VantGrid 1.6 is out. The headline is simple: your friends list stops being a list of names and starts telling you what's actually happening — the emulator, the other launcher, the game that isn't on Steam, the music that's on. All of it off by default, all of it yours to switch on.
Your friends, as a constellation
The activity screen is now a sky. You sit at the centre and every friend is a star that orbits closer the more present they are. Hover a name in the sidebar and its star lights up; the two are the same thing seen twice.
- Games beyond Steam — emulators, other launchers, that obscure MMO nothing else tracks. If it runs on your machine, your friends can see it, under a name you choose.
- Now-playing music from your player or your browser, with a switch per source.
- A pomodoro shows you're focused without letting anyone knock.
Every one of those is a separate switch, and every one ships off. Presence is something you emit, not something taken from you.
Rooms that grow with you
Small calls run peer-to-peer, between the people in them. When a room grows past eight, VantGrid converts it on its own: the member with the strongest connection starts relaying the room, and that member is chosen by an actual upload measurement — not a guess. The one relaying is a person in the call, not a machine of ours.
If nobody's connection can carry it, the app tells you exactly why instead of failing in silence. There's no visible cap and nothing to upgrade.
Ask to join
A host can now open their room to requests. A friend sees you're in there, asks to join, and you decide. If you didn't open the door, nobody knocks — the point was never to make you reachable, it was to let you invite people in without leaving the call.
Calls that hold
You reported these, and they're the reason this release exists as much as the sky is.
- In rooms with more than two people, a departure is recognized as a departure. No more "Reconnecting" banner sitting there after someone already left.
- A dropped peer is detected in about a minute instead of several.
- An offline friend's profile heals itself through your friend mesh, so their card stops looking broken while they're away.
- Screen share, chat, reactions and the soundboard all keep working when a room converts — the room behaves the same before and after.
A quieter, sharper desktop
The chrome got out of the way: a redesigned social sidebar, presence chips that read at a glance, refined Plus frames, and a smoother hand-off when you open a chat from a call.
Open the activity screen and leave it open for a bit. That's the whole idea: knowing your people are around, without anyone having to perform being around.