ownCloud Android 2.10.0 Release – Thanks to the Community!
How can the ownCloud Android app be even more convenient? The best way to improve the app is by the users, for the users. The new release brings you many community contributions.
For this release, most changes come from the community. The ownCloud team is busy refactoring the app, and working on architecture changes – so this time, we have mainly usability improvements.
Two contributors especially proved their competence: Shashvat Kedia, who developed some UI improvements, and Hannes Achleitner, who is working on the code structure.
Usability Improvements by Shashvat Kedia
If you are part of the beta testers, you probably know some of this already: Shashvat contributed many usability features to this version. A big change are two more options for selection:
After he already implemented Select all and Select inverse in the files view, he now added them to the uploads view, too. This makes it far easier to upload many files at once, a feature many asked for.
You can now select all files or inverse the selection in the uploading view.
Shashvat also included sorting options when sharing files from other apps with the ownCloud Android app – in complex folder hierarchies, this makes it easier to find the right location to upload a file.
He also has done some more polishing on the UI: when you deleted multiple files in previous versions, multiple notifications appeared. But now, we are showing just one:
Show only one delete notification when deleting multiple files
To conclude Shashvat’s contributions with this last small feature: when you log in, the login button will only appear when you start typing your credentials. This is smoother and avoids an error message when you accidentally click on a login button too early.
Other Visible Changes
Apart from Shashvat’s contributions, the new release changes some more details. One example: if you want to share a file, but 2 users have the same display name, then you can in the future see their user id or E-Mail address in the autocompletion dialog.
Different users can have the same display name – only the E-Mail address or user id can tell them apart.
This is what the new autocompletion looks like in the Android app.
Another small feature is a warning message, which appears when you first install the app – it asks you to properly configure a camera upload folder, so if you take a photo, they are automatically uploaded after up to 15 minutes.
Support For Android 9 And Twilight
Another very useful development for many users is support for Android 9. Hannes Achleitner, who is working with the team to improve the architecture, took care for the compability – so if you use Android 9, get our app and try it out!
Another notice regarding supported versions: with 2.10.0 we drop support for the oc_jb_workaround. This means, the app will only work from Android 4.4 upwards, instead of Android 4.0. So if you still use Android 4, you shouldn’t upgrade the ownCloud app – or better, upgrade your OS.
Last but not least, with the new version you can use ownCloud with light filtering apps like Twilight – if you want to use such an app, turn on the option “Allow touches when the view is obscured by another visible window.”
Beware though – allow this only if you trust those apps. This is disabled by default for security reasons – apps could trick you into performing actions by showing you a different view. As many users asked for this, we made it possible – but use it at your own risk.
Outlook – Kotlin, Architecture Improvements and Testing
Soon, there will be deep architecture improvements, which make it easier to contribute and write new features. They make it possible to use Kotlin for faster and easier development. You will not need as much know-how as Shashvat or Hannes to dive into the code.
Also there is a lot of work to improve testing. It makes it easier to write tests and helps to find crashes before they happen out there. Stay tuned!
For now, you can get the new version:
Get the app now on the Google Playstore!
Make sure to update now, to benefit of the enhanced security, better overall stability and reliable workflows.
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