That explains it. The device I currently have it running on is stuck at Android 9. I have another device running the latest LineageOS (20) that I'll likely be moving Jami to, so this should cease being an issue for me, personally. But, I'm grateful that this ticket will help everyone else, like my parents whose devices capped off at Android 10.
Thank you for looking into this!
So, I really want to be able to use Jami full-time. But, after a couple years of hanging in there, it still hasn't become viable for me to do so. Currently, my contacts and I almost always have to manually Force Stop the app and, in the Android App settings, clear the cache, and restart Jami to have our messages go through. It is wildly inconsistent and sometimes requires several rounds of the above procedure, as well as sending a message or inputting random characters in the text box to "prompt" the other device (all have "display typing notifications" on). Sometimes, new messages will go through after clearing cache and force stopping, but older messages will still stay stuck until a future clearing. We primarily use text and images, rather than calls, to communicate, but I mainly see issues posted here about the calling (audio/video) features.
This would have just been a rant, but I recently found that one of my contacts and I were able to chat with perfect reliability when we were both out and about, using cellular connectivity (and one time, where he was on Wi-Fi and I was out and using cellular). I believe that my Wi-Fi routers may be a big part of what is confusing Jami and making it hard for our devices to sync. However...I have no experience in networking, let alone trouble-shooting in the area. So, I am unable to know where to even start in diagnosing this problem.
Looking through "similar" issues, I found this one, which has not been solved for me and my clients by Swarm (so far), and this one, which is definitely an issue for me (minus the desktop client being involved - the Android devices are the ones that are still unclear). I have been contemplating making an issue titled "The Green Dot Means Nothing," because it does not give me or my contacts a reliable indication of if the other can be reached. This issue may also be related, but I don't have enough knowledge to know for sure, plus it is more related to SIP accounts and all my clients and I are using Jami accounts via Swarm.
This is, of course, made harder by this issue that I opened a while back. But, my main concern is that Jami (or the backend services) may not be able to navigate my connection setup for whatever reason and that may be affecting other users, as well. If this can be addressed effectively, it may allow other users to enjoy a functioning Jami app out of the box.
My two routers are: A Netgear for the main router/modem and a TP-Link to extend connectivity to the back of the house (it uses ethernet-over-power to connect to the Netgear). Both are Wi-Fi capable. I will update this once I find the exact model names for each.
And the devices are all Moto G7 Supra phones on the same cellular network (Cricket) and all running the latest F-Droid flavor of Jami. The only difference is my device hasn't been able to update from Android 9 to 10, for some reason, while my other two clients' devices have updated. So, two Android 10s and one Android 9.
Oh, and one final note: I have tried leaving the Diagnostic Logs running in the background, but it always seem to get killed after a few minutes or so. The best i might be able to do is leave it on in the foreground, which may or may not reflect real-world usage.
It also doesn't update the preview text you see on the contact screen, if you edit the last sent message.
I have the issue of sometimes accidentally sharing a file with a Jami contact that I meant to share to a different app (like to convert a movie/video file), since Android 9 has this annoying quirk where it'll show the last four contacts you used (from various messenger apps) in a row that will "pop up" above the regular app list, but it will often move the list down to do so. This will cause me to aim for my media encoder app and then land on a contact, instead. Being paranoid and hyper cautious is not an ideal work-around, but having a "do you want to send this file?" confirmation dialogue is. Down the road, it could also give some relevant information about the file, like its size, as well. Just to double-check that you do indeed want to send a 10MB image to someone...
Thank you for creating all those issues on the other repositories, @ovari. Would you also be able to do one for Etherpad/EtherCalc?
Having this "feature" be implemented via plugins is an awesome idea. This takes the pressure off of the Jami team from having to support an array of apps inside of their app and can keep it from bloating, while still giving users and other developers a ton of freedom and options to be able to support and use almost whatever they want. This could also help Jami compete more evenly with apps like Element, Wire, Slack, etc. Hopefully, we'll also get a formal XMPP alternative to those collaborative apps, as well. But having a modern-looking P2P tool that can substitute for them would be amazing.
