New desktop release with RPGP, location streaming and improved mac & ubuntu builds

June 25, 2019 by Jikstra, holga

There are new Desktop releases (0.104.0) with a new Rust-based encryption engine, RPGP, better Mac and Linux release packaging and several other UX improvements which we detail further below. See “Assets” on our github releases page for the respective Desktop downloads.

Important Notes about this release:

You can use Desktop as your only Delta Chat App, no mobile required.

If you use Delta Chat already on mobile, better synchronize your setup to Desktop!: if you install Delta Chat desktop next to an already existing mobile Delta Chat version you need to synchronize your setups. After configuring Delta Chat Desktop, on Android trigger the “Send Autocrypt Setup message” in advanced settings, wait a bit and accept the incoming Setup message on Desktop. After correctly entering the security/confirmation number (presented om mobile, typed in on desktop) you will see outgoing and incoming messages on both devices – synchronization should be quite immediate.

Delta Chat Desktop is well usable but does not have all UX features of Android. You are more than welcome to contribute fixes/features on github but note that feature discussion usually happens first on the support forum. To begin with, the onboarding process for existing Android/iOS Delta Chat users could be nicer ;)

Delta Chat for Windows is upcoming, for those wanting to help there is an experimental pre-release DeltaChat.Setup.0.105.0-pre1.exe, use at your own risk ;)

If you have problems with this release you may check out the Desktop section in our Forum or visit any of our other evolving contribution/communication channels.

Switched Crypto-Engine to RPGP, the full-Rust implementation of OpenPGP

We now use RPGP, the first full-Rust implementation of OpenPGP, the underlying encryption format that Delta Chat is using. This new Rust library supports Autocrypt 1.1 primitives and will allow to switch to ED25519 keys for e-mail encryption within the two next releases. The Desktop releases are the first tangible sign of the upcoming Rustocalypse. Many thanks to Friedel for his perseverance on RPGP and all the support with integrations!

Location streaming: mapping mobile chat partners

We integrated support for the Desktop side of location streaming. Desktop can show a map for a group and the last position(s) of its participants if they enable location streaming. Android devices can report location via “attach location” after you enabled “on-demand-location streaming” in the experimental feature section of the settings. You can set points of interest for a group and use the time range of historic data to look at. Many thanks to Nico who pushed this feature majorly forward in the last weeks so that we could use it in the game.

New packaging for Ubuntu, Mac, Arch

Lots of improved Desktop packaging, majorly pushed forward by Jikstra and treefit the last weeks: There are now signed releases for Mac which allows to install Delta Chat Desktop without fiddling with security settings. Also openssl and all other dependencies are included in the dmg install file. This means no more brew install ... for mac users!

There are now .deb archives for all major Ubuntu versions They each pull in all needed dependencies for the particular Ubuntu versions, so you don’t need to manually install dependencies.

Good news for ArchLinux users too: the updated deltachat-desktop-git AUR package now uses RPGP too.

Several UX and functionality fixes

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