* **New Features**
* Added App Hub browsing with All, Installed, and Updates filters, plus options to install, remove, or update apps.
* Added an installation activity indicator in the status bar.
* Added a mesh command-line app for checking status and managing mesh settings and channels.
* Radio region settings now persist across restarts and are applied to radio devices.
* Added audio codec support for the LilyGo T-LoRa Pager.
* Settings screens now use icons for selection actions.
* **Improvements**
* App Hub displays cached catalog results while a refresh is in progress.
* System menu close controls receive focus automatically when no pointer is available.
- Introduce "side" mode for system bar, versus classic statusbar on top with launcher bar below
- Automatic system bar mode detection with override by Kconfig/device.properties and secondary override by user via Appereance settings app
- Open a quick-settings menu from the status bar for available Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and power controls.
- Apps can display overlays with backdrop or Escape-key dismissal.
- Added focus-container support and improved keyboard navigation, including Fn+Enter on Cardputer devices.
- Power-off controls are available on supported device cards.
- Updated status-bar layouts, simulator display dimensions, and toolbar navigation styling.
- I²C scanning now supports selecting individual buses to rescan.
- SD-card mount status is no longer shown in the status bar.
- Create `USB_HOST_TYPE` base driver in TactilityKernel
- Refactor esp32_usbhost dts format, and create child devices dynamically
- Use PSRAM for task stacks where possible: saving 20 kB from just the task stacks, but roughly 30 kB when nothing is connected.
- Allow the user to disable USB host interface in the USB settings app, saving an additionaly 20 kB of IRAM when nothing was connected.
- Change listener-based APIs to subscribe and poll/await pattern. This avoids callstacks of apps and services leaking into the USB API
This results in big IRAM savings: 30 kB when USB host is on and nothing is connected, and 50 kB total when USB host is disabled.
This brings the total free IRAM after boot from roughly 170 kB to 200 kB (host enabled) or 220 kB (host disabled).
- Crash diagnostics app doesn't use LVGL anymore. It now uses a display `Device*` directly.
- When there's no callstack, show a message instead
- To continue after a crash, you can use a touch/keyboard/encoder device (from touch only)
- Refactored many apps' UI/UX
- Improve material themes
- Fix for Tab5 flickering on v1
- Extend dts parser for i2c address/reg support in code
- Fix for I2C Scanner glitch where it would show devices that aren't connected
- Add name labels to I2C Scanner's scanned devices
- Implemented themes with LSS: material, material mono
- Implemented grid-based navigation
- Added new Launcher
- Updated Appearance app to add theme configuration
- Updated various apps to improve UX/UI
- Added LVGL widgets: cards, badges, chips, icon buttons
- Added support for round/rounded displays
- Added the concept of insets to LVGL and implemented it in toolbar + statusbar
- Terminal app now hides toolbar by default, but tapping the terminal toggles visibility
- File browsing now opens the configured user-data location by default
- Added missing licenses to subprojects
- Updated README.md screenshots and intro text
- External apps can opt into automatic cleanup when they exit, including tracked tasks, threads, files, directories, and memory.
- App-relative file paths resolve against the app’s working directory, with `.` and `..` normalized.
- The shell identifies ELF binaries that cannot be executed instead of treating them as scripts.
- Shared icon fonts now offer distinct default and large sizes, with updated icons across the interface.
- ESP32 apps can load additional ELF formats when address mirroring is enabled.
- Terminal colors render clearly on monochrome displays, and toolbar buttons have cleaner styling.
- GPS settings safely refresh their device list when their window is hidden or its widgets are destroyed.
**Fonts**
Dynamically load text and icon fonts when the device boots.
Font bitdepth depends on whether the device is an ESP32 one and whether it has external RAM available.
When no external RAM is available on ESP32, only small and medium font variants are generated; large font variants refer to the medium size ones.
Implemented Appearance settings app for changing font and font size.
**Other changes**
- Added keyboard shortcuts to delete or rename files in directory views.
- Improved app-grid tile sizing to provide more room for labels.
- Reduced the default LED strip brightness.
Graphics & rendering
- Implement `binfont-module` to generate bitmap fonts on the device itself
- Remove lodepng support from LVGL library and create `Modules/lodepng-module` to make the feature re-usable in non-LVGL apps too. Add binding functions for LVGL support.
