crmne/zapfast v0.16.0

ZapFast v0.16.0

on GitHub

ZapFast 0.16 is the biggest release yet. Photos and videos open and play inside the app, stickers get favorites synced with your phone, packs, search, and a sticker maker, and a side pane searches any chat by day. The composer is rounded with a plus menu, Settings has a search field, and ZapFast now speaks six more languages. Favorites, labels, unread marks, account privacy, and leaving groups all work from the desktop, most of them synced with your phone. It also fixes chats that never loaded after 0.15.0, right-to-left text, read receipts stuck at one tick, and memory that grew in long chats.

Download ZapFast: Mac · Windows · Windows ARM · Linux · Linux ARM · Flatpak · Debian/Ubuntu · Fedora

New

• Photos and videos open inside ZapFast. Images open in a preview with one zoom control. Videos play in their bubble with sound, a seek bar, and mute, and round video messages play inside their circle. Files ZapFast can't play still open in your system player. By @fabiomotta0311 (images) and @crmne (video); thanks @AlfElFriki. (#115, #62)
• Stickers, redone. The picker has tabs for Recent, Favorites, and each pack, plus search by emoji or pack name. Favorites sync with your phone in both directions, Recent shows only stickers you sent, sticker packs shared in a chat open with View stickers and Add to my stickers, and the picker's + page turns a picture into a sticker. Local packs by @fabiomotta0311; the rest by @crmne; thanks @letruxux. (#150, #47)
• A rounded composer with a plus menu. The message box floats over the wallpaper, as in current WhatsApp, and + holds Send files and Create poll. By @leandroruel and @crmne. (#175)
• Search a chat in a side pane. Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on macOS) opens the chat's matches beside the conversation, each with its time and the line that matched, and a calendar narrows them to one day. Clicking a result, or reaching it with the arrow keys, brings the message into view with a brief flash. Ctrl+K or Ctrl+Shift+F search your chats. By @LisandroNahuelH, @fabiomotta0311, and @crmne; thanks @Leoglez10 and @Adxa1. (#170, #149, #166, #159)
• See who read your messages. Message info lists who read, who has it delivered, and who played a voice message, for groups and one-to-one chats. By @crmne.
• Organise your chats like on your phone. Mark favorites (synced with your phone), add local labels shown as chips, mark a chat unread (synced both ways), and filter by Channels or Archived. Mute every channel from the Channels chip. By @LisandroNahuelH, @fabiomotta0311, and @crmne; thanks @ImFenyx and @letruxux. (#160, #154, #164, #136, #18)
• Join and leave groups from the desktop. Invite links open a preview with Join, and Leave group or Leave channel can archive the chat in the same step. By @crmne and @LisandroNahuelH; thanks @Adxa1. (#64, #169)
• Your account from Settings. Edit your name, About, and profile picture, and change who sees your last seen, photo, About, and more. Settings is now laid out on cards and has a search field (Ctrl+F). By @LisandroNahuelH and @crmne. (#172)
• ZapFast speaks your language. The interface follows your system's language, with Brazilian Portuguese, German, Spanish, Italian, French, and Russian available, and Settings → Appearance → Language picks another. By @fabiomotta0311 and @crmne. (#141)
• Notifications that make sense. A message sound for every chat, a mention sound when a group @mentions or replies to you, a switch to keep ordinary group messages quiet, and a sound per chat, using Pidgin's classic sounds by default. Clicking a notification opens the exact message. By @crmne and @fabiomotta0311; thanks @lopezcelani. (#130, #167)
• Voice messages. Other apps' music pauses while you record or play a voice message or a video and resumes afterwards (Linux and Windows). Consecutive voice messages play one after another, and 1.25x and 1.75x join the speeds. By @crmne and @fabiomotta0311. (#168, #120)
• Live locations show as a map card that updates, and a live location your phone shares with this computer as a placeholder says to follow it on the phone. By @fabiomotta0311 and @crmne. (#143)
• Connect through a proxy. Settings → Network → Proxy takes socks5h://, socks5://, or http://, and an empty field follows ALL_PROXY or HTTPS_PROXY. By @crmne; thanks @aandrew-me. (#12)
• Interactive messages from businesses show their cards and buttons, and quick replies can be answered. By @rafaelsantana6. (#113)
• Chat wallpapers in WhatsApp's colours, with ZapFast's own doodles. By @leandroruel and @crmne. (#137)
• Forward several messages at once, selecting them with Ctrl-click and Shift-click. By @crmne; thanks @xodotLBO. (#46)
• Save attachments where you choose, with Save as… and a download folder in Settings. By @crmne; thanks @idanyashar, @birdbox219, and @danalec. (#57, #66, #68, #98)
• Start in the tray at login. By @crmne; thanks @pedronora. (#109)
• Collapse the chat list to avatars, with unread badges, when you hide it. By @fabiomotta0311. (#151)
• Smaller touches:
  • Drafts are kept in the encrypted archive (@fabiomotta0311, #148).
  • A divider marks where unread messages begin (thanks @Adxa1, #82).
  • React and Reply buttons appear on hover (@fabiomotta0311, #116).
  • Arrow Up edits your last message (@fabiomotta0311, #123).
  • The clock follows your system's 12-hour or 24-hour setting (@fabiomotta0311, #124).
  • The unread count shows on the Linux launcher badge (@Nullpntr1337, #156).
  • Skin-tone emoji appear in the composer's suggestions (@Nullpntr1337, #158).
  • Your own chat is easy to find as "(You)".
  • WhatsApp Plus accounts can pin 20 chats (thanks @fgrehm, #39).

