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.
New features and other improvements
Translation support
Pachli will now use your Mastodon server’s translation feature (if your server administrators have enabled it) to allow you to translate posts without leaving Pachli.
To do this tap the “…” menu at the bottom right of the post, and choose “Translate” or “Undo translate” as appropriate.
A “Translating…” message will appear under the post while translation is happening.
When translation is complete the content of the post is updated and information about the translation provider is shown below the post.
If the translation process fails then an error message is shown, and you may be able to retry.
For more information about this feature see the Supporting server translation post.
Compose posts in more places
sanao has made some usability improvements by allowing you to easily compose new posts from more places.
If you’re viewing a list of posts with the same hashtag (e.g., because you searched for the hashtag, or clicked on a hashtag) the “compose” button at the bottom right will now start a new post and pre-insert that hashtag for you (#254).
The “compose” button will now also appear when you’re looking at your list of favourite posts (#276).
Expand link previews
Link previews (the cards that optionally appear at the bottom of posts that contain a link) now show up to two lines for the link’s title and three lines for the lede, making it easier for you to decide whether the link is something you want to click on or not.
Warn about an Android animation bug
A change in one of the software libraries that Pachli uses can trigger an Android bug that results in confusing animations, especially when you tap from a post to view its thread.
This doesn’t affect all Android devices, and on the ones that it does you only need to restart your device (once) to fix the problem. Unfortunately there’s nothing that Pachli can do to prevent this issue.
Pachli will warn you about this issue, once, so that if you are affected by it you can perform the restart whenever you want.
Updates to translations
vinzv, sanao, and chaoscalm all submitted changes to the different Pachli translations, improving things for users who speak German, Japanese, and Italian respectively.
If you would like to help improve Pachli’s translation in to your language there’s information on how you can contribute.
Significant bug fixes
Theme updates
A regression in a previous version meant that on some devices the options for a poll were shown with too much vertical padding. That has been fixed (#255).
Clément L helpfully reported additional colour issues (#267), fixed in PR#272.
Thank you
Thank you to everyone who took the time to report issues and provide additional followup information and screenshots.
Download Pachli 2.0.0 from Google Play, F-Droid, or the GitHub release page.