Calls connect fast now
- The long wait is gone: a call used to hold its connection details until every server and network adapter had answered — so one unreachable path cost the same twelve-second wait to everyone. It now goes out as soon as it has a route that works. Measured on a real call: twelve and a half seconds before, well under one after.
- Ringing no longer waits on itself: the retry that exists to rescue a slow invitation used to sit behind the very step it was rescuing.
- Answered calls stay answered: a rescue attempt could arrive after you picked up and undo it.
Muting
- The shortcut works on any keyboard: Ctrl+M was ignored on Cyrillic and other non-Latin layouts, because it matched the letter instead of the key.
- Choose your own combination: in Settings, Audio.
- Optionally works inside a game: turn it on and the combination is reserved while you are in a call, so you can mute without leaving what you are playing.
- You can hear it: a short falling tone for muted, rising for live — so you know without looking.
Screen sharing
- Shares that never showed up now do: several separate causes, including a share that was simply slow to send its first frame being thrown away.
Also
- Forward a message to other chats.
- Watch a video together from a direct link, alongside YouTube and your own files.
- See when someone is typing in a direct message.
- A permanent news archive in Settings, where nothing is ever deleted.
- Four more languages, a readable Settings panel, and Pictionary you can actually finish.
More fixes
- A way back from a denied microphone: if you said No to Windows' own microphone prompt, calls stopped working and restarting never brought the prompt back. Settings can now reset that answer.
- Workshop publishing says what went wrong: submissions used to fail with a bare "Generic" error.
- The in-call typing indicator stopped shoving the chat every time someone started typing.
- Scrolling through themes no longer stalls while images decode.
- Signalling repairs: catch-up after a reconnect, relay pool health, and a few wires that were quietly disconnected between the app and its background work.
Pictionary
- Words stopped repeating: the memory that avoids recently used words had quietly filled up and switched itself off.
- It works in large rooms: joining and guessing were dropped in silence once a call had switched to relay mode.
- The reveal says who got it.
And
- A broken share no longer stays broken: a screen share could wedge for the rest of the call, with no way to start another.
- Wording that promised more than the code delivered was corrected, including the activity-privacy switches and the first-launch tutorial.
Everything still travels peer to peer. We keep no records of your calls — which is why the new call-health summary in Diagnostics exists: if yours are slow, it is the only way to tell us.