Rocket.Chat

What's new in this version:

Rocket.Chat 4.17.0
Improved:
- Separate windows on a shared native shell — Log viewer, downloads, settings, and document viewer now open as independent native windows instead of in-app overlays, with follow-up correctness, performance, and UX improvements to the log viewer
- SAML authentication through deeplink — SAML login flows can now complete via the desktop deeplink handler
- Workspace presence in the tray — The tray icon and menu now reflect the active workspace's presence status, and hide it when the active server fails to load

Fixed:
- macOS updates now install through electron-updater, fixing manual update installs on macOS
- "Check for updates" now works on store builds — Mac App Store, Microsoft Store, Snap, and Flathub — pointing users to the store instead of the built-in updater
- Windows notification quick replies are no longer lost after the toast is dismissed to the Action Center
- Windows notification quick replies are deduplicated

Internal:
- Release builds now trigger only on semver tags, with PR checks for release lines
- Release tagging fails closed on unsafe tags
- New dev/master/release branching model documented and wired into the repo guides
- Test line coverage raised to 71.19%


Rocket.Chat 4.16.0
Highlights:
- A new workspace navigation system with three switchable layouts, a unified window chrome across all three platforms, security hardening from a 2022 pentest follow-up, and an upgrade to React 19
- New workspace navigation: Tabs, Sidebar, or Titlebar
- Workspace switching has been reworked into three interchangeable layouts, selectable in Settings → General or via the View menu (⌘/Ctrl+Shift+S cycles through them):
- Tabs — a horizontal browser-style tab strip with favicon, label, unread/mention badges, a keyboard-shortcut chip, drag-to-reorder, and an add-workspace button
- Sidebar — a narrow, icon-only vertical column with square favicon tabs and badges, keyboard navigation, and improved contrast when a workspace's favicon matches the background
- Titlebar — no sidebar and no tab strip, just the title bar with a compact server switcher
- The whole desktop chrome is now theme-aware, and the Theme selector is back in Settings
- Unified window chrome across Windows, Linux, and macOS
- Menu bar on Windows and Linux is now hidden by default — press Alt to reveal it temporarily, or pin it permanently visible from Settings → General → Menu bar, the View menu, or Ctrl+Shift+M. Existing installs are migrated automatically without overriding a choice you've already made.
- Linux now uses the same client-side window chrome as Windows: window controls embedded in the tab strip instead of relying on the desktop environment's title bar, plus softly rounded outer corners
- Updates are now surfaced as a titlebar label instead of a modal dialog, with clearer feedback for manual update checks and more resilient silent background checks
- Downloads get a new tab-strip indicator with a cleaner, more compact presentation
- Added a Cmd+, shortcut to open Preferences on macOS

Security hardening:
Follow-up fixes from pentest review, tightening several areas that previously relied on broader trust than necessary:
- Restricted geolocation, notifications, and fullscreen permission prompts in the server view to trusted, configured server origins only
- Blocked main-frame navigation to non-http(s) schemes inside the server webview
- Tightened the Content-Security-Policy on local renderer windows
- Session data (cookies, localStorage, indexedDB) is now cleared automatically when a user logs out of a server through the normal web app UI, not only via the manual "Clear Cache" action
- Documented a risk-acceptance decision on certificate pinning for the auto-updater (CORE-1128) for future reference

Fixed:
- Fixed workspace tabs intermittently getting stuck on the loading throbber after a webview boot failure — the app now recovers automatically instead of requiring a full restart
- Fixed a renderer infinite re-render loop that could throw "Maximum update depth exceeded"
- Fixed an unread-badge update storm that could crash tab bar rendering, and corrected badge rendering/priority
- Fixed the screen-share picker appearing at app launch with no user interaction on Linux Wayland (Fedora Flatpak, Ubuntu deb) — source enumeration was running before the picker was ever opened
- Fixed the screen picker to show on the window that actually requested it (rather than always the main window) and to queue concurrent requests instead of dropping them
- Fixed screen-picker source stability under Electron 42's macOS capture stack
- Fixed workspaces with a valid uniqueId-scoped support exception incorrectly showing the "Unsupported" screen
- Fixed the sidebar tooltip showing "null" for servers beyond the 9th position
- Fixed the TopBar not rendering on Linux when using the Sidebar or Titlebar layouts
- Fixed dependency subpath imports not being externalized correctly in the Rollup build

Internal:
- Upgraded React 18.3 → 19 and Fuselage 0.78 → 0.80
- Added a silent installation guide for enterprise deployments
- Added test coverage across preload and module boundaries
- Applied least-privilege permissions to GitHub Actions workflows
- Updated translations from Lingohub