First Jami beta with Swarm support

jami -

Earlier this year, we announced working on a new generation of fully distributed chat, based on git.

We are excited to announce that the first public Beta is now available for testing on multiple platforms!

The most significant new feature is the introduction of our new Swarm technology, allowing for a fully synchronized history across devices, and guaranteed message delivery even in case of connectivity loss.

Swarms allow Jami to provide a modern messaging technology, while preserving our fully distributed and peer-to-peer design.

Features

The features that can now be tested are the following:

  • 1:1 Swarm creation. If you and your contact have Swarm, you will be able to use the new system.
  • Multi devices history sync. If you send messages from a device, all your devices should receive it.
  • The introduction of the new file transfer system (a blog post will come soon).

There is a lot of new things included in clients that will be described in further articles. But, on desktop clients, there is now the ability to:

  • Answer to a video call in audio only
  • Migrate from an audio call to a video call (screen sharing or start camera)

Replacing the jet engine while still flying

Swarm brings a lot of changes in Jami on how conversation works. This means that your peer needs to support it in order to use the new features. However we can't break the compatibility for users in one day or break all conversations. So, if your peer don't support swarm, nothing should break. Sending messages, adding non-Swarm contacts, file transfer and calls will continue to work like before. For now, Swarm will only be used with new compatible contacts.

Get it

For now, the beta is available on GNU/Linux, Android, Windows and macOS.

Android

For Android, you can become a beta tester on the Play Store version. The beta version includes  Swarm support.

GNU/Linux

Follow instructions there:
https://jami.net/download-jami-linux/
If you use Snap, you need to use the edge channel.
The Swarm beta is available for users of the https://dl.jami.net/nightly repo.

Windows

You can download the beta there:
https://jami.net/download-jami-windows/

macOS

https://dl.jami.net/mac_osx/beta/

We recommend you to do a backup of your accounts before entering in beta.