v0.8.22 — Connection visibility plus community polish

Connection visibility plus community polish

A connection-focused point release: new login/disconnect notifications
for remote clients, passive spots mode, find-search in help, plus a
stack of community-reported regression fixes (TCI WSJT-X TX, RADE
silent SSB, spectrum-click edge jumps, MultiFlex PTT).

Features

Band-stack auto-save on dwell

• New "Auto-save dwell" setting in the band-stack ⚙ menu (Off / 10 s
  / 30 s / 60 s, default Off). When enabled, the active slice is
  automatically added to the band stack after dwelling on a frequency
  for the configured time. Skips entries within ±100 Hz of an
  existing bookmark (so you don't re-stack the same station), skips
  during transmit, and waits 5 s after connect before the first
  auto-save. Caps auto-saved entries at 5 per ham band —
  overflow drops the oldest auto-saved entry in that band, but
  manually-added bookmarks are never displaced. Pairs naturally
  with the existing Auto-expiry option for a self-pruning rolling
  history.

LAN and SmartLink client login notifications (#1892, jensenpat)

• New connection-event notifications when remote LAN, SmartLink, and
  Maestro clients log in to the radio. Surfaced as toast-style
  banners in the status bar so operators see Multi-Flex / shared-radio
  activity without watching the log.

Remote client disconnect flows (#1889, jensenpat)

• Disconnect remote LAN, SmartLink, and Maestro clients from inside
  AetherSDR. Operator confirmation prompt + clean protocol teardown
  so the disconnected client sees a graceful exit rather than a stale
  session.

Passive Spots mode (#1897, jensenpat)

• New spots mode that ingests spot data without sending any commands
  to the radio — useful for read-only / observer scenarios where you
  want spot decorations on the spectrum but don't want the spot
  source to influence radio state.

Device details in Slice Troubleshooter (#1898, jensenpat)

• Slice Troubleshooter now reports audio and control device details
  alongside the existing slice diagnostics so support bundle reviewers
  can see the full I/O path from radio to host without a separate
  step. Device-ID values are SHA-256 fingerprinted for privacy.

Find search in help dialogs (#1899, jensenpat)

• Help dialogs gain Ctrl+F find with case-insensitive search, F3 for
  Find Next, and Shift+F3 for Find Previous — the same shortcut
  behaviour users expect from any text viewer.

Bug fixes

Click-to-tune no longer recentres for clicks inside the visible spectrum (#1906, #1907)

• Click-to-tune was triggering a comfort-margin pan recenter even
  when the click landed well inside the visible spectrum, making
  the outer 18% of each pan effectively a dead zone that auto-pulled
  the slice inward. Two layers of fix: the spectrum-click path
  itself uses a 5% margin, and the RevealOffscreen intent that
  fires from the deferred active-slice change after a click now only
  reveals when the slice is truly outside the visible window (margin
  0). Net behaviour matches SmartSDR — click anywhere visible and
  the panadapter stays put.

TCI tx_enable echoes immediately to unblock WSJT-X v3.0.0 TX (#1689, #1691)

• WSJT-X v3.0.0 waits for a tx_enable ack before keying. AetherSDR's
  TCI handler now matches the cmdTrx pattern (immediate echo plus
  pending notification) so WSJT-X TX is unblocked on current builds.

Fix silent audio in SSB/Digital modes when m_radeMode is active (#1875, #1879, NF0T)

• RADE-mode activation toggled a DAX route flag in AudioEngine that
  left SSB and Digital modes silent on TX. Audio path is now
  restored when RADE mode is not active.

MultiFlex PTT label, row-selection, and correct PTT command (#1893, chibondking)

• Three related Multi-Flex PTT issues: the PTT button label showed
  the wrong station (other client's name instead of ours), row
  selection had no effect, and the wrong protocol command was being
  sent. client set enforce_local_ptt=1 returns 0x50001000 on
  v1.4.0.0 — the correct command is client set local_ptt=1, which
  is now used and documented in CLAUDE.md quirks.

Network health indicator stabilised for SmartLink and remote paths (#1900, jensenpat)

• Status-bar network indicator was twitchy on LTE, SmartLink, and
  hotel Wi-Fi. Now uses remote-friendly RTT thresholds, evaluates
  VITA packet loss over a rolling 10-second window, includes audio
  inter-arrival jitter, and adds display hysteresis so the label
  only changes state when the underlying condition is sustained.
  Tooltip and diagnostics dialog now also show recent packet loss
  and network jitter.

Suppress startup client login replays (#1904, jensenpat)

• When AetherSDR subscribed to client all after connecting, the
  radio replayed the current client list as client ... connected
  status messages — which the new notification handler from #1892
  treated as fresh logins. Existing client handles captured from
  discovery and the SmartLink radio list are now treated as already
  present, with a 5-second startup grace window as a fallback.

Persist CAT/TCI/DAX IQ enabled state across restarts (#1890, chibondking)

• CAT, TCI, and DAX IQ enabled flags weren't written to AppSettings,
  so toggling any of them off and restarting brought them back on.
  Now persisted under their respective enabled keys and restored at
  startup.

Reduce minimum window height (#1793, #1798)

• Operators with smaller vertical footprints (low-resolution
  displays, cramped multi-monitor setups) couldn't shrink the main
  window below the prior height floor. Lowered the minimum so
  small layouts fit.

What's New release date now visible (#1783, #1785)

• The release date line on the What's New dialog was being clipped
  off the visible area. Layout now anchors the date inside the
  dialog frame.

Restore Flex band-stack selection keys (#1887, jensenpat)

• The hardware Flex front-panel band-stack keys had stopped routing
  to the band-stack selection action after a recent refactor.
  Re-wired so keypad band selection works again.

Tighten incremental pan-follow margins

• Trigger margin lowered from 12% → 5% and settle from 18% → 6% so
  trackpad / wheel / arrow-key tuning at the pan edge feels snappier
  without losing the smooth follow animation.

Shorten client-connection status message from 10s to 3s

• The transient banner shown after a successful connection was
  staying up too long and obscuring slice activity.

Fix versioning label issue on Windows

• Build version label on Windows could render incorrectly when the
  build metadata included certain characters. Resolved.

Band-stack ⚙ / × / + buttons no longer clip their glyphs

• The three control buttons in the band-stack bottom row now have
  zero internal padding so the multiplication-sign, plus, and gear
  glyphs render fully inside the small fixed-size buttons regardless
  of font/DPI.

Acknowledgements

Big thanks to jensenpat (six PRs this cycle), chibondking
(two PRs plus the new About → Contributors entry), and the community
reporters whose detailed issues drove the AetherClaude fixes —
especially NF0T for the RADE silent-audio diagnosis.

73, Jeremy KK7GWY