Cwtch 1.15 is now available for download!

Cwtch is a communication application (and associated libraries) that uses Tor v3 Onion Services to establish surveillance resistant channels between people. Cwtch has been designed to be secure, private, and resilient.

You can download Cwtch from https://docs.cwtch.im/download.

Subscribe to our RSS feed, Atom feed, or JSON feed to stay up to date, and get the latest on, all aspects of Cwtch development.

Alternatively we also provide a releases-only RSS feed.

In This Release​

A special thanks to the amazing volunteer translators and testers who made this release possible.

• New Features:
  • Managed Groups Alpha - This Cwtch release contains the first iteration of managed groups, allowing a dedicated (and trusted) cwtch peer to host a multi-person chat. To volunteer to test out this new feature please join the Release Candidate Testers group and ask for an invite.
  • Private Profile Labels - You can now give each of your profiles a local-only descriptive name.
• Bug Fixes / Improvements:
  • Cwtch is now based on Flutter 3.22
  • Cwtch on Linux now uses the Flutter-provided fl_dart_project_set_aot_library_path method (contributed by Dan), rather than our own custom solution.
  • File Download verification attempts with incomplete/missing manifests will now allow attempt to redownload the manifest rather than emitting an error.
  • Cwtch will now correctly connect to the Tor Service in Tails OS > 6.0
  • Importing Unencrypted Profiles no longer requires entering the defecto password
  • When the clickable links experiment is enabled, message Formatting now priotizes code formatting over linking. Thanks @psyduck
  • When the image previews experiment is enabled, images are now previewed in their original aspect ratio. Thanks @psyduck
  • Source Tarballs are now also packaged during the release process
  • The Windows installer is now signed
  • New deb package release option (beta, please help us test!)
  • New Synergy Theme, for those who want Cwtch to look like an enterprise product
• Accessibility / UX:
  • Core translations for Brazilian Portuguese, Danish , Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian , Romanian , Russian, Polish, Slovak, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, and Welsh
  • Partial translations for Korean (41%), Japanese (26%), , Luxembourgish (19%), Greek (15%), Uzbek (9%), and Portuguese (5%)
  • Theme Refresh - Many small adjustments to existing themes to make them more accessible

Reproducible Bindings​

Cwtch 1.15 is based on libCwtch version libCwtch-autobindings-2024-09-05-11-07-v0.1.3. The repliqate scripts to reproduce these bindings from source can be found at https://git.openprivacy.ca/cwtch.im/repliqate-scripts/src/branch/main/cwtch-autobindings-v0.1.3

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Help us go further!​

We couldn't do what we do without all the wonderful community support we get, from one-off donations to recurring support via Patreon.

If you want to see us move faster on some of these goals and are in a position to, please donate. If you happen to be at a company that wants to do more for the community and this aligns, please consider donating or sponsoring a developer.

Donations of $5 or more can opt to receive stickers as a thank-you gift!

For more information about donating to Open Privacy and claiming a thank you gift please visit the Open Privacy Donate page.

Cwtch 1.14 is now available for download!

Cwtch is a communication application (and associated libraries) that uses Tor v3 Onion Services to establish surveillance resistant channels between people. Cwtch has been designed to be secure, private, and resilient.

You can download Cwtch from https://cwtch.im/download.

Subscribe to our RSS feed, Atom feed, or JSON feed to stay up to date, and get the latest on, all aspects of Cwtch development.

Alternatively we also provide a releases-only RSS feed.

In This Release​

Last week, we mentioned that enhanced permissions are essential to implementing many of the aspects of the new hybrid groups design.

In this post we will introduce the new enhanced permissions api in libCwtch, explain why it is needed, and how future releases of Cwtch will manage conversation-level permissions.

Back in September 2023 we released Cwtch 1.13, the first version of Cwtch to be labelled as stable, and a major milestone in Cwtch development.

With the Cwtch interface now stable, we are in a position to begin a new phase in Cwtch development: a Path towards Hybrid Groups.

Cwtch 1.13 is now available for download!

Cwtch is a communication application (and associated libraries) that uses Tor v3 Onion Services to establish surveillance resistant channels between people. Cwtch has been designed to be secure, private, and resilient.

Cwtch 1.13 is the culmination of the last few years of effort by the Cwtch team, and is the first release that meets our bar to be labelled a Cwtch Stable candidate.

While much more work remains, we are now very confident in the state of the Cwtch library, and the Cwtch UI. We are prepared to make certain commitments regarding peer-to-peer messaging, the UI, and experimental interfaces. In this post we will chart the journey that got us to this point, highlight what is in this new release, and talk about our next steps.

The next large step for the Cwtch project to take is a move from public Beta to Stable – marking a point at which we consider Cwtch to be secure and usable. We have been working hard towards that goal over the last year.

Today, as we approach the release of Cwtch Stable we would like to provide another update on the ongoing work, and the remaining blockers to certifying a Cwtch Stable release. We also have a new nightly to test out!

There is a new Nightly build are available from our build server. The latest nightly we recommend testing is 2023-08-22-23-27-v1.12.0-25-ge019f.

This nightly contains a first cut of support for Whonix, a new global setting for managing how conversation history is preserved, in addition to several bug fixes reported in the last nightly.

Please see the contribution documentation for advice on submitting feedback

There is a new Nightly build are available from our build server. The latest nightly we recommend testing is 2023-08-02-20-24-v1.12.0-19-g75b7.

This nightly contains a first cut of Conversation Search, in addition to several bug fixes impacting effectiveness of the contact retry plugin when combined with a large contact list, and an unstable network connection. Finally we have made a few tweaks to the font scaling based on feedback.

Please see the contribution documentation for advice on submitting feedback

As we journey ever closer to a Cwtch Stable candidate we would like to take this opportunity to ensure that those who have contributed to Cwtch over the years have the option to be credited in some way.

If you have participated in the development process in any way e.g. protocol design, writing code, UI design, writing tests, testing release candidates, reporting issues, translating the application or documentation, promoting metadata resistant applications or any other meaningful contribution to the Cwtch ecosystem we want to offer you the option to have your name or handle credited in both the source code repository and the application itself.

Earlier this year we talked about the changes we have made to make Cwtch Bindings Reproducible.

In this devlog we will talk about how the Cwtch UI are currently built, the changes we have made to Cwtch UI to make future distributions verifiable, and the next steps we will be taking to make all Cwtch builds reproducible.

This will be useful to anyone who is looking to reproduce Cwtch UI builds specifically, and to anyone who wants to start implementing reproducible builds in their own project.