4.4 KiB
Offband Meshcore 1.2.0
Our biggest release yet. A ground-up interface redesign, a real database under the hood, GIFs that work across every MeshCore client, and hands-on control of your radio's RF front end. This is also the first Offband release built, signed, and shipped to every platform automatically.
One app, every platform
From this release on, every Offband build ships everywhere at once, signed with the same key so updates just work:
- Android: install from Google Play or sideload the signed APK
- Windows: desktop build
- Linux: desktop build
- Web: run it right in your browser, no install, at offband.app
Pick your platform below.
A brand-new interface
The headline feature. Offband has been rebuilt around a modern navigation shell that finally gets out of your way.
- A left rail you open from the hamburger button, and can pin open so it lives right alongside your conversation instead of covering it.
- Your channels live in the rail and switch in place, so jumping between channels never loses your spot or your scroll position.
- Map layer toggles, Disconnect, and Settings all found sensible new homes in the panel, and the back button finally behaves the way it should: it backgrounds the app instead of killing it, and never knocks you off a connected radio.
Your data, on solid ground
Under the surface, Offband now keeps your messages, contacts, and channels in a real SQLite database instead of a pile of loose preference files.
- Your existing data migrates automatically the first time you open this version. Nothing is thrown away, and your full message history is preserved.
- Storage problems that used to fail silently now surface, so nothing goes wrong in the dark.
- On desktop, your data no longer gets swept into OneDrive/Documents sync.
GIFs everyone can see
GIFs are no longer an Offband-only party trick.
- Send a GIF and it goes out as a plain Giphy link, so people on stock MeshCore and other clients can tap it and watch it too, not just Offband users.
- Paste a Giphy or Tenor link and it renders inline, behind a trusted-host safety allowlist.
Take command of your radio's front end
Power users, this one's for you. On supported hardware, Offband now gives you direct control of your radio's FEM / LNA (the front-end module and low-noise amplifier that shape receive sensitivity and transmit path).
- Toggle FEM LNA right from Radio Settings.
- Device Info now reads out your radio's Offband capabilities, so you can see at a glance what your hardware supports.
Both are gated on firmware capability, so they appear only where the radio actually supports them.
Deeper diagnostics
More signal, less guesswork when you need to see what your mesh is doing.
- Message arrival time is now logged and persisted separately from the claimed send time, so you can tell when a message really reached you versus when the sender says it left (#285).
- Path diagnostics report honest, width-aware units instead of mislabeled hop counts, and path lengths decode exactly per the firmware contract.
Faster across the board
The new storage engine and a round of under-the-hood work add up to a noticeably snappier app.
- Connecting no longer rewrites your entire preferences file for every channel, so connect time is quicker and lighter on storage.
- Bulk reads and writes go through the database now, which scales far better as your message and contact history grows.
And a few more
- Desktop remembers your window size and position between launches.
- Reach a contact's settings straight from its long-press menu.
- You can no longer accidentally block your own node.
See the full, itemized changelog in the repository.
Support Offband
Offband is free and open source, built by a very small team. If it is useful to you, please consider chipping in at offband.org/donate. Donations go directly toward keeping the project going and toward getting Offband onto the iOS App Store, which carries its own ongoing Apple costs. Thank you for being part of it.