wadamesh beta_53

Test build. Stable stays beta_50.

Flash it from https://flasher.wadamesh.com (flip the Beta toggle), or on-device via Settings → Firmware with "Get test builds (beta)" enabled.

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⚠️ Read this before updating

Chats now keep the newest 250 messages each by default. If a chat holds more than that, the older messages are dropped the next time it receives one. Change it or turn it off under Settings → Chats → "Keep per chat (messages)" first if you want to keep a deep backlog.

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Speed with a large chat history

This is the headline. A busy channel made the whole interface crawl, and the cause was the chat list re-scanning the entire message store once per chat, every refresh — so the more history you had, the slower everything became. One reporter had 3800 messages in a single channel. That work now happens once instead of once per chat, and it is why the drag was noticeable even at ~300 messages.

Alongside it, a new per-chat history limit (Settings → Chats): 100 / 250 / 500 / 1000 / 2000 / No limit, default 250. Previously the message store was one shared pool with no per-chat bound, so a single busy channel could occupy essentially all of it and starve your other chats of history. Choosing No limit asks you to confirm, because an unlimited history is exactly what caused the slowdown.

Blocking now actually works

Three separate bugs, all reported by @D-Melhede (#177):

• blocking a sender in a channel never saved properly, so it did not stick
• blocking a person inside a room server silenced the entire room instead of that one person
• blocked names were only filtered in channels, so room posts still came through

Unblocking is also fixed: blocks were stored in two places and only one was cleared, so someone could stay silently blocked after you unblocked them.

Chats

• Chat list preview stuck on an old message. It chose the "newest" message by timestamp, which breaks on a device whose clock restarts each boot — a message from an earlier session could outrank everything new, permanently. It now uses actual arrival order. Mostly seen on the T-Display P4.
• Notification sound works again. A failed map-tile fetch left an internal counter stuck, and that counter was silently muting every chime. Reported by @ropafiro (#184).

Stability and connection

• Multi-second freezes on Heltec V4 in a busy mesh. Every advert heard triggered a redundant write to internal flash, and contact saves were not rate-limited. Thanks to Raph for the detailed report and video.
• Wi-Fi scanning no longer gets stuck off after a badly-timed disconnect (#171, @TrustYourTechnoLust).
• The phone app gets its replies again — ping and telemetry responses could be swallowed before reaching it (#124, @nicocdu23-blip).
• The web control panel no longer drops typed characters. Thanks to VE2CCK.

Apps

• Airtime and Snake now behave like the Spectrum app: a proper ‹ back title bar, and you can no longer tap or swipe through to the screen behind them. A crash-on-close path was fixed at the same time.
• Swiping inside any full-screen app (Airtime, Spectrum, RF Monitor, Discover, Web, VNC, Remote) no longer jumps you to another tab.
• Three older reports from @dreirund: crash-restart dialog text overlapping its buttons (#97), the settings sheet from "Discovered" being cut off (#109), and room servers getting their own icon in the contacts list (#106).

T-Display P4

• The clock is fixed. The P4 showed the wrong time on screen while sent messages carried the correct one, and "Sync clock from system" then broke the good clock too. Its RTC chip was being set but the system clock never was. (This also affects the ThinkNode M9, which has the same chip.)
• New LoRa antenna setting (Settings → Radio). The on-board antenna is selected on every boot, and switching to the external socket asks you to confirm an antenna is actually connected — transmitting into an empty connector can damage the radio.
• If sending has been much weaker than receiving on your P4, this is why: the firmware was transmitting on the on-board antenna while listening on the external one. Pick the antenna you actually have fitted.
• Whole-screen flicker (#167): one contributing cause removed by keeping the display's working buffer off the shared memory bus. Please report whether you still see it — this one is not confirmed fixed.

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Both P4 panel variants are built fresh for this tag: wadamesh-tdisplay-p4* (AMOLED) and wadamesh-tdisplay-p4-lcd* (TFT-LCD).

Full notes: release-notes/beta_53.txt.