v0.29.0

HushMessenger for Messenger 586.0.0.55.92, 6 arm64 and armv7 builds, which needs Morphe Manager 2.4.0 or newer. 88 patches. Calls have their own section now, with switches to record a call or ask before one starts. Hold a message and its actions come up in your own order, and old chats can be searched through the messages your phone kept. Light mode can take a color, and the People tab can come back on accounts that lost it. Source updates don't change installed apps.

New in this release

• Clone install under another package name has a new option, Facebook package to open. Put a Facebook clone's ID there (like com.facebook.katana.morphe) and a Messenger clone opens profiles, shared stories and other Facebook links in that clone, and checks for it instead of the regular app when it asks whether Facebook is installed. Sign-in and account sharing still use the regular Facebook app. (Hushfacebook #348)
• Search saved messages is a new switch under Conversations, for old chats Messenger's own search finds nothing in. It adds a button to a chat's search results that looks through the messages this phone has saved for that chat, and tapping a result opens the chat there. It works in chats that aren't end-to-end encrypted. It can only find what the phone has loaded, so the screen says how far back it got, and scrolling up in the chat loads more. It reads Messenger's data without changing it, and it starts off. Refs #92.
• Record calls is a new switch under Calls. During a call it puts a Record button over Messenger, and the call goes into one sound file in Recordings/Messenger Calls on your phone (Music/Messenger Calls on Android 10 and 11). While it's on, calls use Android's regular audio path instead of Messenger's own, and Messenger needs a restart after you change it. Messenger doesn't tell the other people, and recording laws differ from place to place, so get everyone's OK first. It needs Android 10 or newer. It's experimental for now and starts off. Refs #105.
• Hide call buttons is a new switch under Calls. It takes the audio and video call buttons out of a chat's top bar, so a tap meant for something else can't start an awkward call. Calls still ring, and you can still join one that's going. Refs #121.
• Save button for voice messages is a new switch under Photos and videos. Hold a voice message, tap More, and Save voice message is at the top, for keeping just that one. It lands in the same folder as Save voice messages you play, which can stay off. Refs #123.
• The message log got easier to get around in. There's a search box that looks through words and names and doesn't care about accents, and Group by chat lists your chats so you can open one. Save as text and Save as CSV write what's showing to a file you pick, and Save messages before they're removed adds each message to a text file in Download/Messenger just before the log drops it, one file a month. Saved files aren't encrypted, so that switch starts off, and it needs Android 10 or newer. Refs #127.
• Row in the Menu tab is a new switch under Keep a message log. It puts a Message log row in Messenger's Menu tab, right under the HushMessenger one, and tapping it opens the log without going through settings first. It starts off, and it shows on patches that have Open settings from menu. Refs #133.
• Preview chats on long press is a new switch under Inbox. Press and hold a chat and you get a peek at the conversation with the chat's menu under it, instead of the menu alone. It's Messenger's own preview, which Meta only gives some accounts, so it looks and works like Messenger's. Refs #134.
• Show People tab is a new switch under Navigation. On accounts where Messenger took the People tab out of the bottom bar, it puts it back right after Chats. If Hide People tab is on too, the tab stays hidden. Restart Messenger to see it. Refs #136.
• Customize message actions is a new switch under Conversations. Hold a message and its actions come up in the order you set, without the ones you hid. Messages you sent and messages you got get separate lists in settings, and each fills in the first time you hold one of those messages. The first actions go in the row of buttons and the rest go under More, which keeps your order instead of moving Messenger's picks to the top. Reset to Messenger's order puts a list back. It starts off. Refs #144.
• The message log does more now. Direct and Groups at the top split one-to-one chats from group chats, and a chat that shows up with no name can get one you pick, which search finds too. Photos people send you get their own entry, and when Messenger's notification carries a preview picture the log keeps that too, encrypted like the words. You also pick how long messages stay (30 days, 90 days, a year or until you clear the log), and the log holds up to 5,000 now instead of 500. Button at the top of Chats puts a clock next to the new message button that opens the log. Refs #131.
