TL;DR — Version 1.5.0 is a major overhaul from the previous release, introducing a new user interface and several new features, including IPFS support, an RPC testing app, and support for Geth 1.9.0 features (e.g. GraphQL, Görli).

Grid?

Grid is still a relatively new project, so a quick primer: Ethereum Grid is a desktop application that allows users to discover, download, configure, and use Ethereum tools. Generally, these tools are only available to a technical audience via command line interfaces, but Grid provides a consistent user interface to explore and hack with various clients and developer tools.

Up until this version, we’ve labeled Grid releases as alpha software. Grid is still in the “early days,” but we’re calling this release a graduation to beta. For additional context on Grid, see this introductory post.

What’s new?

We’re in your base, hangin’ with your tray icons.

Nano

Early testers of Grid confirmed our suspicion that the app should primarily live in the background. We’ve introduced some new architecture and UI elements to realize that vision — which we refer to as “Nano.”

Nano is accessible via an Ethereum logo in your menu bar. Within Nano, you can install and run a plugin with one click. When you’re ready to customize the settings or view the logs of the plugin, just click on its name to open the more full-featured Grid UI.

Included in this new UI is a dark color theme across all windows in the app.

Greater Plugin Customization

As an example, Geth has over 100 unique flags available to customize your node. We picked out just a few of the most frequently used settings to display in Grid UI, but now you can view a preview of the flags that will be executed with the binary and make arbitrary edits to them.