October 8, 2026

• Small group and channel calls

  Group and channel calls gain their shared audio and video implementation, protected participant connections and a single active screen share. This first implementation is for small calls of up to six people.

• A call layout that follows the participants

  A call with two people uses the familiar one-to-one stage; larger calls use a grid with stable places. Participants can be pinned, with the conversation and call controls still available.

• Presence, status and paused notifications

  See whether someone is active or has paused notifications, their status and, where space permits, their local time. Set your own status, appear away or pause notifications; a message can offer Notify anyway when someone has paused.

• Mute a conversation

  Conversations can be muted from the Mac interface, with a dimmed row and muted-bell indicator. At this stage the choice is local to the device: mentions can still alert and desktop calls still ring.

• Invitations for more than one person

  Invitation links can allow multiple uses, track accepted joins and be revoked with a verified change. This implements the previously recorded reusable-invitation design.

• Reminders and a Later list

  Set a reminder from a message, choose a suggested or custom time, and manage it from Later with Done, Snooze, Change and Remove. Reminders sync encrypted between your devices and bring the message back when due.

• Mac reminders can fire while Lowfire is closed

  The Mac can schedule reminder notifications with the system so they appear while Lowfire is quit. Linux cannot schedule them this way yet and shows a due reminder on the next launch.

• Clear controls for broadcast channels

  Channels where only chosen people may post show that policy and explain it to readers in place of the composer. Admins can manage posting and reaction permissions; readers can start a private reply quoting a post.

• Keep a turned-off account as an archive

  An account turned off by its server can stay as a read-only archive beside a new working account on that server. Its local history remains readable; a kit made for the working account does not also restore the archive.

• Advance warning when an update is required

  The app warns before its version stops being accepted by a server and checks promptly for an update. Offered downloads can prepare quietly in the background; installing remains the person’s choice.

• A call privacy preference

  Always use a relay is available as a privacy preference for calls, so the other participant does not receive a direct connection to your network address.

• Use the network’s proxy

  Chat connections honor system proxy settings, including automatic proxy selection on the Mac and supported environment or desktop settings on Linux. Call relay connections can also travel over the proxy when direct network access is restricted.

• Send less audio during silence

  Silent speakers use a quieter transmission mode, with comfort noise at the receiving end so silence does not sound like a broken call.

• Read long histories without loading them all

  Long conversations keep only a limited working set of messages in memory and can load the area around a chosen message. Screen-reader access follows that working set, so a large history does not require keeping every row active.

• Capacity limits for hosted organisations

  Server operators can set organisation limits for conversation count and stored message bytes as well as attachments. The server reports which limit was reached and keeps member-removal work bounded in large organisations.

• Sharper colour in supported Mac screen shares

  Mac screen sharing can preserve full colour detail when both devices support the required codec, improving fine coloured text. It negotiates support and falls back for other devices rather than assuming every decoder can display it.

• Subscribe to changes through automation

  Automation clients can subscribe to committed changes and read them through the same commands on each transport. Events carry structural information rather than message contents or keys, and a client is told to resynchronise if it falls behind.

• Steadier scrolling through mixed messages

  Scrolling and dragging the scrollbar through messages of different heights now use the same position model. Loading older rows, resizing or replacing a row is less likely to move the content unexpectedly.

• Reach controls hidden by nested scrolling

  Accessibility can find controls hidden by an outer scrolling region as well as an inner one. Activating such a control scrolls it into view through the relevant regions.

• Explain when a shared window is hidden

  Minimising or hiding a shared Mac window shows Sharing paused to the sharer and Paused to viewers over the last picture. Showing a valid picture again resumes the share.

• Zoom to Fit uses the viewing area

  Zoom to Fit fills the available screen-sharing stage correctly, and its tooltips stay inside the window.

• Keep shared-screen changes moving on narrow links

  Small shared-screen changes are paced instead of repeatedly skipped when bandwidth is tight. This improves continuity without claiming the remaining low-bandwidth quality work is finished.

• Recover camera video from lost packets

  Camera video can repair some lost data and paces repeated data more carefully, reducing pauses and waiting on lossy connections. Further changes start this protection promptly and make it consistent across simulated connection conditions.

• Respond sooner when bandwidth falls

  Call transmission drains an overloaded connection sooner and recovers video after a sudden narrowing with less unnecessary waiting. The work is incremental: some difficult connection recovery targets remain unmet.

• Avoid unnecessary bandwidth reductions

  Connection estimates no longer drop just because a growth cap is reached. Starting probes can establish a narrow connection’s real limit before a share begins, and continue while they are still learning more capacity.

• Sound delay settles after congestion

  After network congestion eases, the audio buffer comes back down rather than leaving the call with unnecessary delay.

• Avoid redundant call setup messages

  Call connection setup no longer repeats messages already acknowledged or sends rounds that are not needed.

