Orbit v0.8.6-beta

Orbit v0.8.6-beta

Version: v0.8.6-beta
Commit: f2d8c7b
Built: 2026-10-09

Note: Four bugs that each broke something you do every day — an emoji you could not send, a link preview that arrived too late to be useful, a profile card that opened on top of the camera, and a backup file this app could read but never offered you. Plus the Contacts screen getting filters and a display style, and a rebuilt attachment preview.

Features

• Restore From a Backup File — The Local Vault could restore its own directory backups and nothing else, while the desktop writes a whole account as a single .orzip/.zip. That file is now found and restored. It looks in two places — the app's own folder and vault/ — because deleting and reinstalling an app removes its data directory but not a file you saved, so a fresh install should find its own old backups rather than making you go hunting for one. It shows each file with its size, its date and which folder it is in, says how many messages it holds before you commit, and adds the account alongside what is already on the phone rather than over it. ⚠ .orzip is not a zip — the desktop writes it with gzip and a house extension — so the format is decided by the file's first two bytes, never by its name.
• Link Previews While You Type — The preview bar appeared only after the message had gone, which is the one moment a preview is useless: you have already decided to send the link. A preview answers "what does this lead to?", and that question belongs to the moment the link is in the box. ⚠ The card inside a sent message was worse — it showed a link glyph where the thumbnail goes, the domain as the title, and then the full URL underneath, so both lines said the same thing. It now uses the page's own title and image, from the same fetch the bar uses, so the two cannot describe one link differently.
• Filter Chips and a Display Style for Contacts — All / Online / Offline / Groups, each with a live count, and a choice between a dense list and a two-column grid of large avatars for people who recognise a face faster than they read a name. ⚠ The chip filter is deliberately momentary — it survives switching tabs and is gone after a restart, because which slice you are looking at is not a preference. The display style is the opposite: how you like to read is, so it is remembered.
• Every Contact Row Has Its Actions — A row had one button, so everything else a person can do with a contact was reachable only by long-pressing — which is not discoverable and does not exist on a desktop. There is a second button now, opening the same sheet the long-press opens. Groups had no actions at all before this; a group was a row you could only tap.
• The Attachment Preview, Rebuilt — Three things were wrong with the strip above the composer, and the first one was measured before anything was written: a staged image was a bare <img> in a 56px tile, so a full-resolution photo was an empty box with nothing happening in it. There is a spinner now, with the image held back until it is actually ready. Each tile carries an × that takes that one image out of the send while the rest go normally, and tapping a tile looks at it — full screen, not a send. The tiles also lift off the composer with a shadow, because a staged attachment is the one thing on screen that is not part of the app yet.
• Only the Active Tab Is Labelled — Four labelled tabs is four words competing for a 62px bar, and three of them are always the wrong word: you are looking at one panel. The label now belongs to the tab you are on, and it moves between them.

Fixed

• An Emoji Picked From the Picker Could Not Be Sent — ⚠ This was not the empty-check, which was fine: an emoji passes it, and typing one worked. The picker's handler assigned the input's value directly, and assigning .value fires no input event — so nothing that watches the composer ever learned the box had content. updateSendButton() never ran, the send button never appeared, and the composer sat there showing the mic. An emoji-only message was unsendable not because it was rejected but because there was no button to press.
• Tapping "Pair a Desktop" Re-Opened the Profile Card — ⚠ A race. The account switcher closes back to wherever it was opened from, so arriving from the profile card made it re-open the card — on the same 220ms timer that opens the scanner, so the card landed on top of the camera. Tapping Pair is leaving for a destination, not dismissing the sheet, so it no longer takes the "go back where I came from" path.
• The Restore Button's Corner Radius Was Resolving to Nothing — The whole restore block was written against --r-sm, and this app defines no such token. An undefined var() makes the declaration invalid and the browser drops it silently — five dead references, all measuring 0px. It is a real radius now, and a deliberately tighter one than the settings buttons use, because a full-width 42px button at 12px reads as a pill.
• The Restore Confirmation Was a Desktop Dialog — A centred card floating over a bottom sheet was two surfaces doing one job. It is the sheet's second step now, and it has one way out: the sheet already pins a Cancel pill, so an in-content Cancel meant two Cancel buttons on screen — the same duplication the × removal fixed in v0.8.3.

Downloads

Artifact	Size
Orbit-v0.8.6-beta.apk	69M
Orbit-0.8.6-beta-amd64.deb	170M
Orbit-0.8.6-beta-x86_64.AppImage	197M
Orbit-0.8.6-beta-arm64.dmg	184M
Orbit-0.8.6-beta-x64.dmg	189M
Orbit Setup 0.8.6-beta.exe	163M

Installation Notes

Desktop builds are currently unsigned.

• Windows: Microsoft SmartScreen may appear. Select More info → Run anyway if you trust the source.
• macOS: You may need to right-click the application and choose Open on first launch.
• Android: Because Orbit is distributed outside the Google Play Store, Android or Google Play Protect may display a warning before installation. Continue only if you trust the release source.

Verify Your Download

A SHA256SUMS.txt file is included with this release.
Since v0.3.0-beta, the checksum file is also GPG-signed (SHA256SUMS.txt.sig).

Use the Orbit Release public key to verify:

# 1. Import the public key
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/D4niel-dev/Orbit-beta/main/security/public-key.asc
gpg --import public-key.asc

# 2. Verify the signature
gpg --verify SHA256SUMS.txt.sig SHA256SUMS.txt

# 3. Verify your downloaded file
sha256sum --check SHA256SUMS.txt --ignore-missing

For Windows PowerShell:

Get-FileHash Orbit-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256
Compare-Object (Get-Content SHA256SUMS.txt) (Get-FileHash Orbit-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256) -Property Hash

Security

Orbit is designed for trusted private networks and local-first communication.
Official releases are published exclusively through this GitHub repository.

Links

• Repository Orbit-beta
• View the changelog for the latest changes!
• Having issues with the app ? Click here to report it!