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.
New features and other improvements
“Copy” button in accessiblity dialogs
If you use accessibility actions to show a dialog with a list of links, hashtags, or mentions in a post the list now includes a “copy” icon next to each item.
This was suggested by @TalkingDroid@tweesecake.social.
Hashtags and mentions in these lists also include the necessary leading “#” or “@” to make them more useful when copied.
Long-press to share
Sharing links, hashtags, and mentions outside Pachli is also easier. Long-press a link, hashtag, or mention and the normal Android “share sheet” will pop up, allowing you to send the link to your chosen application, or copy it.
This was suggesed by cbiere in #695.
Show tabs with / without text and icons
Historical the main navigation tabs have only shown icons. A new setting in “Preferences > Lab experiments” allows you to change the content.
The default behaviour is still “Icon only” but you can also choose from:
Icons and text, with text below the icon:
Icons and text, with text beside the icon:
Text only:
Align tabs
You can also change the alignment of the navigation tabs, again through “Preferences > Lab experiments”.
You can justify the tabs; in this case the tabs expand to take the full width of the screen, falling back to scrolling if there is not enough room.
Or you can align them with the end of the text direction. In a left-to-right language this aligns the tabs to the right, and vice-versa.
This was suggsested by Forger125 in #336 (their first contribution to Pachli).
Disable the language checks when posting
Pachli will – by default – warn you if the language you have set for a post does not match the language you appear to have written the post in.
If this was consistently guessing wrong for you this can now be disabled. Either with a new “Check post’s language setting before posting” preference, or by waiting to be prompted, and then choosing the new “… don’t ask again” option.
This was suggested by muellerto in #893, their first contribution to Pachli.
Hiding dormant suggested accounts
Mastodon’s “Suggested accounts” feature can suggest accounts that haven’t posted in months or even years. This clutters up the list of suggested accounts.
Pachli now removes accounts from the “Suggested accounts” list if the account hasn’t posted in the last 28 days.
Show caption counter when entering media captions
The text field where you can enter captions for media attachments now shows a count of the number of characters entered and the expected limit.
Scheduled post’s scheduled time now shown in “Scheduled posts”
The list of “Scheduled posts” now includes the date and time each post is scheduled to be sent.
This was suggested by lgasp in #293, their first contribution to Pachli.
Updates to translations
Languages with updated translations are:
- Burmese by –//– (their first contribution to Pachli)
- Finnish by Kalle Kniivilä
- Lithuanian by Vaclovas Intas (their first contribution to Pachli)
- Spanish by Juan M Sevilla
- Ukrainian by mondstern (their first contribution to Pachli)
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
Don’t lose posts when navigating away
There were some reports Pachli could lose in-progress posts you were editing if you navigated away to another app; e.g., to switch to a browser to copy a link from it in to your post.
This seemed to particularly affect people who use GrapheneOS instead of Android.
This should be fixed. However, I do not have a GrapheneOS device, so any reports of this problem persisting would be very helpful.
Accessibility action fixes
The “Open boost author” accessiblity action wasn’t. It was opening the profile of the person who wrote the original post.
This was reported by Diego Ramírez.
The “Links”, “Mentions”, and “Hashtags” accessibility actions weren’t appearing on notifications either.
This was reported by @TalkingDroid@tweesecake.social.
Disable “Scheduled post” support on GoToSocial servers
GoToSocial does not support scheduled posts.
Unfortunately, if Pachli tried to send a scheduled post to a GoToSocial server the server would both send the post immediately and send a response Pachli didn’t expect, potentially causing the post to be resent.
If your account is on a GoToSocial server Pachli does not show any of the “Scheduled post” UI.
This was reported by Bruno Rocha in this thread.
UI adjustments
- Opening a scheduled post and pressing “Back” would prompt you to save changes even though you hadn’t made any.
- Content in the “Suggested accounts” screen could run off the edge of the screen (reported by jumase in #876)
- The search operators are shown correctly for accounts on servers running Mastodon 4.3.0.
- The dialog for setting the time for a scheduled post could mis-align the buttons, clipping them off the bottom of the dialog.
Crashes
The following situations could all lead to an unexpected crash, and have been fixed:
- The server returning
nullfor a scheduled post’ssensitiveandspoiler_textproperties (reported by Austin Huang in #1057, their first contribution to Pachli). - Temporarily invalid database states during a database transaction.
- Viewing a conversation with no participants.
- Performing language checks when Google’s
ModuleInstallAPI is unavailable on the device. - Loading announcements which had a post associated with them.
Thank you
Thank you to everyone who took the time to report issues and provide additional followup information and screenshots.
Download Pachli 2.8.3 from Google Play, F-Droid, or the GitHub release page.