Media and emoji

External media is kept in a cache whose size can be set and which is cleared out periodically. GIFs can now be added from Klipy.

The Media timeline can be shown as a masonry grid or in an immersive layout, and there is a new Media timeline type. Explore gains a masonry Discover tab and the Pixelfed timeline a Local tab, and sensitive media can be revealed right in the grid.

Pictures in HEIC or HEIF can be uploaded. When you upload without compression the original HEIC file is kept, and you are warned that not everything can display it.

Images in your Storage can get a description written automatically by Altbot.

Media gets a floating video player, albums shown as a carousel, crop presets, media information and a Media tab in Explore. Lightboxes and attachment thumbnails were improved too.

Videos from PeerTube servers play by streaming over HLS, and video posts lead with the player, with their description folded below.

Mark the spot that stays in frame wherever the picture is cropped, with arrow keys to nudge it and previews of what a 16:9, 1:1 or 2:3 crop will keep. Every thumbnail honours it, the blurhash placeholder included, and it federates in both directions as Mastodon's focal point.

A new Videos view gathers the videos of the PeerTube channels you follow and the YouTube channels you subscribe to as RSS feeds in one grid by date, with live PeerTube and Owncast streams first. It remembers how far you watched on any device, keeps a Watch later list and searches PeerTube through a search index, and YouTube subscriptions can be imported from Google Takeout or OPML.

In the Videos view's Channels tab, Select turns the list into checkboxes, so you can tick several channels, export the ticked YouTube ones as a Google Takeout CSV or an OPML file, or unsubscribe from all of them after a single confirmation. Select all then Unsubscribe on the YouTube tab removes every YouTube channel, and a channel that could not be unsubscribed stays ticked so you can try again.

114 emoji the list did not have, and those from Emoji 15.1 onwards now work as reactions, where the server used to turn a phoenix into a plain bird. An emoji your chosen style has no picture for is drawn with Twemoji instead of showing as broken. 32 emoji names change to follow the current Unicode names.

Every picture now carries a chip on its thumbnail: ALT ✔ when it has a description, which a click unfolds over the picture, and a struck-through ALT ✘ when it has none, so undescribed pictures stand out. Videos and media grid tiles show the same, and screen readers keep reading the description from the picture itself.

In the Media timeline's grid and immersive layouts, a double tap — or a double click with a mouse — likes a post without opening it, with a heart that grows over the picture and fades. It never takes a like back.

The media viewer gains a toolbar with an ALT button that shows the description without shrinking the picture, a magnifier for viewing it at actual size, and the same menu as a thumbnail, along with a counter and the file's size, weight and format. Covered pictures stay covered until you reveal them, and the viewer loops from the last picture back to the first.

A post's carousel of pictures now goes round from its last picture back to its first, and the other way, instead of stopping at either end.