Hi all,

We are delighted to announce that our IEG renewal application for the Commons app[1] has been approved!  Thank you so much to everyone who supported us – reading all of the wonderful comments on our proposal has been extremely meaningful and encouraging for us.

We have been hard at work getting version 2.6 of the app out; there was a bit of a rocky start with the first few beta iterations, but we finally have v2.6.5 in production. \o/

Several UI improvements have been made in the current version:

- New login screen
- New design for the list of nearby places that need pictures
- New navigation drawer design with username displayed
- The upload screen has been remodeled to include tooltips for title and description fields, as well as an explicit copyright declaration and a link to Commons policies
- Improved media details view with links to the selected license, categories and image coordinates

Other improvements include:

- Category search - fixed major bugs, improved ordering and filter for categories
- The "nearby places that need pictures" feature has improved GPS and refresh handling
- Several privacy improvements - new privacy policy, switched to using Wikimedia maps server instead of Mapbox, and removed event logging
- Reduced memory leaks and battery usage; fixed multiple other crashes and bugs
- Various improvements to navigation flow and backstack
- Added option for users to send logs to developers (has to be manually activated by user)

For more information on the new version, recent screenshots, and upload/deletion statistics for 2017, please see this blog post[2]. Feedback, bug reports, and suggestions are always welcome on our GitHub page[3].

Cheers, and happy holidays. :)


Best regards,
Josephine (@misaochan)