- Implement large icons for boot screen (Tactility and USB logos)
- Remove unused asset files in `Data/`
Boot
- Split up `Tactility.cpp` and its `run()` function into various `Init*.cpp` files.
- Re-implement `Boot.cpp` app as non-LVGL app
- Boot app now has a `BootSequence.cpp` for the init code.
- LVGL is now started when the Boot app finishes
- Move more init logic into Boot app
BLE
- Don't allocate scan result buffers unless BLE is on
- Allocate scan results in external memory if possible
UX & UI
- USB Settings app: remove border from the button container
New features:
- SDK version 7.0.0 packages include version metadata and platform-specific application settings.
- Apps gain POSIX support for file polling, terminal attributes, and standard input/output, plus additional C and POSIX functions.
- Shell commands can launch installed headless apps using their registered app settings.
- Apps can exit with a status code, and terminal clear commands support clearing from the cursor to the end, from the start through the cursor, or the entire display.
Fixes:
- SDK integration builds locate the build tool reliably and use settings for the selected platform.
- ESP32 file operations handle invalid paths and existing directories more consistently.
- Refactored shell parsing so that the callstack doesn't increase when script complexity increases.
- Improved terminal input handling: input delay from +- 100 ms to at most about 16 ms.
- Moved WiFi logic from `TactilityKernel/` to `wifi-module`
- Created commandline app to control Wi-Fi
- Update `tactility.py` to v6.1.0 so it can be executed directly
DTS modules (device modules) often have a single source file with an empty `struct Module`.
The module's yaml file now allows a `dts-only` boolean to be set, so the source file becomes optional.
`devicetree.yaml` is renamed everywhere to `module.yaml`
app-module
- Apps now have support for:
- environment variables (inherit from parent app)
- current workdir
- window size (when running in terminal)
- Add type aliases like `AppId` and `PackageId`
- Remove data duplication between ledger and app instance records: create `AppManifestSet`
- `AppManifest` usage safety improved: pass by value where needed, or use `AppId` instead of a manifest.
Terminal and shell
- Moved shell commands into coreutils-module as proper apps.
- Refine stack size for terminal and shell because apps now run with their own task and stack (including in-memory apps)
Platform
- Fix for listing root dir on ESP32: wrap posix directory functions and wire in file systems.
- Moved all platform-specific file system init code to platform subprojects
Other
- Fix for screenshot capture (issue with paths)
- Fixes for coreutils app correctness
- Memory optimizations (use more PSRAM where possible) in various locations such as app-module, shell and terminal.
- `ls` and `help` commands now use terminal width and show columns of data by default
- Created fs helpers at `TactilityKernel/include/tactility/filesystem/fs.h` (partially ported from `ShellFs`)
app-module:
- Implement `AppStartContext` to reduce amount of `app_start_` and `app_exec` functions: replace them with `app_start_with_context()`
- Add support for environment variables when starting apps
- Implement support for environment variables for apps
graphics-module:
- Add this new module
- Move font-module code into this module
- Implement pixel_buffer
apps:
- Terminal app: reduce memory usage by only buffering a single row of characters, and try to buffer in IRAM when possible. Implement new pixel_buffer.
- App List: Mark apps as favourite to pin them on top. Use touch or press "x" key.
- App List: Add toolbar button that shows alert dialog with info about using favourites
Features:
- Implemented terminal app based on BreezyBox
- Implemented shell based on BreezyBox
- Added font-module with fixed-width fonts
Improvements:
- Improved application standard-output and error-output routing, including dynamically loaded applications.
- Updated shared icons and Material Symbols mappings.
- Other improvements & fixes
USB Audio Class (UAC) output
Audio codec re-binding
Keyboard / Bluetooth HID
HID Consumer Control (media keys)
Symbol exports
Other fixes
IMU-based screen auto-rotate
See PR for details: https://github.com/TactilityProject/Tactility/pull/655
- Removed TactilityC, moved its symbols to existing modules and several new ones (pthread-module, c-symbols-module, cpp-symbols-module, posix-symbols-module, freertos-module).
- Removed Firmware subproject and moved main() into Tactility subproject.
- Strengthened application archive, path, version, stack-size, and device validation.
- Moved symbol resolution for elf_loader to app-esp32-module.
