Nuvola 4.13 Released

Nuvola 4.13 was released. This announcement summarizes user-visible changes, which have been already announced separately, as well as important news for script maintainers and third-party packagers.

Nuvola 4.13.0.

To install Nuvola, follow installation instructions at the Nuvola Apps Repository. To update Nuvola, run flatpak update --system && flatpak update --user in terminal (as a regular user, not root/sudo) or use a package manager which supports Flatpak (e.g., a recent GNOME Software application with the Flatpak plugin).

What’s New for Users

Nuvola 4.13 gathers all goodies that were continuously released to the genuine flatpak builds of Nuvola since July 21st, 2018. If you read Nuvola News blog regularly, chances are that you are already aware of most of the changes described below.

Spotify: Widevine Plugin Update Required

Those who tried a fresh installation of Spotify recently may have encountered the Enable player in your browser error message [GitHub ticket]. The cause was a new Widevine plugin shipped with the new stable Chrome 68 release, which is incompatible with Chromium 67 built into Nuvola 4.12.0.

Widewine plugin failed to load.

Nuvola 4.12.20 was updated to use Chromium 68.0.3440.75 (a bit delayed by another issue) and solves the problem entirely. Users who use any of the older versions of the Widevine plugin will be asked to update it to achieve maximal compatibility. If you encounter any issues, please don’t hesitate to report them.

Widevine plugin needs update

Some Apps Use Dark Theme by Default

Nuvola 4.11.60 brought back the option to use a dark theme variant. Nuvola 4.12.20 goes further and enables the dark theme by default for 9 scripts (see below) whose user interface is rather dark. Other apps use a light variant by default if the theme provides it. As always, you can change these default settings in the preferences.

Tweaked Scrollbars

After the dark theme option was reintroduced, the default ugly Chromium scrollbars became the last noisy element ruining the otherwise pleasant visual experience.

The ugly default scrollbar of Chromium.

Nuvola 4.12.20 tackles that with new dark scrollbars (enabled by default for the 9 apps mentioned in the previous section):

Spotify with the new dark scrollbars.

Other apps use new light scrollbars:

Google Play Music with the new light scrollbars.

As always, you can change these default settings in the preferences:

About Dialog with Tips Shown on Start-Up

The very first start of Nuvola takes a while because several things need to be generated and cached (the configuration and properties of all available fonts, the database of GStreamer modules, etc.). Then Nuvola performs its own start-up checks to make sure all dependencies are satisfied, and you shouldn’t expect any surprised. But it may take long.

Nuvola used to show a simple start-up window during its initialization, but it now shows a set of useful tips instead:

• How to add an app to favorites or pin to a dock for faster access.
• How to open Preferences and a help corresponding to individual features.
• How to report a bug, suggest a feature or ask a question.

About dialog with Tips.

When all start-up checks are finished, the dialog usually closes automatically not to bother you. If will be kept open only if you have just installed or upgraded Nuvola and launched it for the very first time after that. You can show the tips anytime later, just click the Menu button, then About.

New Documentation Written from Scratch

Nuvola has finally received new documentation. I’ve been writing it from scratch for a while and hope it will be more useful than the old one. You can now open help pages of individual features with a single click from the recently redesigned preferences dialog:

Open help with a single click.

Again, open help with a single click.

Two Clicks to Report Bug and New Issue Templates

Nuvola now provides extra menu actions to report bugs, ask questions or suggest features more easily.

Two clicks to report bug.

These actions point directly to the new issue templates on GitHub:

New issue templates.

Repeat & Shuffle States

Web app integration scripts can now export repeat and shuffle states. You can change them from Media Player Indicator applet or a tray icon, for example.

Shuffle/repeat states in Media Player Indicator.

Shuffle/repeat states in a tray icon menu.

Flash Plugin Update

Good news is that BBC iPlayer 1.5.7 has recently joined the no-Flash party, which makes Amazon Cloud Player the last script which needs Flash plugin for audio playback.

