mastodon notifications still appear in the app, but never as Android notifications.
This has been difficult to fix because it’s not reproducible by the developers. When my account (or the @pachli@mastodon.social account) receives a Mastodon notification it appears as an Android notification on my phone within seconds, exactly as it’s supposed to.
To better understand what’s going on the version of Pachli Current rolling out now – and the next version of Pachli – includes comprehensive information about how Pachli is getting your Mastodon notifications, what you might need to do to improve the situation on your device, and a mechanism to report logs to the developers to help with bug hunting.
Pachli 2.2.0 released
Pachli 2.2.0 is now available. This contains a critical bug fix when interacting with posts, and has initial support for handling features found on non-Mastodon servers like Pleroma, Friendica, GoToSocial, and others.
Read on for more details about these, and other changes in this release.
Pachli 2.1.1 released
Pachli 2.1.1 is now available. This fixes one bug; if you were upgrading to Pachli 2.1, and you included trending tags, links, or posts in your tabs, Pachli 2.1 would crash when starting, and you had to remove and re-install the app.
Thanks to Rainer Müller for the detailed bug report. This was fixed in #330
Download Pachli 2.1.1 from Google Play, F-Droid, or the GitHub release page.
Pachli 2.1.0 released
Pachli 2.1.0 is now available. This is primarily a bug fix release ahead of planned work next year to extend and improve the translation support that landed in 2.0.0.
This should be the last Pachli release of 2023, with development work resuming early in 2024.
Read on for more details about this, and other changes in this release.
Opt-in crash reporting
If Pachli Current crashes it’s very helpful if the developers can see exactly where it crashed. Sometimes that’s obvious from bug reports, or the problem is easy for the developers to reproduce. And reproducing a problem is the first step to fixing it.
And sometimes the information is just not available to the user, or the problem is not easy to reproduce.
For example, bug report #306.
To make this easier the most recent release of Pachli Current catches crashes, records concrete information about where the crash occurred and what was happening at the time, and allows you to opt-in to sending it to the developers.
No information is ever sent to the developers without your express permission. The crash-handling code is not present in the regular Pachli application.
Pachli 2.0.0 released
Pachli 2.0.0 is now available, and can translate posts for you. This uses your server’s support for translation (if enabled by your server administrators).
Improving translation is the through-line for the Pachli 2.x releases. Future releases in the 2.x line will support translation whether or not it is enabled on your server by carrying out privacy-preserving translation on your device.
Read on for more details about this, and other changes in this release.
Governance model update
In the last governance update I mentioned starting the application process with the Nivenly Foundation.
As announced in their Updates for October and November blog post the Pachli application process is underway.
There are two Q&A discussions currently happening in their forums:
If you have questions please do come along and ask.
Supporting server translation
Edit: This feature is now also available in Pachli 2.0.0.
Pachli Current (on Google Play) now supports server-side translation of posts.
This means the translation does not happen on your device. Instead (and if your Mastodon provider is configured to support it) Pachli asks your Mastodon provider to translate the post, and they, in turn, typically contact a third-party translation service (often DeepL.com) to do the actual translation. Then a copy of the translation is sent back to Pachli.
This comes with a few caveats and additional details.
Pachli 1.4.0 released
Pachli 1.4.0 is now available.
Assuming things go to plan this will be the final release in the 1.x series. The 2.x series will be released soon, featuring support for translating posts.
The significant changes in this release are:
Pachli 1.3 released
Pachli 1.3 is now available.
This is the first release that includes changes from other contributors.
- Eryk Michalak updated the Polish translation
- sanao contributed two PRs (see below), and updated the Japanese translation
Thank you to both of them.
The significant changes in this release are:
Pachli Current
Pachli aims to put out a new major or minor release approximately once a month. But there’s a lot of code that can change in that time, and only so many problems that automated testing can catch.
The wide range of devices running Android, differences in supported hardware, and customisations made by different device vendors make this even more difficult. Code that runs with no problems on a developer’s device may fail or perform in unexpected ways on other devices.
Enter Pachli Current.
Pachli 1.2 released
Pachli 1.2 – and 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 – are now available.
This took a little longer to release than planned. 1.2 was submitted to the Google Play store last week, and was rejected because of an unspecified issue with the Pachli Privacy Policy.
This policy, and how it was displayed in the app, had not changed in the Pachli 1.0 or 1.1 releases, and the Google app review staff do not provide specifics about what needs to change.
Reading the tea leaves I made changes in 1.2.1 and 1.2.2, neither of which satisfied the reviewers.
What did work was changing the link to the privacy policy from https://github.com/pachli/pachli-android/blob/main/PRIVACY.md to https://pachli.app/privacy/.
As best as I can tell the reviewers think that using GitHub as the canonical location for the privacy policy makes it “editable”
The significant changes are:
Accessible fonts
To improve accessibility Pachli allows the user to change the font used in the UI.
The feature originated from work I was doing on the Tusky client. I had seen occasional user requests asking for different fonts, either to improve overall legibility, or specifically to assist people with dyslexia.
I put together a proof-of-concept using Atkinson Hyperlegible from the Braille Institute and OpenDyslexic as they are both freely available and claim to be helpful.
This allowed me to experiment with the UX and identify any issues that might make adopting this difficult.
This is not an accessibility issue I currently have to contend with, so I approached the user community for feedback and recommendations for additional fonts, asking:
Governance model update
When the project launched About Pachli described the goals for Pachli-the-association, and noted that:
At the time of writing it is undecided whether Pachli-the-association will exist as a separate entity, or whether those goals can be met under the wing of an organisation like the Software Freedom Conservancy, Software in the Public Interest, or the Nivenly Foundation.”
Read on for update on that process.
Pachli 1.1 released
Pachli 1.1 is now available.
This is a bug-fix release, with fixes including:
- Fix crash on entering MainActivity on tablets (#25)
- Ensure refreshing does not create a gap in the timeline (#43)
- Restore the user’s home timeline position (#44)
- Show the FAB according to the user’s preferences (#29)
- Fix toolbar flickering when scrolling lists (#26)
Download Pachli from Google Play or the GitHub release page (availability on F-Droid is dependant on the F-Droid volunteers approving merge request #13682).
Read on for more details about the changes in this release.
hello, #pachli
Pachli is an application (now) and an association (aspirational).
Pachli-the-application is a best-in-class open source Android application for Mastodon and Mastodon-like servers. If you’re familiar with Tusky then you’ll love Pachli.
Get Pachli on Google Play or F-Droid, carry on reading to learn more about the application, or head to the About page to see what we’re all about.