I’ve just tagged 0.6.0-beta.1. It’s on OpenRepos by the time your read this! It is still beta quality software. Be aware that it may 
your 
, it could 
a 
, and send unwanted 
to your 
. Be prepared to submit bugs.
Highlights:
- A revamp of the whole UI. It’s seriously impressive, thanks to @ichthyosaurus
- Note that many new UI elements have been added, but some of them (reply/quote, notably) are not yet implemented.
- Linking with Signal Desktop (go to Settings and pull down)
- A revamp of the back-end database, which paves the path for implementing all the fancy new Signal features.
- Implementation of GroupV2. You can now be added to new-style groups; invitations do not yet work. Group upgrades also should work.
You can check whether your group is of the “new type”, by swiping to the group overview page (also revamped by @ichthyosaurus). It’ll show a little text on top to tell you about the upgrade status.
These are only the highlights, please do take a look on Openrepos to check the full (and huge) change log.
Some notes w.r.t. GroupV2
GroupV2 (“new groups”) is a huge beast. This beta version enables you to join these groups and talk in them. Ironically, that’s actually the easiest part of GroupV2. We had a lot of technical debt to pay off (inheritance from Whisperfish 0.5 and our ad-hoc rewrite: DB migrations and UUID-based sessions) before we could implement it all though. These are some important things to consider:
- You can only be added to a group. You cannot be invited, you cannot “join” a group or request to be joined.
- Groups can be updated, but:
- It may take a few minutes (up to a few hours) before your other group members see you as group-v2-compatible. Send them a direct message to kick off the process.
- When the group is updated, you may see “unknown” members (without phone number, but with a hexadecimal UUID). These people map on members that you miss, and it will resolve itself over time when these people start talking or send you a message. Speed up the process again by sending them a message.
- If the group is already updated, then you can be readded. Ask a group member in a direct message to add you to the group (not invite, but add). The old group will automatically be merged with the already upgraded group.
- You cannot at the current time alter your own profile. I’ve been egoistic though, and I’ve made my own profile hard-coded with a
as emoji, because SailfishOS, of course.
Once again, upvote the features that you want most on Gitlab, request new stuff, report bugs, and upvote bugs that affect you. Closing the feedback loop is important, keeping the loop tight reduces bugs and their impact on others.
Happy chatting!
Ruben