Release notes

What's new in Yack, newest first. These are the changes that matter to the people using and running Yack, not every one. Each heading names the releases that carried them; the message your superadmins get after an upgrade names the release you're on.

24 October 2026 (main-228)

• Leave is now called Out of office, in the settings menu, on its own page, in Team Calendar and on video tiles. Booking still works in half-days.
• Out of office is now kept as times rather than half-days, ready for syncing with Google Calendar. Each booking keeps the time zone it was made in, so a morning off is a morning wherever you are. The upgrade changes the database, so with three hosts Yack stops briefly while it runs. Team Calendar shows the hours of anything shorter than a half-day.
• Out of office can come from Google Calendar instead: each person chooses on the Out of office page, and Yack keeps their calendar's out-of-office events in step, reading only their times. Changing over deletes bookings made in Yack from today on; changing back keeps what was synced as bookings. New setting OOO_GOOGLE_SYNC_ENABLED (off by default) turns it on, once the install guide's Google Calendar steps are done. Synced out of office shows on the page's calendar, read-only, and updates as changes arrive.
• A Privacy policy and Terms of service, written for the organisation running Yack, are part of the documentation every installation serves (/docs/privacy.html and /docs/terms.html); Google asks for both when calendar sync is set up.
• New setting FORMER_REALMS: names an installation had before its current one, which then redirect to it, for a deployment moving to a new domain.

22 October 2026 (main-224)

• Who's where: the binoculars in the sidebar (Where is everyone?) show each core team's room and any other room in use, with everyone once: in the room they're in, or else in their core team's room as away, on leave or elsewhere in Yack. It shows meetings under way and a Join or Knock button; find a person to see where they are. It opens over the room, so a call carries on. New setting WHOS_WHERE_ENABLED (on by default) switches it off.
• The documentation link has moved into the settings menu, beside the theme switch.

21 October 2026 (main-218 to main-223)

• Security fixes in the web server and its libraries, and security checks on every change
• Only a room's members can admit or turn away someone knocking, re-run its recordings' processing, and book, change or delete its meetings
• Sign-ins last 30 days unused; logging out ends that sign-in for good, and My Profile has Log out everywhere for a lost device
• Limits on how fast anyone can sign in, send messages, search, upload or knock, well above what people do by hand, to stop floods and scripts
• On AWS, set up a deployment entirely in .env: its region, first superadmin, key pair, name prefix and hosts are now settings there (AWS_REGION, YACK_ADMIN, AWS_KEY_PAIR, AWS_APP, AWS_ZONE, AWS_HOSTS, AWS_INSTANCE_TYPE, AWS_BATCH), explained in .env.example; ./aws-install.sh's options still work and override them
• LOADTEST_AUTH_SECRET, for test hosts only, now needs at least 32 characters, and Yack warns at every boot while it's set

19 October 2026 (main-212 to main-217)

• Correct System theme so it follows your device's light or dark setting
• Add browser logging to the server at a level configurable by user for a day
• On AWS, send logs to CloudWatch and retain for 30 days (RETENTION_LOGS)
• Control support access through SUPPORT_ACCESS: "off", "logs" or "shell" (recorded sessions)
• Without AWS, bin/support-bundle.sh gathers what support needs into one file to send
• On AWS, stop, start or restart an installation's hosts with ./aws-install.sh NAME --stop, --start or --restart

18 October 2026 (main-211)

• The message superadmins get after an upgrade links to these notes.

October 2026 (main-137 to main-210)

Messages and feedback

• A feedback form, from the envelope in the sidebar, reaches the Yack team.
• Reactions to messages.
• A Live button jumps back to the latest messages.
• Get a room: an anonymous nudge towards a breakout room.
• Messages addressed to you can be emailed to you, a switch in My profile.
• When a breakout room closes, its messages go to everyone who entered it.
• Renaming a person or team no longer breaks messages addressed to them.
• Long messages are shortened, with the full text a tap away.
• A team calendar shows meetings and leave together.

@Yack, the AI assistant

• The AI assistant is now called @Yack.
• @Yack cites its sources: the messages and the passages of meeting transcripts it drew on, each opening in place.
• Personal details are replaced with stand-ins before anything reaches OpenAI, and @Yack says what was hidden. Relevance matching runs on your own servers, and the AI's defaults favour privacy.

Meetings and video

• Rooms take up to 80 people sharing video, and a dropped connection is restored by itself.
• Video quality is steadier: fewer quality changes mid-call, every camera at full quality in small rooms, and quality eased off when the server is busy.
• Turning your camera off shows your avatar, not a frozen frame.
• iPhones play others' video as soon as you join.
• Recordings keep the silences when someone is muted, so they stay in step.
• A beep marks the announcement that a meeting is being recorded.

Sign-in and roles

• Sign in with Microsoft as well as Google.
• A superadmin role for the whole installation; admins now manage only their own teams.
• Visitors to a room no longer see its messages and todos; everyone belongs to All Hands.

Running Yack

• Install on AWS with one command, on one host or three. Three hosts keep Yack running through the loss of one.
• Upgrades happen unattended, in a window you choose: Yack waits until nobody is on a call, backs up, upgrades, and rolls back if anything fails.
• Backups to S3 every six hours, with a tested restore.
• An AWS costs screen for superadmins, by day or month.
• Arm (Graviton) servers by default, for lower running costs.
• Settings kept in one place, and an uninstall that removes a deployment in one command.
• One data retention policy, with periods you can set.
• This documentation (the Overview, Install guide and these notes) is served by every installation.

September 2026 (main-79 to main-136)

Meetings

• Meeting transcripts, and AI meeting minutes summarising each recorded meeting.
• Team meetings, including ones that repeat on working days, with reminders that link to the meeting.
• Recordings are processed in the cloud and stored in S3.
• Video quality adapts to each connection.

Messages

• Ask the AI about your messages and meetings, with #tags to focus the question.
• Search across all your messages.
• File attachments, each scanned for malware before anyone can open it.
• See the messages you sent, as well as those sent to you.
• A menu of message directives (@, #, + and the like), inserted where you're typing.

Attention and presence

• A leave calendar, with leave shown in the video pane.
• Do not disturb, which also silences your audio.
• Notifications, on desktop and on iPhone, and Yack can be added to your home screen as an app.

Late August 2026 (main-33 to main-78)

Meetings

• Screen sharing, and zooming in on someone's video.
• Meeting recording, with a speaker-above-gallery layout, titles, credits and a download link.
• A meeting timer, and All Hands meetings for everyone.
• A meeting stays open for a while if the person recording drops out.

Messages and help

• Soundmoji: messages that play a sound.
• In-app help popups and demo data for new installations.
• The release you're running, shown in the app.

Security and accounts

• Disabling a user signs them out everywhere.
• Log out.
• Message content is escaped, and other security gaps closed.
• Phone layouts, including iPhones turned sideways.