Thanks for contributing! It's great to see each improvement Jami gets.
Thank you for the clarifying reply. That would be good, for the future. Thankfully, there's no rush on this. So hopefully it'll/they'll be easier to implement, in the future. (Also, repeating my question above: should I make an issue for this?)
Okay. Should I go ahead and make an issue for it, so discussion can continue more properly?
Oh, so the mobile version of Jami is just using system libraries to handle images internally? That would take care of AVIF on Android >12, I think, but not JXL. No idea about iOS.
Makes sense for the issue. Should I open a separate issue for what I commented above? Sharing next-gen image formats with a compatible viewer is fine for now, but it would be beneficial to be able to display (at least a preview of) them in app, down the road.
Currently, when I press on the "Open gallery" option to send a photo from within a Jami conversation, I get the option to use the system file picker (if it is not already default), but no option to use my gallery app (currently, Simple Gallery Pro). This would be fine, if I could also select the gallery app from the side drawer in the system file picker, but I cannot.
However, here's what I get if I try to select a file for upload by tapping the "Send file" button in a Jami conversation (also what I see when I pick a file to upload in either Element or Bromite):
I am not familiar enough with this aspect of Android to have a clue as to why this would be. But I hope something can be done about this, without it being unreasonable. It does seem weird that the generic file picking option would allow to select from a gallery app, but the "Open gallery" option only lets me browse regular files.
Edit: Also, something I just now tested, when I tap on my profile icon in "Account Settings" and then tap the image/gallery icon there, it gives me the option to either "Complete action using Gallery" (Simple Gallery Pro) or "Use a different app" (Simple File Manager). Perhaps that same intent could be used for the "Open gallery" button in a conversation?
Some updates: I don't know if the last release changed anything here, but I noticed two other details regarding its behavior. For one, the message selection seems to get cleared if you scroll past the point of them being no longer visible. On the other side, when I select several and then tap the back button and quickly reopen the conversation, one of them may get stuck and I have to either reclose it for more than a second or two before reopening it or switch to another conversation and back to clear it. Or I have to lock and unlock the screen before going back in. It seems inconsistent with if it'll stick or not. I actually, just now, had it stay stuck after quickly switching to another conversation and then back (locking/unlocking the screen fixed it) - this was also in portrait mode, just to clarify.
By the way, why are recent apks so large? They were about 50M and now they are 100M.
This is something I have been wondering, as well. It' snot unusual for apps to start to balloon in size with added code and features, but to seemingly straight up bloat to twice it's size with no apparent major change is bizarre. Is it perhaps when swarm was formally introduced?
This appears to have been introduced in the major update released in November, but is only a UI issue and does not seem to affect functionality.
How to reproduce:
It doesn't matter if it is your messages or from (one of) your contact's. They will stay visually "selected" until you back out of the conversation and enter back in.
It released on F-Droid yesterday, so I managed to test it this morning: no issue. This latest version fixed whatever was going on. I am curious what kept breaking, though, and why it seemed to be more prominently broken on some networks than on others. :/
Thanks, Jami team. I hope it continues to get more stable so my family ans I can reliably use it instead of traditional text and calling. Then we can recommend it to others.
It hasn't released on PlayStore or F-Droid for me, yet. When it does, I will also give feedback.
Weird, I just came across the issue ticket and I'm surprised to see it registered as "closed", because this is still an issue for me. Whether it be from my gallery app or either file manager (Simple File Manager or Amaze), it still doesn't give me the option to share to Jami when I select more than one file of any type. (Android and F-Droid build)
This might be related, but on my and my contacts' devices (Android), if there is trouble syncing messages, then sometimes the contacts will be in bold (indicating unread messages in history) every single time I or they open the app. They can become read if you scroll enough, but they don't stay that way. Thr reason I'm not sure it's related is because the notification part does not occur (at least, recently). Sometimes it would, in the past, have an "unread" message appear in a notification along with one for a newly received message, but tapping "mark as read" in the notification itself would do nothing and it would have to be manually dismissed.
Cool. Seems like there's a lot of potential for neat features in the future with this. At least this one seems possibly easy to implement. Not sure about the others.