18

Version 18 adds selecting and copying text within messages and adds whole-link copying. It also lets you attach several contacts at once, shows the photo picker beside the camera in landscape, draws notification and shortcut avatars the same way as in the app, restores opt-in YouTube link preview thumbnails, removes leftover conversation notification channels and polishes the recipient picker.

Messages

• Long-pressing a message's text selects it so any part can be copied, and a selection inside a link, phone number, email address or address offers to copy it whole
• The selection menu offers Select message to switch to the message actions
• Screen readers offer Select text, Select message and a copy action for each link, phone number, email address and address in a message
• opt-in YouTube link previews show their thumbnails again instead of a black box

Message field and attachments

• Removing an attachment animates the attachment strip closed, just as adding one animates it open, and the messages move with the message field instead of jumping
• Attachment previews in the message field all have the same height
• A finished voice recording shows its length right away instead of 00:00 until the draft is saved
• In landscape, the photo picker is shown as a side pane beside the camera and photo review instead of a short bottom sheet, and its Done button closes the media picker
• Rotating the device from portrait to landscape while the media picker is open no longer crashes Messaging
• Several contacts can be picked at once when attaching contacts, each attached as its own contact card instead of keeping only the last one

Recipient picker

• Pressing the keyboard's action key with nothing typed does what the Next button does instead of nothing
• A newly added recipient slides in from its start edge instead of appearing underneath the search hint
• The "no results" text and the section headers match the results on screen instead of the text still being typed
• The end of the contacts list stays above the keyboard when the keyboard opens again

Conversation details

• One-on-one conversations show the contact's number in the header, where a long press copies it, and the participants list is only shown for group conversations

Notifications

• Avatars in notifications, conversation shortcuts and the system's conversation settings match the ones in the app instead of the old green letter tiles
• Notification channels of conversations that aren't shown in the conversation list, such as an empty conversation whose notification settings were opened, are deleted at startup and when leaving the conversation

Platform and dependencies

Updates to dependencies:

• Android Gradle plugin 9.5.0
• JaCoCo 0.8.16
• libphonenumber 9.0.42

Full changelog

A full list of changes from the previous release (version 17) is available through the Git commit log between the releases.