Fixed

• Chats load again after updating. 0.15.0 could wait forever for your phone's chat lock state and never show a chat. By @crmne; thanks @Adxa1, @ricardorfaria1, @dlhnx, and @bslakmon. (#128, #155)
• Hebrew and Arabic read correctly, with emoji in the line, the caret moving the right way, and Arabic as large as the Latin text around it. By @shinycake and @crmne; thanks @BruceUK. (#144, #73, #72)
• Long chats stay light. Only the messages on screen are laid out, so a chat with thousands of messages no longer slows every frame or keeps growing in memory. By @folkwayse. (#174, #146, #145)
• Read receipts no longer stay at one tick. Receipts that arrived before their message were dropped. By @crmne; thanks @letruxux. (#31)
• Replies never go out without their quote. When the original can't be quoted, nothing is sent and your text, attachments, or voice message come back. By @udaya2899, @leandroruel, and @crmne. (#27, #134)
• Channels muted on your phone stay quiet here, and archived chats stay archived when history arrives. By @crmne; thanks @osama-dev2206 and @BenjiMandel. (#79, #35)
• Your phone gets notifications while ZapFast is open: ZapFast only shows you online while you use it. By @crmne; thanks @givemeworld1. (#119)
• Stickers and GIFs stop flickering and placeholders settle. By @fabiomotta0311 and @crmne; thanks @Leoglez10. (#140, #165)
• WAV and other audio phones can't play are sent as documents. By @crmne; thanks @joaogks. (#162)
• A window restored off-screen comes back, and launching ZapFast again brings a minimized window forward. By @fabiomotta0311 and @crmne. (#171)
• Only you can talk to your running ZapFast. The channel a second launch uses is now private to your user. By @crmne; thanks @princesaini. (#80)
• macOS updates start from inside the signed app. By @tobymarks. (#129)
• When the archive key is gone, ZapFast offers to start over instead of getting stuck. By @crmne; thanks @eyademb7-eng. (#83)
• Messages that open only on the phone say so, including view-once media. By @crmne; thanks @letruxux. (#30)
• Opening files no longer leaves zombie processes on Linux. By @crmne; thanks @dakai. (#132)
• The typing indicator uses far less CPU, and times and counters no longer shift as their digits change. By @tassiovirginio and @crmne, with Spotifast's steady digits from @hyperpuncher. (#127)

Known limitations

• macOS: updating from 0.15.0 or earlier inside the app fails with "The update helper exited before it was ready". Install 0.16.0 from the DMG once; updates from 0.16.0 onward work.
• Pausing other apps' music isn't available on macOS, which has no public way to do it.
• WhatsApp sends linked devices a placeholder instead of some live locations, so those show as a card that points to your phone.

Thanks

@fabiomotta0311, @LisandroNahuelH, @leandroruel, @shinycake, @folkwayse, @Nullpntr1337, @udaya2899, @rafaelsantana6, @tassiovirginio, @tobymarks, @Adxa1, @letruxux, @BruceUK, @Leoglez10, @AlfElFriki, @ImFenyx, @aandrew-me, @xodotLBO, @idanyashar, @birdbox219, @danalec, @pedronora, @lopezcelani, @fgrehm, @osama-dev2206, @BenjiMandel, @givemeworld1, @joaogks, @princesaini, @eyademb7-eng, @dakai, @ricardorfaria1, @dlhnx, @bslakmon, @hyperpuncher, and everyone who reported problems and helped test this release. The notification sounds are Pidgin's, under the GPL-2.0.

Full changelog: v0.15.0...v0.16.0