Today we are proud to announce and release Cwtch Alpha 0.3.0 and kick off the 0.3 alpha release cycle! This release line is the first where the Android experience is now expected to work reliably alongside the desktop versions (Windows and Linux). This is the culmination of a lot of work over the past 5 months.

The latest updates in this release are:

Android back button changes: now back button in the app moves the UI “back” through our stack view, and on the home, it no longer exits the app, but takes the user to their Android home screen

Fixing a bug that resulted in miscommunication between Client and Service resulting in new profiles getting created on new starts of the application

Improvements to the Client/Service IPC connection establishment code to make it more robust to terminations and restarts

Group Invite fix so that invites are now properly displayed in the UI

Editbox edit improvements

New edit and update buttons for android

Resolution fixes to make edit boxes render correctly on larger low pixel density displays

Minor changes in Tapir to the p2p connection code causing this release to be backwards incompatible with previous releases. This is also why the minor version bump from 0.2 to 0.3

With a usable Android experience this will allow increased testing and likely the discovery of more bugs, which is great and expected! Please test and report any issues at https://git.openprivacy.ca/cwtch.im/ui/issues.

0.3.x Future Plans

We still have a lot of ideas about short and long term improvements and goals for Cwtch. On the shorter term side we are currently in the middle of big additions to Tapir that will radically change and improve the efficiency of Cwtch.

With Android now working as expected, focus will shift back to extending the UI. One of the first areas of focus will be profile management (including creating new profiles, deleting profiles, unlocking and editing profiles and their passwords). This is one of the next biggest features for the Alpha we are excited about and will really help bring the Cwtch experience and goals closer to reality and into the hands of users.

All of this comprises a lot of work for our small team, and we also have other work going on, some of which you’ll get to hear about soon. We hope you’re as excited as we are for how far we’ve come and where we’re going next!

And as always, if you like our work and are able to, please donate, we are a small team with a shoestring budget but big goals and plans so every little bit is highly appreciated!

Join Us on Cwtch

We encourage those interested to join our Cwtch Alpha discussion group using the following invite:

torv3CiA2NmI0NmM4OGMxNDc1ZGUxODE5YWYyYTk1ZDM5NTQ4ZBIgDSFY2mxYJiSJs0b442hFChzaHB5B8EERcFqLAkpb5kAaODJjM2ttb29ibnlnaGoyenc2cHd2N2Q1N3l6bGQ3NTNhdW8zdWdhdWV6enB2ZmFrM2FoYzRiZHlkIkBgg+E0T4YKtxnw57sHQbuG3C6myjU2aS496O4n3jpzQu8iT25NReJnuwqv9ER93wE1N9g1f7WY8JCtx0bnvyQK

For those who are more adventurous, please check out our continuous Windows, Android and Linux builds. These get updated after every approved pull request, and are likely to be much less stable than versioned builds. https://build.openprivacy.ca/files/.

The Open Privacy Staff