While the long-term goal is to get rid of the Flash plugin entirely, Nuvola comes with a small security improvement: If you use Amazon Cloud Player, Nuvola will ask you to confirm the upgrade of Flash plugin every time a new release is available. Nuvola will then download and install the new version for you.

Upon your approval, the Flash plugin is automatically installed/updated. Note that only Amazon Cloud Player requires Flash, you won’t see this dialog with the other services.

Amazon Cloud Player script 5.8

Maintainer: Andrew Stubbs • Flatpak package • Source code

• Nuvola 4.13 is required.
• Add Italian region support.
• A dark theme variant is used by default.
• Add playlist repeat integration.
• Add playlist shuffle integration.

BBC iPlayer script 1.6

Maintainer: Andrew Stubbs • Flatpak package • Source code

• Nuvola 4.11 is required.
• A dark theme variant is used by default.
• Update following BBC changes.
• Remove Flash plugin as it’s no longer required.
• Adjust the filter of external URLs to allow bbc.com for account sign-in. [GitHub ticket]

Deezer script 3.1

Maintainer: Jiří Janoušek • Flatpak package • Source code

• Nuvola 4.13 is required.
• The script was adjusted to the new Deezer design 09/2018. [GitHub ticket 1, GitHub ticket 2]
• The shuffle status was integrated. [GitHub ticket]
• The repeat status was integrated. [GitHub ticket]

Google Play Music script 6.2

Maintainer: Jiří Janoušek • Flatpak package • Source code

• Nuvola 4.13 is required.
• The shuffle status was integrated. [GitHub ticket]
• The repeat status was integrated. [GitHub ticket]

Jango script 2.5

Maintainer: Jiří Janoušek • Flatpak package • Source code

• Nuvola 4.13 is required.
• The shuffle status was integrated. [GitHub ticket]

Jupiter Broadcasting script 1.3

Maintainer: Andrew Stubbs • Flatpak package • Source code

• Nuvola 4.11 is required.
• Add error.show site support.
• Remove defunct Unfilter Patreon page.
• Switch to https URLs.

KEXP script 1.4

Maintainer: Jiří Janoušek • Flatpak package • Source code

• A dark theme variant is used by default.

Mixcloud script 4.2

• Nuvola 4.13 is required.
• A dark theme variant is used by default.

ownCloud Music script 1.4

Maintainer: Jiří Janoušek • Flatpak package • Source code

• Nuvola 4.13 is required.
• The shuffle status was integrated. [GitHub ticket]
• The repeat status was integrated. [GitHub ticket]

Plex script 1.5

Maintainer: Jiří Janoušek • Flatpak package • Source code

• Nuvola 4.13 is required.
• The shuffle status was integrated. [GitHub ticket]
• The repeat status was integrated. [GitHub ticket]
• Use a dark theme variant by default.

Pocket Casts script 1.2

Maintainer: Jiří Janoušek • Flatpak package • Source code

• Use a dark theme variant by default.

Qobuz script 1.2

Maintainer: Bors, Ltd • Flatpak package • Source code

• Nuvola 4.13 is required.
• Added support for repeating playlist or single track.
• Added support for shuffle.
• Update for the new Qobuz design.

SoundCloud script 1.5

Maintainer: Jiří Janoušek • Flatpak package • Source code

• Nuvola 4.13 is required.
• The shuffle status was integrated. [GitHub ticket]
• The repeat status was integrated. [GitHub ticket]

Spotify script 3.1

Maintainer: Jiří Janoušek • Flatpak package • Source code

• Nuvola 4.13 is required.
• The shuffle status was integrated. [GitHub ticket]
• The repeat status was integrated. [GitHub ticket]
• Use a dark theme variant by default.

Yandex Music script 1.7

Maintainer: Aleksey Zhidkov • Flatpak package • Source code

• Nuvola 4.13 is required.
• Added support for shuffle.
• Added support for repeat.
• Fixed like button.

YouTube script 2.1

Maintainer: Jiří Janoušek • Flatpak package • Source code

• The home page URL was changed. [GitHub ticket]

YouTube Music script 1.3

Maintainer: Jiří Janoušek • Flatpak package • Source code

• Use a dark theme variant by default.

