We are pleased to announce a new stable release of MauiKit Frameworks and Maui Apps!

Stable release

This version of Maui brings new features and bug fixes to Maui’s applications and the frameworks they rely on. The changes introduced in this release will make your experience with Maui Apps much more enjoyable and feature rich.

Read on to find out how Maui’s software has improved and what new features to look out for:

 

Distribution

If you are interested in using the Maui Apps, there are different ways you can do so:

MauiKit Frameworks and Maui Apps are packaged by different distros, like as Arch, and derived distros, such as Manjaro; KDE Neon on unstable repositories, postmarketOS, and Nitrux OS.

Maui Apps are shipped by default on Nitrux OS and Manjaro for Plasma Mobile. So you can wait a few days for the distributions to update the packages for you.

For using Maui Apps on Android, we provide APK packages. The links to the packages will be listed here, and can also be found on the Maui official webpage under each app section.

There is an active task to start publishing the apps to the platforms respective stores, you can follow up the progress at: https://invent.kde.org/maui/mauikit/-/issues/32​

AppImage packages are also available for AMD64 and ARM, so you can also grab one of them, also linked in this blog post.

Remember to open ticket at Invent if you find bugs, issues or have a feature request.

MauiKit Framework 2.1

MauiKit is a group of frameworks used to build Maui applications. It comes with common widgets crafted to work well on small phone screens and bigger desktop computer monitors. But that’s not all: MauiKit also comes with a set of utilities that help developers build applications more quickly with more complex and ready-made widgets. These include a text editor, an image viewer, or a file explorer, among others.

In this updated version, the graphical components have been polished. New widgets have been added to the MauiKit Core library, making navigation easier on phones, desktop computers, and other devices.

Before continuing, just a quick reminder: you can check the previous Maui Reports leading up to this new stable release at:

Maui Report – 15

Maui Report 16

MauiKit

Once again, the framework has been cleaned up, and many bugs have been solved, resulting in better performance and optimizations. A few new controls have also been added, this is what’s new:

Core

• CSD has been improved in different areas: The windows now have drop shadows and the window-control-buttons can be styled, using image assets, a config file, and a QML source file.
• MauiKit gained embedded support for having blur backgrounds, many of the Maui Apps now have a translucent sidebar, such as Index, Vvave, and Nota.
• MauiKit gained some performance boost, by wrapping component into Loaders, only loaded asynchronously when really needed.
• MauiKit by default is built with the option to precompiled all the QML sources.
• Fixes to components: AltBrowser, TabsView, TabButton, AppViewLoader, SelectionBar, Popup, and Dialog.
• And tweaks to the Maui Style which is used by default in the AppImage and Android APK builds.
• Support for ImageViewer and AnimatedImageViewer
• Fixes for building on Windows platform.

FileBrowsing

• Issues with listing directories contents were fixed, such as working correctly with paths without a scheme, a double ending /, or formatting issues.
• More lazy initialization of controls by using asynchronous Loaders.
• The Downloader interface now can download redirecting links, and it has been refactored to be more robust, this is the road to start making full use of the WebDav syncing lib, for syncing all sorts of files between devices via NextCloud.

TextEditor

• Fixes to the duplicated contextual menus on Linux using the Plasma QQC2 styles.

ImageTools & Accounts

• Now uses by default Qt Quick Compiler, the build time flag is -DQUICK_COMPILER=ON
• More lazy initialization of controls by using asynchronous Loaders.
• The source code has been cleaned up from unneeded includes and imports.

Maui Apps 2.1

The Maui Project provides a set of applications to cover your phone, tablet, or desktop needs. The Maui line of apps currently includes a file manager (Index), a music player (Vvave), an image viewer (Pix), a text editor (Nota), an app for note-taking (Buho), a terminal emulator (Station), an app to manage your contacts (Communicator), a document viewer (Shelf), a video player (Clip), a camera app (Booth), and a web browser (Sol).

Index

Download Packages | Open a Report

Highlights:

 

• Preview support for animated GIF images, and: Krita, Adobe Photoshop, EPS, AVIF, JPEG XL, and GIMP image files. (for most formats the package kimageformats is requiered)
• Preview support for PDF files.
• Faster start-up time.
• Correctly launches executable files, such as AppImages.
• Initial support for setting files permissions.
• Correct handling of paths without a scheme.
• Fix per view sorting.
• New settings to toggle places sections from the sidebar.

Vvave

Download Packages | Open a Report

Highlights:

 

• Now can run in the background on Android.
• Faster start-up time.
• More stable UX experience.
• Tags can now be removed.

Pix

Download Packages | Open a Report

Highlights:

 

• Faster start-up time.
• Scanning of geolocation tags is now optional.
• Support for Krita, Adobe Photoshop, EPS, and GIMP images files, among many others coming from KImageFormats.
• Support for animated GIF images.

Nota

Download Packages | Open a Report

Highlights:

 

• Faster start-up time.
• More cohesive dialogs.
• Do no longer shows an intrusive contextual menu popup on mobile.

Station

Download Packages | Open a Report

Highlights:

 

• Faster startup times.
• Precompiled QML sources.
• Polished menu entries.
• Minimal Tabs overview switcher

Buho

Download Packages | Open a Report

Highlights:

 

• Better color tags on the overview.
• Notes syncing and updating properly.
• Faster startup times.
• Polished menu entries.
• The notes overview cards now do not take more height than the minimum needed.
• The No-Notes placeholder now has a button to quickly create a new note.

Shelf

Download Packages | Open a Report

Highlights:

 

• Now installs the PDF render as a plugin and can be used in other apps such as Index for previewing PDF documents.
• Preview thumbnails for Android in the browsing view.
• Correctly notify about locked protected documents.

Communicator

Download Packages | Open a Report

Highlights:

 

• Updated to latest MauiKit changes.
• We fixed grammar typos and bugs.

Clip

Download Packages | Open a Report

Highlights:

 

• Working again on Android.
• Set an idle state when playing to avoid screen locking or screen turning off, for desktop and mobile
• Preview thumbnails for Android in the browsing views.
• For desktop the thumbnails can display the video as a preview on hovering the item for a few seconds.

 

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To follow the Maui Project’s development or say hi, you can join us on Telegram: https://t.me/mauiproject.

We are present on Twitter and Mastodon:

• https://twitter.com/maui_project.
• https://mastodon.technology/@mauiproject.

Release date	2021	2022	2023
February	1.2.1	2.1.1	2.2.2
May	1.2.2	2.1.2	3.0.0
August	2.0.0	2.2.0	3.1.0
November	2.1.0	2.2.1	3.1.1

A quick reminder of the project near future goals:

• Fully utilize CMake. [Done]
  • Developers can build apps and the framework with CMake for all targeted platforms.
• More feature-rich applications. [In Progress]
  • Pix image editor and GPS location browsing.
  • Vvave metadata editor and cloud streaming.
  • Index – feature-rich file management.
  • Better integration with Android. Idle states and background playback.
• Improve data synchronization using NextCloud. [Pending]
  • Only Buho and Vvave have initial support.
  • For 2.1, We will add support for Pix as well. [Pending]
• Improve performance. [In progress]
  • We have split the MauiKit framework into different components.
  • MauiKit::Core controls are faster and more coherent.
  • 5X faster startup times for Maui Apps
• Improve the UI cohesion on all supported platforms. [In Progress]
  • Maui Style has been improved constantly.
• Move beta apps to stable. [In Progress]
  • Shelf and Clip have been moved to stable, missing the Sol, Booth, Strike, Bonsai.
  • NX SC has been moved to Nitrux org.