• Pinned certificate: the connect form shows the full SHA-256 fingerprint; an ⓧ button forgets it.

• Connect errors: a server address that can't be resolved is reported as such, not as an untrusted certificate (heidrun-protocol 1.1.3).

Downloads

• Heidrun-1.8.1-253.dmg  (8.5 MB)

Hello again!

Alright, b30! Grab a coffee, this is a long list. Since b29, Hotline has picked up private chats, Markdown nearly everywhere you write, a much more capable Files section, streaming audio and video previews, and a pile of fixes and small touches.

As promised last time, Hotline now requires macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later. Keeping to the two most recent macOS releases lets me use Apple's latest and keeps the project fresh and easier to maintain into the future.

• Private chats! Start a private chat with one or more people on a server, add a subject if you like, and invite others to the conversation later if needed. Private chats get their own spot in the sidebar.
• Markdown everywhere: the message board, news, private messages, broadcasts, and your auto-reply can all now be written in Markdown, styled as you type, with a formatting bar for bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, code, and links. Chat styles Markdown as you type too, and there's a new Format menu in the menu bar. Pasting rich text turns it into Markdown.
• Redesigned message board composer. Quotes, lists, and highlighted code blocks now show up on the board, and selecting text in posts works much better. Drop a picture onto a post to turn it into ASCII art (experimental if not a little silly).

...

Downloads

• Hotline.b30.zip  (11.1 MB)

• Bookmark shortcuts: assign ⌃⌘1–⌃⌘9 to a bookmark to open it from the Bookmarks menu; applies immediately and shows in the bookmark sidebar.
• Quit prompt auto-quits: an unanswered quit confirmation quits after a countdown (default 30 s, Settings → Connection) and is skipped on logout, restart or shutdown.

Downloads

• Heidrun-1.8.0-248.dmg  (8.5 MB)

• No schema migration and no config change.
• On the ng wire, the msg reply to a message that went as an instant message carries im: true and the message's guid, the one it was sent with or the server's own, so a client names it by guid for replies and reactions rather than as a stored message. A client that ignores unknown fields sees no other change.

• A private message waiting for its recipient, retried by login under its guid once they were back, never reaching their attached session.

• A retry by login of a private message read and pruned since answered as an instant message.

Image: ghcr.io/mishan/hxd-ng:0.3.0

• The main SQLite store migrates from schema 29 to 36 on first start: portable friendships, a private message's reference and per-mailbox cursor, replies, reactions on chat lines and on stored private messages, and stubs of read messages. Forward-only, as before: take a backup first (docs/operating.md, "Backups"). The registrar's database is unchanged.

• A new secret, messaging-requests.key beside [inbox] db ([messaging] request_secret), is made owner-only on first start wherever [messaging] and [inbox] are configured, and one that cannot be read refuses the start. Back it up with the other keys. Each address's count of requests sent today starts over once.

• [messaging] max_message_bytes is now at most 65505, and twice request_messages messages of that size must fit a page of the classic wire's Get Message Requests; a config past either is refused at start. The defaults are well inside both.

• Get User Info shows a user's login and address only to that user and to a session holding disconnect_users; everyone else, the bootstrap guest included, reads - in their place.

• A private message to a login now reaches every attached session of the account but the sender's, rather than one of them.

• To an account taking part in messaging, a guest's message by login is now a message request, or refused where the account takes none.

• On the ng wire, a stored private message is named by ref, and id

...

The first release.

• From this release on, the SQLite databases (the main store and a registrar's) migrate their schema forward on start and cannot be downgraded: an older hxd refuses a database a newer one has migrated, so going back means restoring the backup taken before the upgrade (docs/operating.md, "Backups").

Designed but not built yet:

• Vouching (docs/identity-vouch.md).
• File attachments on chat lines and private messages (docs/attachments.md).
• Importing mhxd's and Mobius's news.
• Secure rooms, and rooms across links.
• Bans placed from the config, and the ban list on the ng wire.
• A registrar's standing and probation, and its key backup.
• The delivered/read split for private messages: delivery to a classic client still marks a message read.
• Instant messaging on the classic wire (the extension's 800-block for period clients), and portable friendships (docs/proposals/portable-friends.md).
• Legacy text encodings other than Mac Roman, such as Shift-JIS or Latin-1.
• The real-client exit test for rooms (period 1.2, 1.5 and 1.9 clients) has not been run.

