Sailfish Community News, 16 April 2026 - 5.1 translation round

[Jolla]

Sailfish OS update from Jolla

Fortnight newsletter time! @vige once again wrote a great Harbour news which is always nice to read and feel what’s going on in the harbour. Similarly @dcaliste wrote a deep dive on the Repository roundup. Big hand for both authors.

Update on first impressions of the new Jolla Phone

Joshua had a chance to meet us again and see new iteration. Read more from Joshua’s post.

First Impressions of the new Jolla Phone

I had the opportunity to meet up with Jolla again to talk about (and see!) how the new Jolla Phone is progressing, including new iteration that is using tooling and not hand-made. The tolerances are really fantastic now. No gaps! The buttons and privacy switch felt firmer, with the power button now being a bit more recessed to make accidental presses harder. Gone is the antenna tape, proper antennas are now around the device. Stronger battery shield. There were some design changes made to the …

Jolla Phone final payment

Last week we posted a separate topic regarding final payments status of batch #1, #2 and #3. We’ll try collate all information, discussion and Q&A to that topic. Please give a look.

Jolla Phone update - final payments status Batch 1, 2 and 3

Hi there, There’s been questions in regards the final payment emails and status, so let’s try to pull all information, discussion and Q&A together to this topic. Batches #1 and #2 (batch #3, please see below) Starting on Friday March 27, we started to send out emails first to Batch #1 to complete the final payment. Initially we estimated the whole process for all batches 1, 2 and 3 to take a ~week but it has taken longer than expected - no reason to worry, just let us do it in the phase we ca…

As mentioned in the above, we targeted to start rolling out batch #3 final payments emails this week and so we did yesterday. If you have not received yours yet there is no reason to worry, just let us do it in the phase we can perform well.

We encourage to post any questions regarding final payments to final payments status topic, those often help others too, and also us to improve the communications for coming emails!

Reminder regarding Jolla Phone Day1 celebration ticket. If you have claimed (ordered) your exclusive Jolla Phone Day1 celebration ticket during the final payment, then you have a ticket – it’s a digital ticket – and no need to ask it by email . If you cannot make it for a reason or another, please let us know so that we can free up a ticket for somebody else – thank you.

Sailfish OS 5.1

Translation round for the Sailfish OS 5.1 has started. There are tens of languages and together we can make them to flourish. For this round there is around 240 strings to be translated depending on a language. Already 6 languages are almost completed – well done !. Please give a look to the announcement and jump into translation world.

[localisation] Translation round for the Sailfish OS 5.1 release

It has been quite a while since the previous translation round, but it’s finally time to start doing translations for Sailfish OS 5.1, the next major release. This time there is around 240 strings to be translated depending on a language. Not setting a hard deadline, but lets target for Sunday 26th of April. I’ll now try to pull in any new translations and changes from time to time, as there probably will be couple of release candidates and early access releases. Without further ado, head to h…

On last fortnight it was communicated that we have still few items on the table that should be sorted before branching. Happy to say that major items are now done & integrated and we are ready for branching. Branching happens any moment now. After branching we’ll create a first release candidate (RC) from the branched Sailfish OS 5.1. If we do not see big blockers, we’ll publish that first release candidate to Community Beta (CBeta) .

Support and Care

We still have a very long support backlog. Please try check first from the Forum if there is already an answer. When it concerns final payments, please check final payments status and other topics. When it comes to duplicated shipping costs, you are covered . Please refrain from emailing to shop@jolla.com regarding duplicated shipping costs .

You can help us to collate the answers to final payments status topic. Should that actually be wikified?

Please bear with us and kindly note there is currently a very long backlog for our small team to deal with - it will take 2-3 weeks for us to process these. If you have requested a refund you will get it, no worries!

Community meeting summary

No community meeting summary today, please find meeting logs here.

Harbour news

The app developers have been busy lately. The Harbour QA queue is currently a bit over 2 weeks.

Gotifish

Gotifish is an unofficial client for Gotify, a self-hosted push notification service. It can handle multiple Gotify server connections and real-time message streaming via WebSocket. You get - Desktop notifications for incoming messages and lock screen cover with recent messages. You can also filter messages by application.

jBoy Color

The Gameboy Color emulator got a new version, 1.1.0. It’s now compatible with SFOS 5.0. There is a new option for the border around the screen, and also some bugs were fixed (debugger, layout). I think it’s also worth mentioning that there is now aarch64 build as well.