Changes in Pricing

These changes apply only to the genuine flatpak builds of Nuvola. The entire source code from Nuvola Apps project is still available for free under 2-Clause BSD license.

I and my employer have agreed to reduce my employment to 60% which means I will have two full workdays a week to work on my open-source portfolio including Nuvola. In order to compensate the imminent salary drop, I decided to make changes to Nuvola pricing, simplify purchase flow and reduce the feature set of Free Tier. [More details]

Other Changes in Nuvola 4.13.0

Changes since release 4.12.0:

• Individual Nuvola apps check whether the installed Nuvola Apps Service does have the same version to prevent compatibility issues. (Nuvola Apps Service is an optional background service that provides individual Nuvola apps with globally shared resources such as global configuration storage, global keyboard shortcuts, an HTTP remote control server, and a command-line controller.)
• Some labels in Preferences dialog were tweaked.
• The list of Patrons was replaced with a static widget instead of a web page.
• The Welcome screen was removed, the About dialog with tips is shown instead.
• Nuvola no longer warns if a matching GTK+ theme for Flatpak is not installed. One of the start-up tips guides users to open Preferences, and the Appearance tweaks are the very first item there.
• The permissions of Flatpak builds were tweaked to require specific DBus services instead of the unrestricted access to session/system DBus. [GitHub ticket]
• Nuvola no longer allows a user to set multimedia keys as in-app/global keybinding because it clashes with the system handling of these keys, especially in GNOME. Instead, take a look at Multimedia keys feature which is designed to avoid the conflicts. [GitHub ticket]
• Memory leaks with Vala 0.42 were fixed.
• Various minor bug fixes, performance improvements, and clean-up of the codebase.

What’s New for Script Maintainers

• The demo player example in Nuvola SDK was updated with shuffle/repeat functionality. [GitHub ticket 1, GitHub ticket 2]
• Nuvola SDK commands new-project and convert-project: CircleCI configuration was added to run nuvolasdk check-project when a new commit is pushed. Look at Tiliado projet at CircleCI to see the results. [GitHub ticket]

What’s New for Third-Party Packagers

• Several scripts now require Nuvola 4.13. See individual changelogs for details.
• Diorite & Nuvola now require Valac 0.42 because it contains fixes for GLib.Variant reference counting bugs and Diorite & Nuvola removed workarounds for these issues. If you decide to use older Valac, you can expect crashes because of invalid memory access. We recommend building the correct Vala version from source prior to building Diorite/Nuvola. Note that Vala is only a build-time dependency, you don’t need to include it in the resulting package.
• Diorite and Nuvola: Dependencies were increased: glib-2.0 >= 2.56.1, gtk+-3.0 >= 3.22.30.
• Diorite: GIR is no longer built by default. Use --gir configure flag to build it.
• Diorite: All deprecation warnings were resolved. [GitHub ticket]
• Diorite: It is now built with fatal warnings but you can pass --no-strict to disable that.

Nuvola Contributes to Good Angel Foundation

Jiri Janousek, the core developer of Nuvola Apps project, is glad to contribute a part of the project’s revenue to the Good Angel foundation. This way, he can regularly help families with children, which face financial distress as a result of severe illness. Even small monetary donations can help these families overcome a tough period.

Nuvola contributes to Good Angel Foundation.

Thank You for Your Support

At the time of writing, the awesome people listed below and a few others are Nuvola Patrons, who support the development of Nuvola Apps Runtime. Thank you all!

Christian Dannie Storgaard, José Antonio Rey, Ryan Wagner, Simon Law, Bart Libert, Chris Beeley, Andrew Azores, Bryan Wyatt, Balázs, Denton Davenport, Ben MacLeod, Duco van Amstel, David Wiczer, Andrew Allen, Nathan Warkentin, Chuck Talk.

If you are a Nuvola Patron but your name is not listed, you have to enable the “Show my name and a link to my external profile page in a list of Patrons.” option in your profile settings. Obviously, it is not enabled by default to protect privacy of our patrons.