• Hotline 1.2 and 1.5 clients (and 1.9 where its behavior is known) on TCP :5500: login, the agreement, user list, nick and icon changes, Get User Info, keepalive, with mhxd's observable behavior.
• Public chat, /me, the chat subject, private chats and their invites, private messages, broadcast.

...

• Colored nicknames: Servers can deliver nickname colors to color-aware clients via the new HL_FIELD_USER_COLOR (0x0500) field on user-change broadcasts, and optionally honor colors clients set themselves (TranSetClientUserInfo, 304). New ColoredNicknames: block in config.yaml (and ColoredNicknames* plist keys): Delivery (off / auto / always), HonorClientColors, DefaultAdminColor, DefaultGuestColor. Per-account Color overrides the defaults. GUI: new Colored Nicknames settings section and a color row in the Account Editor.
• Auto-ban for repeat offenders: An IP that trips the per-IP rate limiter 10 times within 5 minutes is added to the persistent banlist and dropped at accept, before any read or TLS handshake. Controlled by the new AutoBanEnabled setting (default on), with a matching GUI checkbox; the Bans tab gains a Refresh button to show bans written by the running server.
• Chat history settings in the GUI: All nine ChatHistory* keys are now editable and round-trip through GUI saves (previously a GUI save silently dropped them), including a one-click Generate Key… for encryption at rest.

...

Downloads

• Lemoniscate-0.1.8.dmg  (3.6 MB)
• lemoniscate-linux-x86_64-0.1.8.zip  (118.7 KB)

This release cleans up saved logins and date formatting: bookmarks keep their password settings when they cross between Rust and the interface, reconnects retrieve saved credentials, and news timestamps follow your system’s locale and time zone.

Builds also move entirely onto GitHub-hosted runners. macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS / iPadOS packages are built in Actions without depending on a personal Mac mini or remote build machine. Downloads get a smaller async stack footprint, with additional regression coverage on Windows.

• GitHub-hosted builds for every platform — macOS universal, Windows x64, Linux x64 and ARM64, Android, and unsigned iOS / iPadOS packages are available below.
• Individual platform rebuilds — The Apple and Android workflow can build all three platforms together or retry just macOS, iOS, or Android.

• Dates that follow your system — Threaded news and file-info dates use your locale and time zone instead of a fixed US format.
• Saved credentials survive reconnects — Bookmark password flags now match the interface’s field names, and manual and automatic reconnects retrieve passwords from encrypted storage. Explicitly empty passwords remain valid.
• Lower download stack usage — The streaming copy buffer moves to the heap, reducing the size of the async download future. Windows regression tests cover multi-chunk transfers.

...

Downloads

• Hotline.Navigator_0.3.1_aarch64.AppImage  (85.1 MB)
• Hotline-Navigator-0.3.1-ios-unsigned.ipa.zip  (9.6 MB)
• Hotline.Navigator-0.3.1-universal.dmg  (22.8 MB)
• Hotline.Navigator_0.3.1_amd64.AppImage  (86.2 MB)
• Hotline.Navigator_0.3.1_amd64.deb  (13.2 MB)
• Hotline.Navigator_0.3.1_arm64.deb  (13.8 MB)
• hotline-navigator-unsigned.ipa  (9.7 MB)
• Hotline.Navigator_0.3.1_universal.dmg  (22.8 MB)
• Hotline.Navigator_0.3.1_x64-setup.exe  (7.8 MB)
• Hotline.Navigator_0.3.1.apk  (100.4 MB)

• News remembers Board or Threaded per server across reconnects and bookmark autoconnects.
• The Connection menu no longer goes inactive after switching the news view.

Downloads

• Heidrun-1.7.1-234.dmg  (8.4 MB)

• News auto-download: threaded servers load board and threaded news on first open and show the one with content (threaded when both have content); progress and Cancel in the Task Manager.
• Settings → News: turn auto-download off and pick the default news view (Automatic, Threaded or Board).

• Softer sound effects: the classic sounds are denoised, filtered, faded and level-matched.
• ⌥⌘W closes all other windows and tabs (File → Close Others), also ones showing the server agreement.
• Disconnect closes the window while other connections stay open; only the last one returns to the connection form.

Downloads

• Heidrun-1.7.0-232.dmg  (8.4 MB)