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:
New features and other improvements
Add a preference to hide “self-boosts”
A “self-boost” is when someone you follow posts something, and then boosts their own post some time later.
These are shown by default, but now you can hide them by opening “Preferences > Tabs”, and disabling the “Show self-boosts” option.
This was contributed by sanao in PR#193.
Show announcement dates
The operators of your Mastodon server can post announcements; details about server changes, planned downtime, special events, and so on. You can view these by opening “Announcements” from the left navigation menu.
These announcements include the date that they were posted and (optionally) updated, but Pachli wasn’t showing those dates. Now it does.
This was contributed by sanao in PR#151.
Show full display and username in profile view
Pachli shows display and usernames in multiple places throughout the app. In many of those places the available space is limited, so they are shown on one line and truncated if they are too long.
They were also truncated if you were viewing the account’s details, which is the one place where there is enough space to show the full display and username. So now it does (PR#195).
Improve display of “obscured” links
Generally people post links on Mastodon by pasting in the full link, which Pachli will show you.
It is possible to to post a link with custom text. When that happens Pachli shows you the destination domain for the link to make it more difficult for a malicious user to trick you in to clicking on a link that doesn’t go where you expect.
There were two problems with this.
- Pachli showed a link icon using an emoji character, which could look different depending on the emoji set the user had chosen.
- The destination domain also looked like a link, so a malicious user could create a link that included its own version of the “good” domain, making it easier to trick the user.
To fix this a new link icon is used, and the destination domain is never shown as part of the link (PR#194).
Adjust video playback UX behaviour
In issue #144 Eric Lathrop provided useful feedback about how videos were shown on Pachli. In particular, the player controls show as soon as the video is opened which places a semi-opaque scrim over the video, obscuring the content for five seconds.
The new behaviour when opening a video (in PR#186) is:
- Show the media description at the top of the screen, disappearing after two seconds
- Tap the screen to show the media description and the player controls (which will show a full-screen scrim to ensure the controls are visible over the video). The media description and controls will disappear after two seconds
- Tap the media description or the pause button when shown to pause the video, allowing more time to read the media description
Significant bug fixes
Colour changes
Finding and fixing issues where the new Material Design colours clash with previous colours leading to white-on-white or black-on-black (so effectively invisible) UI continues.
In this release changes have been made to ensure that:
- The message that appears when there are no posts in your home timeline is visible (PR#191)
- The vertical lines that connect posts that are part of the same thread are visible (reported by vinzv in issue #148, fixed in PR#157)
The colour used for notification icons has been updated, it’s now either blue (if the notification is from Pachli) or orange (if the notification is from Pachli Current). This was reported by foss- in issue #178 and fixed in PR#182.
Update timeline when link preview setting changes
If you changed the “Show link previews in timelines” preference the change wouldn’t take effect until you restarted Pachli. Now it affects your timelines immediately (PR#180).
Show media when returning to Pachli
If you opened a video or an image, then switched from Pachli to another app, and then switched back you were faced with a black screen instead of the image or video you had been looking at. This was reported in issue #161 by Daniele Conti, and fixed in PR#174.
Thank you
Thank you to everyone who took the time to report issues and provide additional followup information and screenshots.
Download Pachli 1.3.0 from Google Play, F-Droid, or the GitHub release page.