• Keep the search bar is a new switch under Inbox. Some accounts lost the search bar above their chats when Messenger moved search behind an icon, and this brings the bar back and drops the icon. Messenger needs a restart after you change it. Accounts that never got the icon see no change. It's still experimental, so it starts off. Refs #128.
• Ask before a call is a new switch under Calls. Tapping the audio or video call button in a chat asks "Start a voice call?" or "Start a video call?" first, so a stray tap doesn't ring anyone. Call starts it and Cancel doesn't. Calls coming in aren't affected. Refs #130.
• Jump to the first message or a date is a new switch under Conversations. Long press a chat's name at the top of the chat and pick the first message or a day. Messenger only loads a chat a page at a time, so it scrolls back with a count at the bottom of the screen until it gets there, and Cancel stops it. Refs #130.
• Calls have their own section in settings and in Morphe's patch list now, so Quiet incoming calls sits there next to the other call switches instead of under Conversations. Refs #130.
• Light mode can have a color now. Unlock app themes is a new switch under Theme that lets you pick any theme in Messenger's own Theme setting without a subscription, and the check moves to the theme you tap right away instead of after you leave the page. Material You also got a Light mode accent switch, which gives Messenger's blues in light mode your accent while grays and white stay put. Pick that accent from the new row of colors in Appearance, or keep your wallpaper's. Refs #132.
• Report a problem now also says whether Messenger's notifications can pop up on your phone. It fills in Android's notification switch for Messenger, your chat bubbles choice, whether Messenger may draw over other apps and show calls full screen, and which notification channels sit below the level that pops up. Channels are listed by Messenger's own id for them, so no chat names end up in the report. Refs #126.
• Your own home header is a new switch under Theme. Type a few words or pick a picture and it shows at the top of the chat list in place of Messenger's wordmark. Words take the wordmark's own colors, gradient and dark mode white included, and stand as tall as its letters in the same spot. A picture keeps its colors, sits at that height too and wins when both are set. With neither, the wordmark stays. Refs #129.
• Quick setups has an iPhone look choice now. One tap puts a Chats title over your chat list in place of the wordmark and keeps the search bar under it, the way Messenger looks on an iPhone. It turns on Your own home header and Keep the search bar, and it only fills in the header's words when you haven't picked any (or a picture). Undo takes it all back. Restart Messenger to see it. Refs #136.
• The HushMessenger settings icon in the app drawer has a blue gear of its own now, and its name comes from the app's resources the way Messenger's does. Some launchers (one on a realme phone) showed it as a second Messenger icon with Messenger's name. The text menu's Bold and Italic rows get the same treatment, and so do Restart Messenger and a clone's app name, and the settings name follows your language where the settings page does. Refs #141, #125.
• Hide pictures on the Blocked list is a new switch under Privacy. The list of people you've blocked, in Privacy and safety, keeps their names and Unblock but drops their profile pictures, the same way Messenger already shows someone it can't look up. It starts off. (Hushfacebook #361)
• Allow landscape is a new switch under Conversations. Messenger turns sideways with your phone when auto-rotate is on, so you get a wider keyboard and bigger photos and videos, and a photo or video you close doesn't snap the screen back upright. Calls, the camera, payments and a few other screens stay upright. Messenger needs a restart after you change it. It starts off while it's experimental. Refs #140.
• Hide chosen chats is a new switch under Inbox. Press and hold a chat and tap Hide from chat list, and that chat stays off your list even when new messages come in. Search still finds it. The chats you've hidden are listed under the switch with an Unhide button each, and they're kept per account on this phone. Hiding doesn't stop notifications, so mute the chat in Messenger for that. This one's experimental too, and it starts off. Refs #139.
• Notify for restricted chats is a new switch under Privacy. Restricting someone in Messenger also stops their messages from notifying you. With this on they notify you like any other chat, and a chat you've muted still stays quiet. End-to-end encrypted chats aren't covered, and most one-to-one chats are encrypted now. The chat stays in your restricted list, and they still can't see when you're active or when you've read their messages. It's experimental and it starts off. Refs #143.

