Hello friends! I have another update on the core apps and I wanted to thank all the contributors that are making Ubuntu Touch awesome!

• Calculator App
  • Released version 2.4.0
    • Theme support
• Calendar App
  • New release coming soon
    • Improved colors for calendars
• Camera App
  • Moved to GitLab
• Clock App
  • Moved to GitLab
  • Working on fixing alarm timing issues
• File Manager App
  • Moved to GitLab
  • Released version 0.6.1
    • ContentHub import fixed
• Gallery App
  • Released version 2.10.1
    • New options to configure the grid size
    • Fixed missing albums when upgrading from Vivid
    • Bug fixes and UX improvements
• Messaging App
  • Can be built using Clickable (coming soon)
  • Visual imporvements (coming in next OTA)
• OpenStore
  • Released version 2.50
    • Minor fixes
• TELEports
  • Moved to UBports organization on GitLab
  • Had their second hackathon and are making great progress

Multiple apps have also had translation updates, thank you translators!

Hello everyone! I wanted to give a quick update on what's been going on in some of our core apps and developer docs recently.

• Calculator
  • Updated the math.js library to fix issues with decimals
  • Moved the code to GitLab for automated deploys to the OpenStore
• Music
  • The swipe animation between tracks in the now play view has been updated
  • The music app is now available on the OpenStore!
  • Moved code to GitLab for automated deploys to the OpenStore
• Weather
  • Currently working on getting an api key from OpenWeatherMap so we don't need to rely on the current key
• Gallery
  • New "Info" panel for media file details
  • Other minor improvements and translation updates

In general news we are slowly moving the core apps over to GitLab. We are going to setup each core app that is a click to be automatically compiled with Clickable and deployed to the OpenStore. If you're interested in setting up your own app with automated deploys to the OpenStore check out the Clickable docs.

The docs have seen some improvements thanks to some new guides by @CiberSheep. There are now guides on Content Hub export and Content Hub import & Url Dispatcher. If you are willing and able to contribute a guide or an example app you can find a full list of things we want to create over at the Development Resources GitLab project.

Thanks to all the hard work of our Core App developers/contributors, all the great translators, and our documentation writers!

Hello friends! It's been a while since I posted a core apps updated, but that just means there are more good things to talk about. Plenty of new releases over the last few months thanks to all the hard working contributors!

• Calendar
  • Released v0.8.1
    • Improved colors in color picker
    • Improved navigation between different views
• Clock
  • Released v3.12
    • Added user defined default alarm sound
    • Created work around for alarms sounding on the wrong time
• File Manager
  • Released v0.7.0
    • Removed bottom bars
    • Added theme support
    • New option to move the rename function to the swipe right actions
• Gallery
  • Released v2.10.2
    • Various fixes
• Notes
  • Released v0.7.0
    • New splash screen
  • Released v0.8.0
    • Initial dark mode support (better support coming in the future)
• OpenStore
  • Released v2.60
    • Added "Update All" button
    • Added banner loading indicator
    • Various fixes
  • Released v2.62
    • Various fixes
• Weather
  • Released v4.5.0
    • Added theme support
    • Fixed sunset/sunrise times
    • Improved moon phase display
  • Released v4.5.1
    • Various fixes

Multiple apps have also had translation updates, thank you translators!

Hello everyone! I just wanted to apologize for the mishap with the weather app this week. We got an api key for OpenWeatherMap for UBports and I published an update to the Weather app without realizing there should also be a Weather Channel api key. I recently pushed an update that removes the Weather Channel option and also removes the issues users were facing by moving them to the OpenWeatherMap provider. Unfortunately we won't be reactivating the Weather Channel/Weather Underground data provider since it seems they are shutting down their api in favor of a business focused IBM provider and they are no longer offering free api access and their data seems to have restrictions for some countries. For now we will keep with just OpenWeatherMap but we will look into other options like DarkSky, etc.

I've been working on this for a bit, but I wanted to release an early version of a possible Dash replacement. You can find it for download on the OpenStore. It's a bit more of a traditional home screen, but that's where the your feedback comes in. What do you think of this possibly being the default on your phone? Nothing official has been decided, this is just an experiment that I've been working on.

When taking a look keep in mind that's is pretty early stage. Although it already has support for the same icon packs that Falcon uses (props to @CiberSheep for those!). I hope you enjoy it and please leave any feedback/discussion here!

Hello again friends! I have another quick update on the core apps & developer documentation.

• Weather
  • Removed "The Weather Channel" data provider
  • Moved to GitLab
• Welcome App
  • Moved to GitLab
  • Fixed broken links
  • Cool visual refresh coming soon
• Gallery
  • Moved to GitLab
• Calendar
  • Fixed setting of the default calendar
  • Fixed custom reminders
  • Improved working hours
  • Fixed long pressing to add events
  • Recurring events have their intervals shown in the event details
• Document Viewer
  • Moved to GitLab
• Developer Documentation
  • Tutorial on writable directories
  • Tutorial on Push Notifications
  • Tutorial on User Metrics

Thanks to all the hard work of our Core App developers/contributors, all the great translators, and our documentation writers!

