v0.23.0

This release moves HushMessenger to Messenger 582.0.0.61.92 and adds seven switches, Auto reply and Use your own font among them.

Reported issues

• #29 Messenger 582.0.0.61.92 is supported now, all 14 arm64 builds of it. 580 and 581 are dropped.
• #42 Auto reply is new. It answers messages with replies you write, by the words you pick or any message at all.
• #41 With Hide read receipts on, opening a chat doesn't send Seen any more, and the chat stays unread in your list. Mark as read and Mark as unread work again.
• #20 Hide read receipts now points to Messenger's own Read receipts setting, for when you'd rather have opened chats marked read on your phone without the other person seeing Seen.
• #40 Use the phone's camera app opens your camera app from a chat's camera button again.
• #39 Use your own font is new under Theme. Pick your phone's font or a .ttf or .otf file.
• #36 Turn off the swipe up for disappearing messages is new under Conversations.
• #37 With Stop analytics uploads on, an upload it skips lets the phone go back to sleep right away instead of holding it awake for up to 90 seconds.
• #30 With Hide People You May Know on, your chats show up sooner after Messenger starts.
• #38 Fix shared videos with xHE-AAC sound is new. It converts that sound to regular AAC when you share such a video into Messenger, so it can be sent.

New

• HushMessenger now patches Messenger 582.0.0.61.92, all 14 arm64 builds APKMirror lists for it, and no longer accepts 580.0.0.49.91 or 581.0.0.49.91. Morphe Desktop applies every patch to each of the 14 builds. Messenger 582 looks up some of the names HushMessenger uses to tell its built-in switches apart instead of spelling them out, so the two business suggestion switches now follow that lookup. Meta also reworked the code behind the Settings row in the menu, the avatar tab in the sticker keyboard, the inbox tabs, kept unsent messages, Save any story and Send videos without re-encoding, and each of those patches now finds its spot in both ways 582 builds lay it out.
• Auto reply is a new Conversations switch, off until you turn it on (#42). Tap Edit replies under it to write up to 20 replies, each with the words that should trigger it, split by commas. A message that has one of those words, matched as a whole word in any case, gets that reply. Leave the words empty and the reply answers any message. The reply goes out through the Reply button on Messenger's own notification, so it works in encrypted chats too, and each chat gets at most one auto reply every five minutes. Group chats are left alone unless you tick Answer in group chats too.
• There's a new Use your own font switch under Theme, off to begin with (#39). With it on, Messenger's own text uses your phone's font instead of Meta's Optimistic font. Below the switch in HushMessenger settings you can also pick a .ttf or .otf file of up to 20 MB, and Messenger's text uses that font instead. The row shows just the file's name and whether it's in use. Emoji stay as they are. A change shows after Messenger restarts.
• Conversations gets Turn off the swipe up for disappearing messages, which starts off (#36). With it on, swiping up at the bottom of a chat no longer turns on disappearing messages, so a scroll can't set the timer by accident. Scrolling works as usual, and you can still turn disappearing messages on from the chat's settings. It takes effect right away, with no restart.
• Fix shared videos with xHE-AAC sound is a new Conversations switch, off until you turn it on. Messenger can't send a video whose only sound is xHE-AAC, which Facebook and Instagram now use for some videos, so sharing a saved one into Messenger ended in "Unable to send". With the switch on, Messenger's copy of a video you share into it gets that sound converted to regular AAC before anything reads it. The picture is copied as it is, and videos with any other sound aren't touched.
• Stop ad attribution uploads joins the Privacy switches, off until you turn it on. With it on, Messenger's ad attribution job stops before it reads your phone's advertising ID, whether through Google's library or its direct Play services fallback, so the request that sends Meta the ID and your ad tracking setting never gets built. The saved attribution state stays as it was, and turning the switch off lets the next run go ahead as before. The ID itself doesn't change.
• Stop inbox and ad link logging is another new Privacy switch, and it starts off. With it on, Messenger skips two reports. One says which part of your chat list was on screen, each time the visible chats change, and Messenger files it under its inbox ads. The other says which ad and business page brought you in when a link from an ad opens a chat in Messenger. Only the reports are skipped. The code around them, which keeps track of what's on screen, still runs, and turning the switch off lets the next report through.
• Hide ad banners in business chats is new too, under Conversations and off by default. When you start a chat with a business by tapping one of its ads, Messenger shows that ad in a banner at the top of the chat. Hide chat promotions never covered it, because it isn't a promotion banner, so it gets its own switch. With it on, the banner isn't added the next time you open such a chat.
• HushMessenger settings has a Support HushMessenger row at the end of the App tab. It opens my Ko-fi page in your browser, if you'd like to buy me a coffee.