Fixes and changes

• HushMessenger now targets Messenger 586.0.0.55.92. 585.0.0.53.94 is no longer supported, so update Messenger before you patch. Arm64 phones can use builds 347215257, 347215330, 347215343, 347215344 or 347215348, and 347215257 and 347215343 are the nodpi ones with icons for every screen. Each was checked patch by patch, and Morphe Desktop applied and rebuilt it. On any other 586 build the patch stops before it changes anything, so pick one of those five. Refs #137, #145.
• Messenger 586's 32-bit build (armeabi-v7a, 347215341) is supported too, so 32-bit phones can patch 586. It was checked patch by patch the same way, and Morphe Desktop applied and rebuilt it. Refs #106.
• The patches are built with Morphe's patcher 2.2.0 now, so they need Morphe Manager 2.4.0 or newer, or Morphe Desktop 2.0.0 or newer. Refs #137, #138.
• Hide Meta AI also hides Meta AI's offer to summarize the messages you haven't read. That's the "Summarize N unread messages" pill over a chat and the Summarize link on the unread divider. They're never built, so they don't leave a gap. Refs #142.
• Chat heads show up for messages that arrive while Messenger is still running in the background, once you allow it unrestricted battery use. On Optimized battery Android blocks the chat head in that case, so one only appeared if Messenger had been closed. Allow chat bubbles now has an Allow unrestricted battery use button under its modes that asks Android for it, and its help text says why.
• Coming back to HushMessenger's settings from an Android screen, like Android bubble settings, keeps your place in the list. If you'd searched first, the list used to jump back up to the search box.
• Someone who calls you while HushMessenger's settings sit open behind Messenger now shows up under Only chosen chats when you go back to settings. The list used to stay as it was until you left settings and opened them again.
• Pin more chats works now. A fourth pin used to end in Messenger's "Can't pin chat", because the limit lives on Meta's servers and nothing on the phone can talk them out of it. Pins past the limit now stay on your phone instead. They go to the top with the pin mark and stay there after a restart, and you unpin them the usual way. They won't show on your other devices. Chats that don't offer Pin at all get it back the same way. Turn the switch off or pause HushMessenger and those pins step aside until you turn it back on. Refs #56, #60, #47.
• Record calls no longer tries to post its notification on Android 13 and newer when Messenger isn't allowed to show notifications. The call still records and saves, and the button over the call says it's recording.
• Restore screens on re-signed builds changes nothing when it can't place its push service fix in a Messenger build. It used to have the signature answer in place already by the time it gave up.
• If a part of HushMessenger that starts with Messenger can't load, Messenger opens anyway and only that part stays off. Before, a class that failed to load at that moment could close Messenger before safe mode had a chance to run.
• New messages pop up at the top of the screen again on a phone where they'd stopped. While chat heads were on, Messenger lowered its Chats notification channel for good, and only Meta's server flags ever raised it back, so the pop-ups stayed gone even with chat heads turned off. Keep chat pop-ups is a new patch with no switch that stops the lowering and raises the channel at the next start. It leaves the channel alone if you changed it yourself in Android's settings, and picking Chat heads under Allow chat bubbles keeps Messenger's own behavior. Refs #126.
• Mark as read button now shows up in chats whose top bar was full with no chat details button to replace, like a chat with a Label button, an Add friend button, a Meta AI button or a group's home button next to the call buttons. It takes the place of a button that isn't for calls there, so the call buttons still stay put. Refs #122.
• Android Auto's launcher opens Messenger again instead of showing the HushMessenger settings entry in its place. The drawer entry now sorts after Messenger's own, so anything that launches Messenger by package name lands in Messenger, like Android Auto or the Facebook app's Messenger button. A Manager's Open button does the same. The Android Auto messages text now says Unknown sources is only enough on a desktop head unit, since a real car can still leave Messenger out, and that playing a message aloud marks the chat read and shows Seen, even with Hide read receipts on. Refs #75.
• With Open your gallery app, a photo or video from Google Photos no longer crashes Messenger when the folder it copies your pick into won't take the file. The copy moves to another of Messenger's own folders and the send carries on, and Report a problem says which folder refused and why. Refs #124.
• Bold and italic text now puts Bold and Italic straight into the chat box's text menu, by name, with nothing to tick first on a Samsung phone. On some Samsung phones those two rows showed up as Messenger and Messenger, and they brought Dictionary, Translate and other apps' rows into the chat box along with them. Those rows are gone from the chat box again. Refs #125.
• Check for updates can't close Messenger anymore when the check breaks in a way it didn't plan for. It says it couldn't check, the same as when you're offline, and Report a problem picks up what went wrong.
• Saving your choices to a file now says "Couldn't save your choices to the file" when that fails. It used to show the clipboard's message. A restore that only gets some of them back reads like "Restored 3 of 5 choices." now.
• A switch that stopped with an error doesn't keep saying so after you repatch. That error came from the older patch, so the line under the switch and Copy setup now leave it out until the new one hits a problem of its own. A part that keeps failing also logs once a minute instead of every time the screen redraws.
• In a right-to-left language the arrows on the settings sections point the right way. A closed section's arrow pointed up and an open one's pointed down.
• TalkBack reads a settings section's name and count first. It used to say "Collapsed, Button" before the name.
• Buttons in the Hush settings with a short label like "OK" are at least 48 dp wide now, so they're as easy to hit as the taller ones.
• The Hush settings page has a new layout, the one HushGram uses, drawn in Messenger's colors. It opens on the HushMessenger logo and name, and the name moves up into the top bar once you scroll past it. Right under the name is the search box, with Show all settings as a list below it if you'd rather see every switch at once. Sections are cards now, each row with its own icon. Sheets got bigger titles and buttons that are easier to tell apart, and the restart bar sits at the bottom of the screen. Dark mode is true black and light mode follows the same layout. Switches are squared off, with the thumb inside the track. The HushMessenger name and the other titles drift through Messenger's blues, sky to royal, and the pink and orange are gone.
• A switch that can't work on your phone says why on a line of its own now, at full strength. The reason used to be dimmed along with the switch, and it was hard to read. Log out does the same with the line that says where to log out instead.
• Buttons that remove something are red, like Clear log and Remove the picture, or the one that removes an auto reply or its picture, and they look grayed out while they can't be used. Text boxes have a thicker outline that turns red while what's in one needs fixing, and an empty auto reply now says "Write a reply here, or remove this one before saving."
• The Shared install help is an amber warning now, since uninstalling Messenger from there removes its data too. The note that auto reply is off sits in a box of its own instead of one that looked like a text field.
• Cards in settings, the sheets, the message log and the restart screen all use the same corners and padding.
• A search left typed on the Controls tab doesn't rename the App tab's top bar anymore.
• In the message log, a chat's name is in the link color when tapping it opens that chat.
• Search saved messages shows each result as its own card with room between them, and a long message ends in "…". Tapping Search with nothing typed says to type a word first instead of doing nothing.
• Picking an accent color, Use copied theme, Back to wallpaper colors and Remove the picture under Your own home header can all be undone with Undo at the top of settings. The color dots and the Record button over a call show your tap now.
• Settings stay put under your finger. Undo showing up at the top, or going away 10 seconds later, used to push every row down and back up, and the note above the color dots did the same when an accent pick changed its length. The page moves with them now, so the dot or button you just tapped stays where it was.
• The bar at the bottom of a chat while Jump to the first message or a date scrolls back has a line along its top, and TalkBack names it when it shows up. A tap beside Cancel no longer lands on the chat box under it.
• When an update is out, View release is the main button under Check for updates, and a check that fails says so in red.
• An auto reply picture with see-through parts, like a logo saved as a PNG, goes out on white. Those parts used to turn black.

