Dev

This week the Session team continued to make big progress, on the Android side closed group chunk 1 is nearing completion, with the final unit tests being worked on now. Disappearing messages on Android has now patched in 'disappear after read' support, which is going through its last bit of code review. On iOS chunk 1 of closed groups as well as a number of small bugfixes are being worked on and were making good progress. Finally on the Desktop side devs are writing unit tests for closed group chunk 1 and responding to code review & writing tests for disappearing messages. The core team continues its work on the Merkle tree implementation for claiming balances from the Oxen workchain when EVM migration occurs. Last but not least the Lokinet team has told me they can see the light at the end of the tunnel and are moving into the final stages of their Lokinet internals refactor, which should mean internal testing soon!

Session

Session Android

• Fix regression which caused media to not download

• Ongoing work on disappearing messages, disappearing messages is now undergoing code review

• Ongoing work on closed groups overhaul, chunk 1 is close to being finished, writing more unit tests and pulling in some more libSession related changes to finish things off

• Limited release of 1.17.2 which attempts to fix a number of crashes and resolve minor issues in Session Android client.

Session Desktop

• Ongoing work on disappearing messages overhaul, disappearing messages is now into code review, with unit tests being written while its undergoing the review process 

• Ongoing work on closed groups overhaul, now into the stage of build prep for QA

• Update Electron version

• Remove password verification from general settings menus and only verify if viewing recovery password (thanks to community contributor Gravel)

• Allow user to delete unsent messages (thanks to community contributor Gravel) 

• Increase visibility of remaining image counter (thanks to community contributor Gravel)

Session iOS 

• Fixed issue with message reprocessing

• Fixed crash which could occur when scrolling in conversations

• Fixed a bug where profiles with blank name values wouldn't fallback correctly

• Fixed an issue where theme changes stopped updating nav styling

• Change the “Grant camera access” modal to conform with Apple standards

• Fixed issue where string validation was failing on archive builds

LibSession 

• Enhance merge() to return accepted hashes for Session clients

• Minor fixes for new groups support (Thanks to community contributor frtget)

• Add better targets to make libSession usage as a submodule clearer

• Update Protobuf handling logic

• Update nodejs wrappers

Oxen Core  

• Ongoing work on Merkle tree implementation for verifying rewards state

Lokinet

• Ongoing work on internals overhaul of Lokinet

Marketing

Our big ticket project last week was making sure that the launch of our updated Youtube page went smoothly and on time (both of which were successfully achieved). Our relaunch to Session TV was a move to consolidate our content under the one brand hub. This decision is set to better reflect Oxen’s overall rebrand which is currently underway. In Sessions revamped media hub you’ll be able to find all our content in one streamlined place (project updates, tutorials, Session Tapes etc). This move means it’s easier for new viewers to discover the Session ecosystem and get started on their privacy journey — all whilst making it simpler for long-time fan’s of the channel. You can learn more about Session TV in this great video Tom made with Josh.

Session Token wise, the team reviewed branding design and mockups for the new website. The designs are currently in a feedback and iteration loop, while we are also refining the core copy which will be used to build out the rest of the site. Specifically, this is content such as launch blogs, webpage copy and documentation for FAQs. We’re excited to share more news about this with the community soon.

Socials wise, the team continued to kick goals. It was great to see one of our posts on Mastodon do really well, considering we have only just kicked off our Q4 campaign. This is a great sign of community interest in our presence on the platform and we will keep putting out content like it. Since our relaunch on the platform two weeks ago, we have already attained 20 percent of our quarterly follower goals. 

In terms of housekeeping, Wes audited our Help Desk and support documents to find any out of date copy or assets. It's critical that as we continue to push out updates for Session that all our support reflects the most current version. 

Finally we continued to work on the Session newsletter. With all the copy and assets ready to drop, we ran into a client side issue with dark mode. We are looking into resolving this ASAP and can't wait to send this one out to our 20K subscribers. 

Thanks for swinging by folks!