• Keep an active call connected while paths change

  A call can continue on its working path while one side searches for a replacement, avoiding an incorrect Reconnecting state or hang-up while media still flows. Checks also wake an exhausted path search when verified progress arrives.

• One slow participant does not freeze the others

  A group-call connection left behind at one picture size no longer holds up the other participants receiving that size.

• Explain a group call’s missing relay

  When a group call cannot start because the required relay is unavailable, it gives one clear explanation as a one-to-one call does.

• A floating call window that fits

  Status pills and controls fit the mini call window at its supported sizes. Overlays fade when the pointer leaves, and the top bar no longer leaves an unnecessary empty area.

• Explain limits before adding people

  Add is dimmed when a group is full, with a reason before it is pressed. Device-limit explanations keep their reserved space in the Add People interface.

• Keep notices and invitation actions in bounds

  An invitation footer wraps when it does not fit, and banner buttons move together below the words in narrow columns. Refused-account banners center their text and narrow update notices stay clear of the whole account footer.

• Close a reaction picker when focus moves

  The emoji field for a reaction closes when it loses the keyboard or its message scrolls away.

• Reliable removal from a reminder menu

  Remove Reminder keeps its selected reminder information alive while the menu is copied, so choosing the action has valid arguments.

• Automatically retry after an older server refusal

  Existing accounts retry automatically after a refusal caused by an older server. Creating a conversation just after joining an organisation also waits for the membership prerequisites to arrive.

• Joining and leaving settle consistently

  Joining and leaving an organisation reconcile the account and organisation records. Direct conversations remember when their other member has left and refuse further use accordingly.

• Recover a rejoin whose reply was lost

  If the server accepted a rejoin but its answer was lost, the client can discover and settle the accepted change. It avoids confusing later or obsolete membership changes with the one it owns.

• Keep asking for missing channel history

  Missing history remains owed until records actually cover it. A storage failure no longer silently clears the need to fetch those records.

• Recover from a lost message event

  The chat core recovers when it cannot allocate a message event and distinguishes certificate failures more accurately, rather than losing the event without a useful recovery path.

• Recover an organisation change nobody could open

  The client can move past an organisation-key period whose key reached nobody. Admins receive a neutral explanation and repeat notice instead of a permanently stuck organisation.

• Track all restored conversations

  Restoring more than 64 conversations no longer leaves later ones out of the idle-work tracking.

• More stable text layout under growth

  Editable text reuses storage for exact wrapping, and retained text layouts survive growth of their backing pool. Wrapping also reuses scanned prefixes in very long words instead of repeatedly scanning them.

• Even translucent line joins

  A translucent line’s join is drawn once, preventing visibly darker overlap at the corner.

• Give back unused graphics resources

  Idle spare drawables are released rather than kept indefinitely, reducing graphics resources retained after activity.

• Bound memory during backup and restore

  Backup, restore and history handover process messages in bounded batches, with indexed message lookups. Linking also spools history through encrypted pages; further work on interrupted large transfers remains.

• Avoid opening every old group at launch

  Connecting and listing conversations no longer eagerly open idle encrypted groups, and unconditional history scans are removed. These are steps toward keeping startup work independent of history size.

• Let another process read without blocking normal chat

  A second process can briefly borrow the encrypted store and return what it read to the app. When a chat action needs the store back, it waits briefly and reclaims it instead of simply refusing the action.

• Explain outdated update information

  Signed update information gains an expiry, and the app explains when the feed is stale instead of silently trusting an old listing. Compatibility handling includes a dated transition for feeds without the new expiry.

Designs, contracts and foundations are work in progress; they do not by themselves mean a finished feature is available.

• A relay for private wake notifications

  The push relay implementation can open sealed registrations and send content-free requests to Apple and Google notification services. Provider stand-ins and real clients exercise it; this is infrastructure and integration work rather than a statement that every platform’s push delivery is enabled.

• Plan for larger and web calls

  The roadmap routes future larger calls and web calling through a forwarding server. That architecture is documented here, not delivered as an available call size increase.

• Clarify the future third-party plugin model

  The project records that future third-party plugins will run in a sandboxed format. Existing native plugins are trusted first-party code, and the third-party sandbox is not built yet.

• Record thread and organisation emoji direction

  The owner’s decisions specify Messages-style threads, reject shared channels between organisations and accept the organisation emoji design. Recording those choices does not itself implement threads or custom emoji.

• Prepare the next security workflows

  Preparatory work sets limits on stored security state and adds the connections later work will use. It does not make a new security workflow available in the app yet.

• Prepare to read large messages in small pieces

  New internal readers and writers can process large structured messages without loading every repeated part at once. Account, linking and reminder features still need to adopt these building blocks.

• Recovery groundwork for larger groups

  Periodic account-key updates and authenticated large-group bootstrap improve the foundations of self-rejoining and recovery. This is a partial implementation: some discovery and retained-history cases remain open.