White Noise v0.2.1 is out!

Notifications behave better, images are smoother, and the app gets out of your way a bit more.

SO. What’s new?

✨New Features

Notifications & navigation

- Deep linking for notifications: tapping a notification now takes you directly to the correct chat or invite screen

- Automatic notification clearing: notifications for messages and invites disappear when you open the related chat

- Unread counts: added unread message counts for both DMs and groups.

- Notification translations: added proper localization support in notifications.

🖼 Images & Media

- Automatic image downloads: images in messages now download automatically.

- Image zoom: added zoom functionality for images in messages.

- Media icons in previews: message previews in the chat list now show a media icon when images are present.

👣 User Experience

- Identicons: replaced single-letter avatars with unique identicons for better visual identification.

- Unsaved changes dialog: added protection against accidental back navigation on the edit profile screen.

🐛 Bug Fixes

Chat Experience

- Scroll behavior improvements: chat now jumps instantly to the bottom when opened, does not auto-scroll for incoming messages, and only scrolls when you send a message.

- Fixed disappearing messages: messages no longer temporarily disappear after being sent

- Better hit-box: the chat bubble hit-box now spans the entire width for easier interaction

- Scrollable group details: chat details during the creation flow are now properly scrollable

🔔 Notifications

- Missing notifications fix: fixed an issue where multiple messages arriving in the same polling window could miss notifications.

- Inactive account navigation: fixed notification navigation for inactive accounts.

💅 UI Polish

- Developer settings: fixed content going under the three-button bottom navigation on GrapheneOS and some Android devices.

- Keypackage buttons: fixed the loading state displaying incorrectly on keypackage operation buttons.

- Chat screen padding: reduced unnecessary bottom padding in the chat screen.

- Avatar colors: refactored avatar color handling for consistency.

💪 Performance Improvements

- Optimized group metadata: improved group metadata loading and caching.

Non-blocking user fetch: switched several areas to use non-blocking user fetch for better responsiveness.

- Smarter data loading: added digests and improvements to avoid reloading everything on every update.

- Notification efficiency: avoided fetching all groups unnecessarily for notification details.

- Background sync optimization: increased the foreground task repeat interval from 1 second to 60 seconds for better battery life.

🛠 Technical Improvements

- Better error messages: improved error messaging throughout the app.

- Updated Rust crate: updated the underlying Rust crate with various improvements.

- Added get_group method : new bridge method for better group data access.

This release sharpens notifications, makes images easier to work with, and cleans up a bunch of UI/UX issues reported by the community. The performance work under the hood should make White Noise feel smoother and more responsive in everyday use.

Thank you for the support 🖤