Changed and fixed

• With Hide read receipts on, opening a chat no longer marks it read or sends Seen, and it stays unread in your chat list (#41). Mark as read and Mark as unread in the chat list work again, and so does Mark as read on a notification. Those show Seen, like Messenger does. Replying in a chat marks it read too, since your reply shows you saw it anyway.
• Hide read receipts now points to Messenger's own Read receipts setting under Settings > Privacy & safety. With that turned off and Hide read receipts left off, a chat you open is marked read on your phone and the other person doesn't see Seen (#20).
• Use the phone's camera app now works from a chat's camera button on Messenger 582. That button starts Messenger's camera a different way there, so the switch never saw the tap and Messenger's own camera kept opening. Now your phone's camera app opens, and the photo you take opens in Messenger's editor for that chat. Messenger checks where a picked photo comes from before it opens one, and it refused this photo because the screen that hands it over runs inside Messenger. It lets that one photo through now, and every other file still gets Messenger's usual check (#40).
• With Stop analytics uploads on, a skipped upload now tells Messenger right away that the phone can go back to sleep. Before, each upload Messenger started directly could keep the phone awake for up to 90 seconds (#37).
• With Hide People You May Know on, HushMessenger asks Messenger for your chat list again about half a second after it starts instead of after 2.5 seconds, to shorten the loading circle that could still sit under your chats for a few seconds. It tries up to three more times in the first 8 seconds and stops as soon as your chats show up (#30).
• Stop analytics uploads now also skips the timer that sends Messenger's native analytics batch every three minutes. It leaves crash reports alone.
• Copy setup now lists each folder in Messenger's data whose name mentions analytics, with how many files it holds and how big it is, so you can see whether Messenger's analytics pile up while Stop analytics uploads is on. It shows names and sizes, never what's in the files.
• Restoring saved choices on Android 9 or 10 now reads the right part of the file when the app you pick it from hands it over as a stream that starts partway in.
• The checks that find the code each patch changes now accept only what Messenger 582 ships. The extra shapes they used to allow for 580 and 581 are refused now, so a build that brings one back stops with an error before anything is changed.
• Stop analytics uploads now also covers the way Google Play can hand Messenger's Google Play upload service a task directly, without starting it the usual way. With the switch on, that task is reported back as done right away, so Google Play doesn't retry it, and Messenger's other scheduled tasks on the same worker run as before.
• Keep a message log now deletes messages older than 30 days from the saved file itself, a little after Messenger starts and every six hours, instead of only hiding them until the next message arrives. That happens with the switch off too. Off stops saving new messages and keeps the old ones until they expire or you clear the log, and the log's screen now says so. Each message keeps up to 8,000 characters and the whole log stays under 2 MB, dropping the oldest first. If the saved file can't be opened any more (say the phone's key store lost its key), it's moved aside and the log starts fresh instead of failing on every message. A save that fails partway leaves the old log as it was, and Clear log also drops messages that arrived a moment before but weren't saved yet, so they can't show up again afterward.
• Restore old emoji drawer and the Meta AI tab part of Hide Meta AI keep the answer Messenger got when it started, so a change waits for a restart. Their rows in HushMessenger settings now say so ("Takes effect after Messenger restarts", or "Stays in effect until Messenger restarts" after you turn the switch off or pause), and Copy setup marks them with until_restart. An account Meta never moved to the redesigned emoji drawer has nothing to wait for, so its row doesn't say that.
• Tapping a row in Messenger's menu after scrolling it now opens that row. Messenger reuses rows as the menu scrolls, and one that had been showing the HushMessenger entry could open HushMessenger settings instead of its own screen.
• With Material You theme on, a color that one of Messenger's theme methods just takes from another is now changed once instead of twice.
• Spoof package version now refuses a number lower than the Messenger you're patching. The Play Store would keep offering that same release as an update, and the patched app couldn't install over the version it came from.
• Keep a message log holds on to messages when a save fails and tries them again first, in the order they arrived. A message dated in the future gets corrected in the saved file too, not only on screen. If you repatch without the switch, the saved log and its key are deleted the next time Messenger starts. On Android 13 and newer the log's screen stays out of the Recents preview.
• Send photos at original quality now cleans its copies older than a week out of Messenger's cache. Up to 20 MB each could pile up there before.
• TalkBack can now reach the message log's View log and Clear log buttons. Buttons that can't be used right now look grayed out.
• The message log now says who sent each message, and in a group which chat it came from ("Ana in Weekend trip"), taken from Messenger's own notification for that chat. Before, entries were grouped under a long chat code. Messages saved before this update show as "Unknown chat".