Tooterβ

The mastodon client received yet another update, version 1.3.3. It has fixes for poll display in notifications and preview cards in quote replies. Also Italian, Swedish and French translations were updated.

Tarkka

Tarkka, the digital magnifying class, was updated to version 0.5.0. Here’s the changelog:

• UI icons updated
• Improved visibility with light ambiances
• Improved UI feedback
• Added background to buttons to improve contrast
• Added save to gallery and share option
• Bugfixes
• Updated Swedish translation

Badge Magic

Badge Magic is a companion app for FOSSASIA’s led badges. You can write messages to the LED badges that you see people wearing all over FOSDEM and elsewhere. Enter your text, set the animation and effects, and write to the badge. Save your favourite badges for later. You can write multiple badges at a time, and the badge will cycle through them if you press the centre button.

Sailtrix

Sailtrix, a Matrix chat app, received an update to version 1.4.3. Then changes include possibility to see if other people are typing in the room, along with assorted bug fixes. Also the translations were updated for Chinese, Norwegian, Finnish, Estonian, German, Slovak, Swedish and Spanish.

ExRates

ExRates, a currency converter app, was updated to version 1.9. Here’s the changelog:

• [bug] Error message on BasePage not formated
• [bug] Fixed Busy indicator on rate update
• [update] Added personal api token for ExchangeRate.com
• [update] Updated to ExchangeRate API v6
• [improvement] Added error messages for API failures
• [improvement] Added missing flags and flag placeholder

Repository roundup

Main interface

• sailfish-weather, the application providing weather forecast information, abranson separated the data providers from the main code, so providers can be added and removed without impacting the previously selected locations. He proposes MET Norway/yr.no as a new backend. pvuorela fixed a vertical positionning issue when a notch is present on the display. abranson later added some small usability improvements, like a “set as current” pull down entry on any non-current location pages.
• qtwayland, Qt Wayland compositor, wayland_egl variant, n2klb used some upstream commit from before the license change, bringing some missing compositor protocol bits. n2klb also proposed to add some other missing standards that are required to get Firefox run natively. piggz proposed a patch to avoid crashes on native ports using Mesa.
• lipstick, the home screen code (open source parts), n2klb implemented the (missing) xdg-shell protocol. This opens the possibility to run natively Qt6 and Gtk applications. He also simplified the window destruction, avoiding duplicated calls.

Network, communication and telephony stack

• libcommhistory, the library to access SMS/phone history, pvuorela fixed a memory leak.
• libconnman-qt, QML bindings for the connection manager, LaakkonenJussi added a retry mechanism to the getProperties() D-Bus call. It is fixing an issue when booting a device with WireGuard VPN on. Sometimes, the VPN is on before the getProperties() is able to return a proper value, making the top menu toggle inconsistent.
• iptables, tools for managing Linux kernel packet filtering capabilities, LaakkonenJussi updated it to 1.8.11.
• openssh, the OpenSSH implementation of SSH protocol, mal updated it to 10.3p1.
• connman, the connection manager, LaakkonenJussi fixed duplicated network names when an access point is extended with repeaters. The signal strength at which the device switch network has been raised up a bit to avoid staying too long with a weak network signal.

Multimedia

• gecko-camera, a plugin-based library for Gecko to simplify video capture, mal fixed an issue with video playback in the browser on Unisoc devices.
• droidmedia, Android media wrapper library, mal increased the number of acquired buffers, from 2 to 4. It seems that some devices need more than the currently rendered buffer and an offscreen one to be rendered next.

