1.6.6
Two apps stop pretending. The file manager was named after its own sidebar, and that sidebar found three ways to say “this device” above eight greyed-out rows that had promised cloud and chain storage since the app shipped and never once delivered it. It is now Storage, with two places that are genuinely different: Local, for what sits on this machine, and Web3, where IPFS works because you bring the account. Connect an external pinning account and Storage can publish files through it. The App Store stops pretending in the other direction: it had been showing star ratings nobody gave, on a shelf with no reviewers behind it, and an invented figure where a reader most expects a real one is worse than no figure at all. The ratings are gone, the shelf is organised by what apps are for, and the featured row is a short list somebody chose and can defend. Elsewhere, five apps pick up the same navigation, and live panels stop refreshing while nobody is looking at them.
12 changes in this release
Highlights
- 01
Files is now Storage, with two places instead of eleven
The old sidebar carried Desktop, Documents and Downloads, three rows that each meant “this device”, above On Cloud and On Chain, eight rows greyed out and labelled Soon that led nowhere. Four of those five said the same thing while the folders themselves were already one click away, and the other four were a promise the app had been displaying for months. So there are two destinations now, and they differ in the only way that matters: what lives on this machine, and what lives on a network that keeps it whether this machine exists or not. The three home folders are still special and still undeletable; they are folders inside Local, which is where somebody looks for a folder. The name changed with the shape, because “Files” only ever described the left-hand half and there are two halves now.
- 02
IPFS, through your own provider
Storage can connect to an external IPFS pinning account for publishing, browsing and removing Web3 files, with capability differences explained before an action is offered.
- 03
The App Store stops showing ratings nobody gave
There are no reviewers on this shelf and nothing counting installs behind it, so every star it drew was invented, and an invented number in the slot a reader trusts most is worse than an empty slot. The rating is gone from the detail page, where the figures are now ones the store can stand behind rather than three facts with a decoration in front, and the “Top” sort that ranked by it is replaced by Category, which groups the shelf by what apps are actually for. What is featured is a short hand-picked list rather than whatever sorted highest against a fiction. Category stops being a label and becomes the organising idea, and the store gains pages you can move between and come back to.
- 04
One navigation, five apps
Once an app has more places to go than a row of buttons can carry, it wants a permanent rail beside the work on a desktop and a thumb-reachable bar underneath on a phone. Pump.fun worked that shape out first and Wallet copied it, which left two navigations that agreed on every idea and disagreed on a dozen small details. Solana Hub, Stocks, Incinerator, the App Store and Storage now all use the same one, so they move alike and an improvement to any of them reaches the rest. Each app also judges its layout by its own window rather than the screen around it, so a window dragged narrow gets the touch layout on any machine, and grouping destinations under headings is available everywhere rather than only where it was invented.
- 05
Nothing refreshes while you are not looking
Every live panel here keeps itself current on its own: a resting swap quote, the gas tab, a price strip. Windows stay open when they lose focus, so a scan survives a glance elsewhere, and that used to mean a hidden tab went on asking for fresh figures all afternoon. It was both the largest share of the traffic this app made and the share nobody could see. Now a panel nobody is looking at stops, and reads again the moment you come back rather than showing a figure from whenever the tab was last in front. Swap, Uniswap, Wallet, ETH Hub's network tab and Hyperliquid all work this way.
Everything in this release
New5
- Storage: the file manager, renamed and rebuilt around two places, Local for this device and Web3 for IPFS. Desktop, Documents and Downloads are folders inside Local now, rather than three rows of a sidebar that no longer exists.
- Connect an external IPFS pinning account and publish local files through it, with supported actions shown for the selected service.
- Storage gains multi-selection with shift and ⌘-ranges, a copy/cut/paste clipboard, duplicate, drag-to-move onto any level of the path bar, import from this device, export, and undo across all of it, offered in the message that reports what happened.
- Search in Storage is scoped: this folder, or everything beneath it. A details pane answers what a selection weighs and where it lives without a dialog, and Recents collects what you last touched.
- The App Store shelf can be sorted by Category, and the featured row is a short curated list.
Improved4
- Solana Hub, Stocks, Incinerator, the App Store and Storage move onto the shared rail-and-bottom-bar navigation. All of them now size themselves from their own window rather than the display, so a narrow window on a wide screen gets the narrow layout.
- Live panels stop refreshing while their tab is hidden and read again the moment it comes back. Swap, Uniswap, Wallet, ETH Hub and Hyperliquid are on it.
- Storage's compact layout is chosen by window width rather than by device, so dragging the window narrow gets the touch layout on any machine: tap rows, action sheets, a Select mode and a folder picker for moves.
- App descriptions across the desktop and the store are rewritten to say what each app is for rather than what category it sits in.
Fixed1
- Request logging is quieter and avoids retaining unnecessary request detail.
Removed2
- Star ratings throughout the App Store, and the “Top” sort built on them. There are no reviewers here and nothing counting installs, so every one of those numbers was invented.
- The On Cloud and On Chain sidebar groups in the old Files app, eight rows labelled Soon that led nowhere. IPFS is now real and lives in Web3; the other seven are not promised.