Behind the scenes

• The How to update step in the release notes lists the version codes the release was checked against, instead of saying any build on APKMirror works. v0.28.0's notes said that, and then APKMirror posted 17 more 585 builds that v0.28.0 doesn't take, newer nodpi ones included. Refs #138, #145.
• scripts/walk-app.ps1 no longer taps anything on Messenger's chat restore prompt, as its own notes always said. When the prompt turns up in front of a later screen, the walk opens the chat link to get past it and then opens that screen again, the way it already did for the chat list. -Thread has to be a chat's numeric user id now, and a walk given -Serial without -OutDir keeps its steps and receipt in a folder for that phone, so walks on two phones at once don't clear each other's.
• scripts/CompatReport.java --save records a new Messenger build now instead of failing because the build isn't recorded yet. Without --save that build still fails. A damaged APK or a broken line in a record gets one line naming the file and exit code 2, not a Java stack trace.

Reports this release changed something for

#47, #56, #60, #75, #92, #105, #106, #121, #122, #123, #124, #125, #126, #127, #128, #129, #130, #131, #132, #133, #134, #136, #137, #138, #139, #140, #141, #142, #143, #144 and #145.

Full history is in the changelog.

How to update

1. Update Messenger to 586.0.0.55.92 first. On APKMirror's 586.0.0.55.92 page, take a build whose version code is 347215257, 347215330, 347215341, 347215343, 347215344 or 347215348. APKMirror shows the code for each download, and a build posted there after this release may not be supported yet.
2. In Morphe Manager (2.4.0 or newer), open Sources and refresh HushMessenger. The card should say 88 patches.
3. Patch Messenger again and install it over your current one. Your settings carry over.

Patching on a computer? patches-0.29.0.mpp below is the same bundle for Morphe Desktop 2.0.0 or newer. It's a patch bundle, not a Messenger APK. SHA256SUMS.txt and its signature let you check the download, and the README says how.

What was checked

• The full test suite, plus a patch run against all 6 Messenger 586.0.0.55.92 builds on file.
• Morphe Desktop patched and rebuilt one APK from each of the 2 build families.
• An APK patched from this exact bundle was installed on an emulator on Android API 32, signed in to Messenger. A chat, the inbox, both HushMessenger settings tabs, the message log, auto reply, Messenger's own settings, story settings and contact settings all opened, with no crashes.