This month brought an automatic update check for Gajim on Windows/MacOS, account password storage enhancements, an OMEMO fix for ChatSecure, as well as many small improvements.

Changes in Gajim

We introduced an automatic update check for Gajim on Windows/MacOS. The feature request for this dates back to 2009, seems it was about time. On first start, Gajim will ask you if it should search for updates once per week. If a new release is detected, you’ll get a notification enabling you to download the new version.

The password of your account is stored in your systems’s keyring by default. You can now turn that off in Preferences. There have been some password storage improvements, and it’s now also possible to use kwallet for your password when running Gajim via Flatpak.

An often requested feature for group chats is loading recent messages automatically when scrolling up. To implement that feature however, the message displaying methods Gajim uses at the moment would need bigger changes. For a start, we will now display the 50 most recent messages in group chats. This is meant as a step between having no backlog at all and having dynamic message loading.

What else happened

• The status selector on the bottom of the contact list has been rewritten, fixing a bug where status items would not render correctly
• Bug fixes for the Account Assistant
• It’s now possible to send messages to more than one group (e.g. Team 1 and Team 2 in your contact list)
• Better error handling for group chat invites
• You can now move someone from ‘Not in Contact List’ to any group in your contact list to add this contact permanently
• It’s now possible to drag content from notifications in KDE and drop them on Gajim to start a file transfer
• Audio/Video: fix ending a call properly
• Preferences: Video preview can now be toggled

Plugin updates

OMEMO received a fix for a bug preventing encryption on a newly created account.

Changes in python-nbxmpp

Version 1.0.1 of python-nbxmpp has been released. This version includes a fix for a bug where messages from ChatSecure could not be decrypted after a longer period of time has passed. It also includes some fixes for Websocket connections.

As always, feel free to join gajim@conference.gajim.org to discuss with us.