Low level libraries

• nemo-qml-plugin-systemsettings, QML bindings to access system parameters, pvuorela added specific properties for Hybris provided location in the location settings.
• libpng, the library to read Portable Network Graphic formats, mal updated it to 1.6.56.
• xz, a compression library, direc85 updated it to 5.8.3.
• libsignon, a framework to centralise signing credentials and procedures, pvuorela merged with upstream after pushing there a fix for a possible hang in D-Bus response.
• libaccounts-qt5, a library to handle online-service accounts, pvuorela updated it with upstream.
• karchive, KDE Frameworks addon with archive functions, pvuorela updated it to 5.111.0.
• libarchive, a library to handle compressed formats, direc85 updated it to 3.8.6.
• p11-kit, a library for loading and sharing PKCS#11 modules, direc85 updated it to 0.26.2.
• ca-certificates, the system-wide authentication certificates, direc85 updated them to 2025.2.80_v9.0.304.
• openssl, utilities and library for cryptography, mal updated it to 3.5.6.
• gdk-pixbuf, image handling library for GTK and friends, mal updated it to 2.44.6.
• nemo-qml-plugin-contacts, QML bindings to access the contact database, lduboeuf modified the caching mechanism to be able to use it from D-Bus with a change signal to avoid polling.
• nemo-qml-plugin-filemanager, QML components to create a file manager, PureTryOut fixed the code so it can be built with a libc different from the GNU libc (here Musl for PostmarketOS).
• ssu, the seamless software updater, direc85 made the device id source configurable. It allows the Platform SDK not to be spammed by repeatedly needed ssu register.
• xdg-dbus-proxy, filtering proxy for D-Bus connections, mal updated it to 0.1.7.
• qtfeedback, a Qt module to handle all sort of feedback, like haptics, PureTryOut adjusted the code and build system to be able to compile with Qt6. QtFeedback is actually part of the Qt project, but it has been unmaintained for some years. pvuorela fixed some issues due to these changes, so it can still be used in Sailfish OS.

Developer’s corner

• mingetty, a getty program for virtual consoles only, direc85 updated the spec file, so it can compile with a newer version of rpm.
• ttmkfdir, a utility to create fonts.scale files for truetype fonts, direc85 modernized the spec file for more recent versions of rpm.
• meego-rpm-config, specific rpm configuration files for Sailfish OS, direc85 removed the custom clean macro used in Meego (the action to delete the build root is the rpm default action anyway).
• buteo-sync-plugin-carddav, the plugin used by the synchronisation framework to sync contacts via the CardDAV protocol, jbicha contributed a patch from Debian that allows to cross build the package. He did the same for the QML module for contacts.
• yaml-cpp, a YAML parser and emitter for C++, direc85 updated it to 0.9.0. The process to update it is a bit complicated as the library is used by libzypp during an update, which requires to get the old library still alive during the update process.
• python-pip, a module manager for Python, mal updated it to 23.3.2.
• policycoreutils, SELinux policy core utilities, mal added a patch from Suse required by a change in Python pip. He did the same in the main SELinux repository.
• fingerterm, the console application, pvuorela fixed positionning for devices with a notch (and no rounded corners).
• vim, the text editor, mal updated it to 9.2.0340.

Please feed us your news

Hope you enjoyed reading this fortnight!

This is a community update, and frankly we can’t always keep up with all the exciting stuff happening in the Sailfish Community. Plus, the less of this we have to actually write ourselves the better. So please help us out by posting your Sailfish news updates to the forum as a reply to this post. We’ll collate as much of it as possible into one easily digestible post for the next update. This is your news!

Please do also join us at our community meetings on IRC, Matrix and Telegram. The next community meeting will be on the 23rd April. Please note change in the time slot due to the daylight saving time change (7:00 PM EET) as we agreed to stick with UTC 2026-04-09T1600Z.

Remember to follow us also in Mastodon jolla (@jolla@techhub.social) - TechHub

[tom.i]

@mal can you provide us some info how your work with Xperia 10V continue, please? Thank you .. <3

[CLMA31]

Not Mal, but when it has been asked in recent community meetings, device specific development of 10 IV/V are on hold as there aren’t that much that can be done with broken implementation from Sony side. So they are basically waiting Sony to release new, better working blobs. They have said to be working with stuff that maybe improve things also with 10 IV/V like camera api 2. This is at least how I have read it

[CLMA31]

Like recently always, community news just don’t let down! Again super exciting stuff happening, 5.1 update just around the corner (can’t wait!!), great app updates in Harbour (special thanks to all devs ), compositor+lipstic update, everything related to Firefox (don’t know if n2klb is Jolla employee or not, but what great effort in short period of time!), Weather app maybe becoming functioning again soonish (in 5.1??) & everything else I don’t understand. Thank you Jolla and every sailor <3

[PolatBirdal]

JOLLA FOREVER

[mettska]

You see in the code, that he has a Jolla-Email-Adress - so I think Jolla has boarded a new Sailor

[CLMA31]

That is AMAZING news!

Edit. Just what I have been dreaming, Jolla in the position where they can hire new people and have more hands to do stuff. For me this seems amazing sign and I hope the good looking track keeps getting even better

[ApB]

The xdg-shell news is probably the most important news since i don’t know when. Probably there are more that need to be done to get to have a modern compositor that can handle multiple screens or whatever but it an enormous step in the right direction.