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whatRust v0.6.14

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@github-actions github-actions released this 10 Nov 09:39
v0.6.14
1c5abb9

whatRust v0.6.14

Linux: attaching a video works again, and no longer eats all your memory.

On Linux, dropping a video onto a chat (or attaching it with the + button) could keep loading forever, never show the preview, and in the worst case use every gigabyte of memory until the desktop froze. A 35-second screen recording took the app to 21 GB within a minute.

whatRust tells WhatsApp Web it is Chrome on Linux, so WhatsApp runs its Chrome code on the system web engine (WebKitGTK), and the two differ in four places. All four are handled now (#79):

  • The video was read back damaged. The engine corrupted a video held in memory when it was loaded the default way. whatRust now loads it in the mode that reads it correctly.
  • The thumbnail came out black. The engine draws no frames for a video that isn't on screen, so WhatsApp retried its thumbnail 100 times and gave up. The video is now kept where the engine will draw it, as WhatsApp itself does on Safari.
  • Hardware-decoded frames were black or transparent when used for the thumbnail. Video inside whatRust is now decoded by the CPU. If you prefer the hardware decoders, start whatRust with GST_PLUGIN_FEATURE_RANK= set (empty).
  • The memory blow-up. WhatsApp also hands the video to an image element. Chrome refuses that. WebKitGTK decoded the whole video as an animated image and kept every frame in memory. whatRust now refuses it too.

With the same 35-second recording, memory now stays around 1 GB, the preview appears in about a second, and the video sends.

Tested on an Intel laptop under Hyprland with the Flatpak's own web engine. Windows and macOS are unchanged.

If you are on 0.6.11 or later, whatRust installs this update on its own (AppImage, macOS, Windows) or offers it in Settings → Updates (.deb, Flatpak).

Support whatRust

whatRust is free and open source, built in my spare time. If it saves you time every day, please consider sponsoring it. Sponsorship pays for the hours that go into fixes and releases like this one, and every sponsor helps toward the monthly goal.

Sponsor whatRust

Install or update

# Linux (Flatpak)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/karem505/whatRust/master/install-flatpak.sh | sh
# Linux (AppImage) and macOS
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/karem505/whatRust/master/install.sh | sh

On Windows, run the x64-setup.exe or .msi below. 0.6.10 and older don't have the updater, so install this version by hand once.

macOS .dmg: "whatRust is damaged and can't be opened"? The app isn't damaged. It is not signed with an Apple Developer ID, so macOS blocks it after a browser download. Drag it into Applications, run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/whatRust.app once in Terminal, and open it again. The install.sh line above does this for you.

Full changelog: v0.6.13...v0.6.14

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