Regular updates from the trenches of XMPP and Objective-C
There was a bug that came up recently about Monal disconnecting in Mojave when backgrounded which really confused me. It seems a feature added to OSX in Mavericks called App Nap that suspends apps to save battery life might be the culprit. I am putting out a new Mac beta today Bonus: With improved dark mode support, better dark mode correct fonts and icons.
There is new Mac beta. I have tried to fix the dark mode visibility as well as some possible networking issues.
There is a new iOS beta. Testflight users should update or grab it from the beta link to the side.
In order to reduce the pain for most users, I have added a new login screen that will pop up if no accounts are set up (e.g. first run)
I have made the latest iOS Beta available to the public. This link is also permanently on the left of this site. This is a beta so you will see debugging messages as well as a debug log at the bottom of settings titled ‘Log’ this will let you view everything the app is doing. If you encounter any issues feel free to look there and send me the last few lines (make sure not to send anything involving authentication)
It’s been a while since the last release. I am planning out what will be in the next Mac and iOS clients. I was hoping to have OEMEO but it hasn’t been sufficiently tested yet, so I am turning it off until the following release. I will have an open beta for iOS 3.1 soon. This will be a GDPR update but along with it comes the new rich links, a more compressed chat ui as well as the share sheet. Mac clients will see the Mojave dark mode and a share sheet.
Something people have requested for a while has been to have wallpapers on chat. This will be in the 3.1 release. I am also updating the bubbles to contain delivery and time stamp info so you don’t have to worry about text visibility with your background.
I’ve been focusing some of my efforts as of late on things that make Monal feel more modern. There are parts of the app I haven’t touched in 5-6 years and expectations have changed in those years. The inline images in 3.0 was very well received and I am following that up with inline link previews. If you have used any other modern messaging client this will be very familiar to you. XMPP doesn’t need to feel like its form the 90s.
This is more of a question for other open source developers. I recognize there are payment structures in the Mac App Store that do not work for paid software. However, I’ve always wondered why other open source apps do not publish there.
My general experience publishing Monal there has only been positive. While I still push out beta clients on the web the App Store has been the primary way that users have discovered Monal. It also takes care of several things that are pain points for developers such as upgrades and hosting/bandwidth costs. I honestly think more people use XMPP because I have made the software readily available in a trusted location. The Mac App Store has a lot of good software but also a lot of junk. The ratio is a lot worse than on iOS and I think we should change that.
If the problem is the $99 developer fee, would you be more interested in publishing software there if it were to go away (or at least not be something you need to worry about)?