• When someone unsends a message, the message log keeps the original and no longer gains a second line like "Ana sent a message." for the unsend. That stand-in doesn't get an auto reply either.
• The message log saves each message once. Messenger can build one message's notification twice, and both copies used to land in the log. A message that Auto reply answered also says who sent it now, instead of "Unknown chat".
• Restoring choices from a file that can't be read now says "Couldn't read that file" instead of calling it an invalid backup. Canceling a restore partway says your choices didn't change.
• Several lines in HushMessenger settings read more clearly, like the restart hint, the empty search result, the export and import help, and error lines, which now point to Copy setup for details. A switch used more than two days ago shows days ("Used 3d ago"). Chat heads is written the same way everywhere.
• Hide Meta AI now also covers the list that opens when you type @ in a chat. Meta AI and imagine drop out of it, while the people in the chat still show. In a community chat the community's AI entry goes as well. Turning the switch off brings them back on the next letter you type.
• With Hide Meta AI on, the search bar above your chats drops its "Ask Meta AI or search" hint and shows Messenger's plain one.
• Restore screens on re-signed builds now also answers the certificate check in Messenger's own push service, which reads the signature by itself instead of asking the method the patch already covered. That service matters most on phones without Google Play services.
• Use system emoji tries adding Messenger's emoji font behind the phone's up to three times when it fails, since a font that's still being written can fail once.
• HushMessenger publishes its app shortcuts in the background now, so they don't hold up Messenger's startup on a Root Mount install.
• On a Root Mount install, Copy setup now says how long HushMessenger took to start when Messenger first needed it, and on which thread. That shows whether it's slowing Messenger's startup down.
• More of the checks that find the code each patch changes now refuse a spot the patch's code couldn't work in, like a register its call can't reach, a field Messenger's code isn't allowed to read, or a static method where it needs an instance, before anything is changed. The patch descriptions also say that the Meta AI tab goes after a restart.
• The release and install check scripts now report a damaged profile record or a signer line without a key with a clear error instead of crashing. Nothing changes in the patches.
• On an install that has no screen for opening your phone's camera app, like a Root Mount install, Use the phone's camera app is grayed out and says why. Before, it looked on while the chat camera stayed Messenger's own.
• Releases now run from scripts/release/release.ps1 in five stages that refuse to run out of order. Each Messenger build family gets patched once per release, and the release checks can wait for a free build slot instead of piling onto other builds. Nothing changes in the patches.
• Extended the app audit with actual Messenger packet observations, background job and CPU measurements, and physically unplugged battery readings. Revision 2 includes aggregate data, a charge-counter chart and a repeatable procedure. It distinguishes shared encrypted hosts from specific tracking operations and documents the limits of short observations on a paused installation. No patch behavior changed.
• Added a detailed Messenger internals audit with ad and tracking paths, native settings screenshots, the boundaries of the 37 controls at v0.22.0, and patch candidates with acceptance criteria. A reusable 581 DEX query batch accompanies the report. The audit identifies a conditional analytics Binder entry outside the existing guards and documents message-log isolation and retention limits. No patch behavior changed.
• The README now points to the patch code, in-app settings, build profiles and catalog checks. It also walks through adding a control or a supported Messenger version.
• Material You theme is now in Morphe Manager's default selection, so every control is there without Expert mode. Its switch is under Theme on the Controls page and starts off, so a build patched with the defaults looks like Messenger until you turn it on. Clone install under another package name, Spoof package version and Custom new-message sound still need Expert mode, because they change the package or need a file you pick.
• Every patch description in Morphe Manager now says in plain words what the patch changes and why you might want it. It ends with where to turn it on, or says it works as soon as you patch it in.
• Every switch in HushMessenger settings now explains in plain words what it does and what you'll notice. The pages, the setup panel and the bubble and app icon help text got the same plain wording.
• Messages in HushMessenger settings are clearer. Saving and restoring your choices, update checks, the camera notice and the setup help now say what happened and what to do next.
• The options you fill in when patching are easier to read. Clone install, Custom new-message sound and Spoof package version now explain what to type, and the version code option is called Version number.
• The settings extension's unit tests now always run on JDK 21. On Windows, the Java 25.0.2 runtime bundled with Android Studio made four Android 9 and 10 restore tests read the start of a file instead of the part the provider pointed to. Restoring choices on a phone was never affected.