Bitchat Android v2.1.0

Highlights

• Spam filtering for public mesh and geohash chats, enabled by default. Phone users can disable it in settings.
• More reliable geohash participant lists, nicknames and blocking, including removal of blocked users' messages.
• Corrected Cashu ecash amount formatting for fiat-denominated tokens.
• Clearer light-mode voice-note waveforms, improved onboarding layouts and consistent QR scan controls.
• Basque language support and spam-filter translations.
• Improved incoming-message autoscroll and verification-sheet layering.
• QR scanner initialization fixes for minified releases, plus concurrency fixes for security-cache cleanup and relay snapshots.
• Panic reset confirmation and accurate reporting of wipe outcomes.
• Wear OS: swipe right from chat for the app menu, including a confirmed Quit action.
• Privacy and security hardening: exclude app data from backup/device transfer, validate message fragments and encoded data, check verification QR timestamps, and limit APK downloads and decoded packet sizes.
• Prevent recipient-less Nostr private-message envelopes from exposing a stable mesh identity.
• Updated bundled Nostr relays.

Versions and downloads

Phone 2.1.0 (41) requires Android 8.0/API 26 or newer. Wear OS 0.1.6 (1000000007) requires API 33 or newer. Both use com.bitchat.droid and target API 37, from commit b8016545e00cc7317fd9dc938b8cb7796db190ff.

• bitchat-android-arm64.apk: most modern Android phones.
• bitchat-android-universal.apk: compatibility fallback.
• bitchat-android-x86_64.apk: x86_64 devices and emulators.
• bitchat-android-wear.apk: direct Wear OS installation.
• bitchat-android-play-upload.aab: signed phone bundle for Play.
• bitchat-android-wear-play-upload.aab: signed Wear OS bundle for its separate Play track.

Only signed binaries and reproducibility metadata are attached. No unsigned APKs or AABs are published.

Reproducible-build verification

Requirements: Git, Docker (at least 16 GiB memory), and GitHub CLI.

git clone https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat-android.git
cd bitchat-android
git checkout v2.1.0
tools/reproducible-builds/build-in-container.sh .reproducible-build/verify-2.1.0
gh release download v2.1.0 --repo permissionlesstech/bitchat-android \
  --pattern BITCHAT_BUILDINFO.json --pattern BITCHAT_SHA256SUMS.unsigned \
  --dir .reproducible-build/metadata-2.1.0
gh attestation verify .reproducible-build/metadata-2.1.0/BITCHAT_BUILDINFO.json \
  --repo permissionlesstech/bitchat-android
gh attestation verify .reproducible-build/metadata-2.1.0/BITCHAT_SHA256SUMS.unsigned \
  --repo permissionlesstech/bitchat-android
cmp .reproducible-build/verify-2.1.0/SHA256SUMS.unsigned \
  .reproducible-build/metadata-2.1.0/BITCHAT_SHA256SUMS.unsigned

To check downloaded release-file integrity:

gh release download v2.1.0 --repo permissionlesstech/bitchat-android --dir release-files
(cd release-files && shasum -a 256 -c BITCHAT_SHA256SUMS)

Signing certificates (SHA-256)

• GitHub APKs and Play upload: 3b03fa66a5451321100792f5b55a7b4966d5c8dc10c6daa40aa95ea489531bca
• Google Play app signing: 5e651dd0c80d1f57f2617964955085e28949dd04addac7b53fe9d2f11e172aa2

Google Play signs delivered APKs separately; their bytes need not match the GitHub APKs.

Validation scope

Phone unit tests: 762 passed, 3 existing skips. Wear unit tests: 238 passed. Contract tests and two synthetic minified-scanner runtime tests passed. Two independent local canonical builds matched byte-for-byte.

Both independent builds in the tagged release workflow also matched byte-for-byte. All eight canonical binaries and both public build-metadata subjects passed GitHub provenance verification against the exact tag, source commit and release workflow. APK signing is deterministic; existing signing-certificate continuity and signed AAB payload comparisons passed.

Existing lint findings remain; the six targeted translation errors were fixed. Changed-line coverage is unavailable because its Gradle task is not wired. Physical-device, cross-client/endurance and Play-delivered upgrade tests were not completed for this release; these gates were explicitly waived. This is not a claim that those checks passed.

Full changelog

Changes since v2.0.3