Hello fellow developers!

The UBports App Dev Steering committee has recently started efforts to improve the app developer documentation. The improvements are not just geared at onboarding new developers, but they are also for experienced developers. The first step in this long journey was the publishing of a revamped app dev page in the UBports docs. But there are several holes in it still! We've identified several areas where a tutorial would be useful and created a project in GitLab to track them. If you are interested in creating documentation/tutorials check out the project on GitLab and/or join our UBAD Discussion Group on matrix.

We want to make Ubuntu Touch the best development platform out there! We appreciate your help and support!

Thank you all for the great feedback! Some really great discussions coming out of this and hopefully we can continue this and turn out a great operating system!

One thing that Sprint really suffers from right now is that its very rough and very early. It's not very well integrated with the rest of unity. I kinda ignored the launcher when making Sprint. That's probably something that we want to keep since it's uniquely Ubuntu. So rather than the current design in Sprint it might make sense to do away with the bottom "favorites" section and make sure the launcher is better suited for the most frequently used apps. At this point the app draw in the next big unity 8 release is a bit of an unknown. But once that's a reality then we should definitely look at how that will interact with Dash/Sprint.

One thing that came up several times is how this has an Android-like feel too it. And I did borrow some ideas for other OSs. This is similar to how on my computer I'm running a "traditional" desktop environment that you could say has a Windows-like feel. But that doesn't mean that its bad. Being different for the sake of being different isn't always a good thing. I think we should take a look at what we want to focus on for Ubuntu Touch that makes it stand out when compared to other OSs. Things like privacy, security, openness, and convergence come to mind. Yes we should most certainly have our own style, we want people to know when they are running an Ubuntu Touch device. But right now the app scope doesn't really do us any favors as its very rigid and lacks any customization. Another thing to consider is onboarding new users. Borrowing ideas from other OSs can help ease users into using Ubuntu Touch.

Due to the range of responses, I think it makes sense to include more customizations in the final solutions as people want different things out if their Ubuntu Touch. And the other take away (as mentioned above), is that we should come up with a few key features/points that we want to define Ubuntu Touch.

Again thank you all for the feedback!

@mymike what do you think about turning your demo into a template for clickable? It could be really great way to get more people creating/porting SDL apps.

uApp Explorer was down with an error and I brought it back up again. But it should probably be shutdown and direct everyone to either the OpenStore for click apps or the Snap store for snaps as it is a bit redundant now. To clear up some confusion, uApp Explorer doesn't host any of the clicks/snaps it provides. It showed apps from the Canonical app store back in the day (which is why you can find older apps that doen't exist on the OpenStore), the snap store, and eventually the OpenStore. I also want to note that while I'm now the main developer for the OpenStore it was all started by Michael Zanetti before UBports took over the development of Ubuntu Touch (so a huge thanks to him for getting it started!).

@bryanegraham feel free to bug me with any questions, I'm happy to help!

Well, if you can't get a working binary the template probably won't help you. But you could use clickable's debugging features to help with the app not starting. Another thing to look at is the unity8 logs as well.

If you want to take a stab at making a template, check out the repo here: https://gitlab.com/clickable/ut-app-meta-template And feel free to direct any questions my way!

@poVoq No, vanilla framework is just css, Vue is just my preferred JS framework.

As an alternative to the old sdk, there is the Vanilla framework by Canonical: https://vanillaframework.io/
It's not 100% Ubuntu Touch, but fairly close. I've used it for my Recipe Boss app: https://open-store.io/app/recipe-boss.bhdouglass

So you can't technically uninstall the notes app as its part of the rootfs, so what version do you have installed now and what version did you uninstall?

That is a good question, it does some hackery to get the login tokens so maybe not the services api.

I did some hacking today on Slaq to see if I could get it running on Ubuntu Touch. I was able to get it to run in clickable desktop, but it crashes almost immediately on a phone. I pushed up my changes to https://github.com/bhdouglass/slaq if any one wants to take a crack at it (warning, it's super hacky!). On the desktop I was able to login by manually setting the tokens in here: https://github.com/bhdouglass/slaq/blob/master/qml/dialogs/WebLoginDialog.qml#L80

@PINE64 There is a group interested in building a companion app for AsteroidOS, so I see a lot of overlap. The matrix group is here: #UBports_AsteroidOS:matrix.org
@stefwe is doing most of the work there and I helped with the Pebble companion app (RockWork), so let us know if we can do some collaboration! I'm very excited for the PineTime and PinePhone!

4 - Notes stored in Nextcloud in Markdown. I just use the markdown editor in Nextcloud, but it's kinda buggy.