What's new in Joplin 2.9

Proxy support

Both the desktop and mobile application now support proxies thanks to the work of Jason Williams. This will allow you to use the apps in particular when you are behind a company proxy.

New PDF viewer

The desktop application now features a new PDF viewer thanks to the work of Asrient during GSoC.

The main advantage for now is that this viewer preserves the last PDF page that was read. In the next version, the viewer will also include a way to annotate PDF files.

Multi-language spell checking

The desktop app include a multi-language spell checking features, which allows you, for example, to spell-check notes in your native language and in English.

New mobile text editor

Writing formatted notes on mobile has always been cumbersome due to the need to enter special format characters like * or [, etc.

Thanks to the work of Henry Heino during GSoC, writing notes on the go is now easier thanks to an improved Markdown editor.

The most visible feature is the addition of a toolbar, which helps input those special characters, like on desktop.

Moreover Henry made a lot of subtle but useful improvements to the editor, for example to improve the note appearance, to improve list continuation, etc. Search within a note is now also supported as well as spell-checking.

At a more technical level, Henry also added many test units to ensure that the editor remains robust and reliable.

To enable the feature, go to the configuration screen and selected "Opt-in to the editor beta". It is already very stable so we will probably promote it to be the main editor from the next version.

Improved alignment of notebook icons

Previously, when you would assign an icon to a notebook, it would shift the title to the right, but notebook without an icon would not. It means that notebooks with and without an icon would not be vertically aligned.

To tidy things up, this new version adds a default icons to notebooks without an explicitly assigned icon. This result in the notebook titles being correctly vertically aligned.

Note that this feature is only enabled if you use custom icons - otherwise it will simply display the notebook titles without any default icons, as before.

Improved handling of file attachments

Self Not Found made a number of small but useful improvements to attachment handling, including increasing the maximum size to 200MB, adding support for attaching multiple files, and fixing issues with synchronising attachments via proxy.

Fixed filesystem sync on mobile

This was a long and complex change due to the need to support new Android APIs but hopefully that should now be working again, thanks to the work of jd1378.

So you can now sync again your notes with Syncthing and other file-based synchronisation systems.

And more...

In total this new desktop version includes 36 improvements, bug fixes, and security fixes.

As always, a lot of work went into the Android and iOS app too, which include 37 improvements, bug fixes, and security fixes.

See here for the changelogs:

About the Android version

Unfortunately we cannot publish the Android version because it is based on a framework version that Google does not accept. To upgrade the app a lot of changes are needed and another round of pre-releases, and therefore there will not be a 2.9 version for Google Play. You may however download the official APK directly from there: Android 2.9 Official Release

This is the reality of app stores in general - small developers being imposed never ending new requirements by all-powerful companies, and by the time a version is finally ready we can't even publish it because yet more requirements are in place.

For the record the current 2.9 app works perfectly fine. It targets Android 11, which is only 2 years old and is still supported (and installed on millions of phones). Google requires us to target Android 12 which only came out last year.

36 Likes

Thank you very much for the new android version. I have installed the apk but I do not see the new editor when going into edit mode; I presume that is because I am still running Android 10.

Will Joplin 2.9 run on my mobile nonetheless, or should I stick to the older version 2.8?

Kind regards,
kai.

Did you enable the beta editor?

To enable the feature, go to the configuration screen and selected "Opt-in to the editor beta". It is already very stable so we will probably promote it to be the main editor from the next version.

3 Likes

Great thanks to Laurent & team

Just downloaded the android app too and enjoyed the new editor!
I understand completely your fights with the android regulations. Hope you never give up!

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No, in fact I have not. I had somehow incorrectly assumed that since it was specially mentioned it would be the default editor. I'll try that now ...

Works ... and looks very nice ... thanks for the quick reply.

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Thank you for the release! Been looking forward to all the changes.

Is modernizing the UI and look of the app in the pipeline? I think a lot of inspiration can be taken from some of the theme plugins.

Just another thanks for the wonderful update to the Android version. I do a lot of writing in Joplin on my 8" tablet and this is very helpful.

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Thank you to Laurent, Henry, and the team for the hard work! The new version (especially the editor) is fantastic! :tada:

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Thanks again - massive improvement for the mobile editor, greatly appreciated

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The new mobile editor is great!
Will you be publishing the android version in some FOSS repository? Like F-Droid?

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I don't look after this but there's a thread on GitHub on the topic. I think someone got quite close to make the app compatible with F-Droid

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Hey this update seems to have fixed the "create table" interface on windows! So I can click on a grid instead of entering numbers. That's really convenient, thank you!!

Sometimes little things can have great effects: Haven't tested it properly on iOS and iPadOS, but it seems that the font size of rendered markdown can be determined by system-wide accessibility settings. To put it more simply: Great relief to see text in notes displayed in bigger fonts... :smiley:

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I just discovered here we can assign icons to notebooks.
I struggled to find how to set one. For those still searching, you have to right-click on the notebook, and choose Edit, which actually sets the properties of the notebook: change the name, and assign an icon (or clear it).
Perhaps rename this Edit into Edit properties or something similar?

I just discoverd the latest Android version and it's super nice. Thank you for all the work !! :pray:

Sometimes Google's reqs make no sense at all. Many tablets that you can buy today only come with Android 10 or if you are lucky with Android 11.

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"Target" doesn't min the minimum system requirement in this case. The current Android NDK still supports building apps for Android 4.4 and later. The target simply allows apps to use the features introduced in that Android version. It's just the Play Store policy that forces apps to up their target or new updates won't be accepted otherwise.

Amazing, thank you all! Really happy to be able to use the new Android editor :clap:

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Thank you for fixing the local file storage sync with android.
I just noticed that the local file storage sync blocks the UI on android, WebDAV sync method does not. Is that expected?