BlockEQ Wallet 2.6.0 — Enabling development mode in our latest release

This article marks the next major release of the BlockEQ Stellar Wallet on the iOS App Store. We have lots of great updates as a part of release 2.6.0, including:

• A redesigned and universally accessible asset list
• Consistent asset icons thanks to the open-source cryptocurrency-icon project
• A visually refreshed breakdown of your asset balances, both for native and non-native assets
• Accurate fee calculations when sending and trading assets
• … and much more.

The redesigned balance screen

In order to reliably build all of these features and test out as many edge cases as possible, we needed our wallet to become more flexible and allow us to switch between a sandbox environment and the live Stellar network. This means we would be able to work in a smarter way during development, but still give us the confidence that our wallet would perform well as when it was on the live Stellar network.

In order to accomplish this, we have been progressively working towards being able to specify which Stellar Horizon API our wallet fetches data from, and transmits signed transactions to.

In 2.6.0, we’re happy to release basic support for this to our users who need this development feature. We understand that if we find it useful, our community of users will too.

To enable development mode, navigate to Settings > BlockEQ > Development Mode.

Then, you’ll have access to an option in the settings menu to switch networks.

Development settings will appear at the bottom

Once you switch to the network you’d like to use, you’ll need to force quit the app for the changes to fully take effect. This is only a current limitation, and we are hoping to eliminate that requirement in the future.

You will need to restart your app in order to complete the switch to the test network

Lastly, we found it confusing to know when we were on Testnet and when we were on the live network, so we’ve made it dead simple to tell:

‘Testnet’ will always appear at the top to avoid uncertainty which network you’re using

In the future, we’d like to be able to allow developers to specify which Horizon API server to use and that’s the next step — for now, we believe this adds immediate utility for our users. Be sure to check out the Stellar Laboratory for funding your test accounts.

That’s all for now! For a more comprehensive list of changes, you can check out our latest release on GitHub.

Head over to the App Store today and download the BlockEQ update!