Hermit — Older Versions

Jan 01, 2017

A Quick Summary

• ⚡ Faster than Lite. Automatically load Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) instead of slow regular pages.
• 🆕 Lite App Widget. Use with launchers that have buggy icon behavior.
• 🆕 Find in Page
• 🆕 Share your Lite Apps with other Hermit fans!
• 🆕 Backup & Restore Lite Apps — even if you uninstall and reinstall Hermit.
• 🆕 Toggle JavaScript on or off per Lite App.

6.3

• ⚡ Faster than Lite. Automatically load Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) instead of slow regular pages.
• 🆕 Lite App Widget. Use with launchers that have buggy icon behavior.
• 🆕 Find in Page
• 🆕 New Button to close Lite App
• 🆕 Replaced introduction slide show by feature tooltips.
• 🆕 Create monogrammed icons (with your own choice of color) when a site does not have a high quality icon.
• 🆕 Type theme colors as hex codes, without using the color picker.
• 🆕 Change a Lite App’s URL after creating it.
• 🆕 No need to type https:// before example.com when creating a Lite App.
• 🆕 Ability to silence SSL warnings permanently.
• 🆕 Now possible to have more than one Share Integration URL per Lite App.
• 🐞 Fixed crash on Android Nougat when sharing Lite Apps.
• 🐞 Fixed crash on Marshmallow when downloading files.

6.2

• 🆕 Share your Lite Apps with other Hermit fans!
• 🆕 Backup & Restore Lite Apps — even if you uninstall and reinstall Hermit.
• 🆕 New icon & Facebook Page: Follow Us for Updates
• 🆕 Reorder Lite Apps and Bookmarks. Long-tap any Lite App, then drag and drop to re-order.
• 🆕 Atom feeds supported for Notifications.
• 🆕 Popup Blocker can be disabled to support Google Login to sites like Pocket.
• 🐞 Removed the Customize button from the Lite Apps list, since many users were getting confused when the Lite App opened directly to the Customization view.
• 🐞 Scroll the Floating Action Button out of the way when the user is browsing the Lite App.
• 🐞 Don’t immediately disable a feed when it’s found to be temporarily broken.
• 🐞 Group any notifications over 3 into a single grouped notification.

6.1

• 🆕 Toggle JavaScript on or off per Lite App.
• 🆕 Long-press the BACK button to kill a Lite App.
• 🐞 Set the user agent for the WebView correctly.
• 🐞 Handle customization changes involving multiple tabs correctly.

6.0

• 🆕 Optimized for Android Nougat! (SDK 24)
• 🆕 Multi-Window support: Watch videos while browsing your favorite sites, without waiting for those other apps to implement multi-window support.
• 🆕 Zero permissions for usual usage: you only need to allow special permissions for special actions (e.g. location permission only when you want to check-in to a place, or camera/microphone when taking a phone or conducting a video call.)
• 🆕 Lite App Specific Permissions: Stronger controls than Android Marshmallow permissions model.
• 🆕 Scroll to Top button is now optional; turn it on or off from the Customize screen.
• 🆕 Direct Share: Share content from any Android app directly to a Lite App. More configuration assistance coming soon.
• 🆕 Create Content FAB: Configure your own URL for a FAB in every Lite App. More configuration assistance coming soon.
• 🐞 Don’t attempt to fetch feeds or malware blocklists when offline.
• 🐞 When text zoom is changed, save the shortcut immediately.
• 🐞 New text hint in the searchbox when a Lite App has a search integration configured.
• 🐞 Don’t vibrate with a default pattern if the user explicitly set it to a blank pattern.
• ⚡ Performance improvements in the in-app billing implementation.
• ⚡ Web Links to create new Lite Apps (via hermit.chimbori.com/create) open in Hermit by default.
• ⚡ RAM improvements all over: several features optimized to use even less RAM than earlier.
• ⚡ Improved startup performance: Hermit now starts up 1.6×—2× faster than earlier.

5.0

• 🆕 Add a separate menu item under About to show the What’s New dialog.
• 🆕 Allow deleting feed URLs created via the manifest.
• 🆕 Changes to the Feature Tour: simpler instructions and detailed steps for how the user should use Hermit
• 🆕 Copy URL & Share actions in the long-click menu for links in the WebView, and Share image for Images.
• 🐞 If there was a problem fetching any feed, show a message in that Lite App the next time the user opens it.
• 🐞 Automatically disable a feed if the server returns a 404, to avoid hammering the server.
• 🐞 Return to the list of Lite Apps after creating a new Lite App.
• 🐞 Improved startup performance: only does the basic tasks needed to get Hermit up and running as quickly as possible.
• 🐞 Prevent NPE when trying to access ringtones on phones that don’t have a default.

4.3

• 🆕 Ad Blocker. The most requested feature is now available. Free for everyone, no subscription fees, no root required, and the block list is updated regularly. 🙈
• 🆕 Quick Settings Sidebar. Instant customization. Just swipe in from the right edge!
• 🆕 Text Zoom. Set the text size for any Lite App, and Hermit will remember it.
• 🐞 Completely re-written in-app billing code.
• 🆕 Automatic update checking. Hermit can now show you within the app when an update is available.

4.2

• 🆕 Customize the icon and name after creating any Lite App.

4.1

• 🆕 Open links in Lite App, Load images & Do Not Track settings can be applied to individual Lite Apps separately, not globally to all apps.
• 🆕 Handle native app installation prompts more elegantly (no more UNKNOWN_URL_SCHEME errors).
• 🐞 On some Samsung phones, downloaded files were being downloaded to an internal directory.
• 🐞 Show pull-to-refresh spinner when tapping on the refresh button.
• 🐞 Better handling of screen changes: you should not see lingering toolbar icons from the previous screen.
• 🐞 Allow certain resources to be loaded over HTTP from HTTPS pages. Fixes image issues with XKCD (SSL).
• 🐞 SSL errors now generate a user warning before proceeding (Addresses Google Play warning).
• 🐞 Icons are now larger than they used to be, while still following Material Design guidelines.
• 🐞 Allow copying the Notification Feed URL after it has been auto-configured.

4.0

• 🆕 Data Saver mode: Save-Data HTTP header
• 🆕 Library uses SSL
• 🆕 Download files to phone
• 🐞 Crash seen only by Beta users when deleting icons.
• 🐞 Open links in Lite Apps by default. Solves issues related to OAuth redirection.
• 🐞 Silent notification sounds correctly supported
• 🐞 Re-check aggressively with Google Play whether Premium has already been purchased

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