- Improved `struct Module` declarations and made module and symbol definitions in modules more consistent.
- Removed old http download code from Tactility subproject.
- Rename app-module's source files for consistency.
- Add missing pthread symbols.
- Kernel module symbols are now resolvable on all platforms.
- Apps can specify task stack depth and preferred memory placement in their manifests.
- App identifiers are validated against length and character requirements.
- Crash diagnostics now show the crash cause, reason, fault address, call stack, and program-counter details, with logs saved for review.
- App closing is more consistent across built-in screens. There's now a dedicated function, and the old _emit() function is made private.
- Crash diagnostics no longer display a QR code without a call stack.
- Improved memory allocation for unrestricted requests.
- Enable BT by default in DTS, and create separate radio on/of functionality (like recent Wi-Fi changes)
- Bluetooth event handling now uses queued subscriptions, improving event delivery and application responsiveness.
- Improved synchronization of Bluetooth advertising, connections, HID, MIDI, and SPP operations.
- Enhanced cleanup during Bluetooth shutdown and subscription removal.
- Clarified Bluetooth start and stop behavior.
- Improved wifi driver subscription stability to prevent endless loops
Event handling:
- Added unified event handling for application, system, and Wi‑Fi events.
- Updated all apps to reflect event handling changes
Wi-Fi:
- Refactored event handling from listener interface to task & event group.
- Added direct Wi‑Fi radio controls and improved event subscriptions.
- Wi‑Fi screens now refresh asynchronously and handle unavailable devices more gracefully.
- Enabled Wi‑Fi by default on in dts files, but radio on/off is still done by code. The main reason was reliable event subscription and consistent devicetree states.
- Improved Wi‑Fi shutdown cleanup and radio-state handling.
Other:
- Renamed the Kernel Display app to Display.
- Moved test projects to the parent project they belong to
- Improved test stability/corectness
- Improved recursive directory deletion by safely ignoring current- and parent-directory entries.
- Update docs
- Auto-select widgets in Launcher and apps with toolbars on devices without touch.
- Improved USB HID input reliability, cleanup
- Updated PSRAM settings to improve boot stability on supported devices.
- Prevented duplicate Wi-Fi event subscriptions during screen rebuilds.
- Updated docs
- Fixes in WifiManage and WifiConnect
- Reduced main task stack size
- Moved USB HID stack size to PSRAM when available
- app_manager_find_manifest() now returns a copy instead of a pointer
- Fix BluetoothSettings app not updating when toggling on Bluetooth on
- Fix BluetoothSettings app crash when closing while scanning
- Fix BluetoothSettings app crash when turning BT off while scanning
- WebServer doesn't save config anymore as a side-effect of reading the config
- Add missing license headers
- Use TactilityKernel's time and delay functions instead of TactilityFreeRtos ones
- Replaced device_find_\* usage by device_get_\* variants.
- Removed deprecated device_find_\* functions.
- Improved reliability of Bluetooth scanning, pairing, connection, and HID host lifecycle behavior, including peer auto-connect handling.
- Improved Bluetooth/USB status indicators and clarified “Eject failed” alerts with the affected mount path.
- Added generic GPS/GNSS support with device detection, configuration, and persistent settings.
- Improved device and module lifecycle management.
- Added flexible filesystem locking support for displays and storage.
- Improved display-idle and keyboard backlight handling.
- Updated architecture, driver, module, testing, and licensing documentation.
- Removed old HAL device and related code.
- RGB display driver added
- display_driver API:
- Added software-based display rotation for screens without hardware rotation support.
- Improved display capability detection across supported display drivers.
- lvgl_display driver:
- Improved framebuffer handling for smoother, more reliable display updates.
- Display gap and rotation behavior now adapts more accurately to hardware capabilities.
- Migration Crowpanel 5" basic & advance to kernel drivers
- Improve KernelDisplay app: brightness controls are hidden for displays that only support on/off operation
- device.py now allows for (non-ambiguous) partial device IDs
- TactilityKernel: Implement more tests
- Added modular device support and devicetree bindings for ILI9341, ILI9488, CST816S, XPT2046, and GPIO button input, updating several board configurations for display/touch/backlight/keyboard/battery.
- Added a setting to control deprecated HAL usage (device property + Kconfig).
