r/AsterPrivacy

https://jmap.io/

I would love to see Aster based on JMAP. Since it’s a brand new platform in active development, now is the time. Thunderbird is doing it and anyone that wants to be a solid alternative to Google and Microsoft’s suites really, really needs to consider this.

This week was about reliability, stability, and security. We have fixed tons of bugs, more than we can count in one post, plus we rolled out a few new features. From this point on, we aim to release weekly update logs to the community, as silence is the worst possible thing. With that being said, here is this week’s update log:

Android App. This release was mostly about Android. It got the biggest batch of fixes this round, from faster and more reliable notifications to more dependable sending, on top of the long list of smaller fixes below. Update as soon as you can to pick them all up. Get it on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.astermail.android or grab the APK directly from our download page here: https://astermail.org/download. F-Droid is still pending, we have submitted and are waiting on their approval.

iOS App. Our iOS TestFlight build is ready, and we will start sending invites out to beta testers later this week. If you signed up to test, keep an eye on your inbox.

Folder Auto-Clean. You can set a folder to clear out old mail on its own after a set amount of time. Good for the folders you never want to deal with by hand.

Mail Rule Templates. For most people, building filters from scratch can be annoying and a pain, so we added ready-made templates that you can start from.

Password-Protected Expiring Messages (Android). You can now send a message that is password protected and quantum safe on Android now.

Reply tracking protection. When you reply to or forward a message, the images in it will now load through our privacy proxy, so a sender is unable to slip a tracking pixel in and watch whenever you open it. We actively block these pixels with our privacy and tracker protection, and remote images load cleanly without ruining the email.

Family Kids Addresses. You are now able to reserve email addresses for your kids on Duo and Family plans so they have an address when they grow up.

Everything else. This is where most of the work went this week. We closed a long list of bugs and rolled them out everywhere at once:

• Unread counts stay accurate across the sidebar, tabs, and folders, and opening a message will clear the unread mark like it should.
• Sending is now more reliable, as messages no longer get stuck in a “sending” state when your network drops. The “undo send” also holds up even when you fire off two in a row.
• Email HTML rendering is significantly improved, including newsletters with white backgrounds, so no more white-on-white text that you have to highlight to read.
• Compose will now warn you about bad recipients and oversized attachments before you hit send, and scheduling a message with attachments no longer drops the files.
• New mail notifications are faster and more reliable on Android, and Quiet Hours will hold your mail until Quiet Hours ends instead of silently ignoring it.
• We have also added a Settings search, inline renaming for passkeys and security keys, and a delete account option in mobile security settings.
• Encryption key handling is better so encrypted and self-destructing messages stay readable across sessions and devices.

This is just some of the biggest bug fixes we have done. We have done lots of minor changes, and the full list is a lot longer.

Like always, our whole codebase is on GitHub under AGPLv3 at github.com/Aster-Privacy if you want to read through the changes or contribute.

You can see every commit on one page in the changelog here: https://astermail.org/changelog/

Thanks again to everyone here who reports issues and helps make Aster better. 💙

Go try it out at https://app.astermail.org / https://astermail.org