Hey Stackers!

Hope you all are feeling good, safe, and well-prepared for the second wave of COVID-19 ?

It's been more than a month since the last major product update, but oh... boy... we have achieved so much that it's even hard to recap! In the coming days, we will be releasing a manifesto, summarizing the insane journey we went through with you since the start of the pandemic, announcing some major news, as well as informing you what to expect in the product in the coming months.

Spoiler alert: we have raised Seed Investment and starting from November we will be speeding up the development speed like crazy! ? So, we do are well-prepared for the second wave, and nothing can stop our growth & development process - come what may!

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Furthermore, In general, from now on for quite some time, our main goal will be improving performance ⚡️ and eradicating annoying bugs ?  , However, while doing this boring but essential work, we will try our best to keep indulging you by releasing at least one most requested feature on each product update!

Consequently, in this update we had two main lines:

1. Refactoring & code cleanup. We've been refactoring two big parts of the product: Synchronization and Analytics. We had a lot of tech debts in there so we decided to rebuild them from scratch - and we did. We have also modified our database structure to a more scalable design.
2. Bug fixes and performance improvements. This direction will be the main direction in the coming months. In this regard, we have built one of the most requested features - Card suspender.

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New Features

⚡️ Performance Mode

With this update, we are adding a performance mode, which comes with two features: Card Suspender and Animation Killer. The former automatically suspends cards after a predefined idle time, while the latter removes the card switching animation. These features have been requested by quite a large number of users and will save a lot of RAM and CPU usage.

As we progress, we will be adding new features to this section dedicated to improving the performance.

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🧹 Clear Cache

There is a new item in the card menu that will clear the cache for that card.

Furthermore, we have come to know that after fixing the Twitter problem (see update 3.11.1) which emerged due to electron Twitter conflict, few apps (Slack, Messenger, etc.) sometimes do not load properly. And clearing cache fixes that as well. So this can also serve as a temporary solution to that problem. Don't worry, clearing cache doesn't log you out from the app.

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Option to edit the name

After signing in Stack, in cases when we didn't manage to retrieve your name from the e-mail, your profile name was still a Guest Stacker. With this update, you can change your name in profile native card, so you don't get annoyed by being called a Guest!

This is a small change in the profile card, and we will be releasing a new profile page soon where you will be able to control all your account details.

Improved Navigation Performance

We have refactored the navigation between cards. This resulted in better performance and speed. This is only the first step of big refactoring that is coming in future releases.

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New E-mail Extensions

Many of you are managing emails from Stack, so we integrated a new extensions for e-mails:

• Snov.io
• Gmelius

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Bug fixes and improvements

Fix: Twitter is not loading at all.
Fix: Tips notification does not disappear.
Fix: Shift+ALT+L overlaps with polish key - Ł.
Fix: 2FA authorization does not work in Lastpass.
Fix Stack window size is not saved on Windows.
Fix: Zoom in/out with command + +/-.
Fix: AdBlocker was not loading on Stack start sometimes.
Update: Display ∞ symbol in notification badge if it's more than 3 digits
Update: Improve the user experience of Horizontal Spacebar layout tip
Update: Integrated Miro
and tons of other small bugfixes and performance improvements

Hey Stackers!

Finally… The day that we all have been waiting for has arrived…

Extensions are here!

…And the Oscar goes to our Product Team for managing almost impossible.

Integrating Extensions turned out to be the most technically challenging thing that we have done so far. And although our aim was to deliver it two weeks ago, given our team size, still managing to integrate the most requested extensions in just one month is close to being a miracle.

Unfortunately, extensions need to be integrated one by one, and each of them takes quite some time. Therefore, in order to prioritize we ran a small poll in the Stackers FB group and the following 4 received the most votes:

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New Extensions

Lastpass

In order to activate Lastpass in Stack, go to your profile, and click extensions.

Installing Lastpass is as easy as it can be. However, after installing it won’t become functional until you restart each card. Click "Refresh All Cards" so you don't have to refresh each card separately. When logging in, check "Remember Password" so it stays logged in after you restart Stack. All this is shown below in the GIF as well.

For those of you who might not know, Lastpass is the number one password manager in the world. And after creating the account, it can definitely be your last password to remember. It also partially solves the private card log out problem that some of you may have experienced, as it remembers passwords, and logging back in is just one simple click. So if you are on Stack PRO, we strongly encourage you to give it a try.

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Grammarly

No mroe mssipelled txets in Stcak ?

Grammarly is here not only to correct your spelling but also to check the grammar as well. It works pretty much the same as in Chrome. Simply Go to: Profile >> Extensions >> Install Grammarly and become a native English speaker... well... writer!

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Simple Google Translate

Google Translate in Stack is not as perfect as we would have loved it to be, as it is not translating entire pages. Nonetheless, if you want to translate small texts while reading, it is still doing this job perfectly. Simply select the text you want to translate and click the Simple Translate logo that pops up. Alternatively, you can translate large texts as well, by typing or copy/pasting in the extension itself.

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‍Night Eye

The extension poll showed that there are quite many Dark Theme freaks among Stackers (including ourselves)… Stack did have its own Dark Theme, but that made only our content — Native Cards and Top Bars dark. With this update, we have integrated the coolest extension ever — the Night Eye, that can make any web-app or web-page you use inside Stack — Dark.

Even Notion and Google can be Dark in Stack
Simply Go to: Profile >> Extensions >> Install Night Eye and enjoy the power of the dark side

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Other Major Changes

Stack Shield

Here at Stack, we believe that the right to privacy should be considered as the fundamental human right. And we ourselves strictly follow GDPR standards. You should have the option to chose whether you want to be tracked while surfing the internet or not. And for that reason, we have created our own Ad Schield.

Do you want to protect your privacy, stay incognito, and avoid being tracked by any web-applications you use?

Go to: Profile >> Ad Shield >> toggle the Ad Shield

And enjoy incognito surfing!

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New Profile App

We have completely redesigned the Profile card and made it way more functional.
Now it serves four basic functions:

• Log in Stack
• Check membership plans
• Install Extensions
• Activate Ad Shield

And this is how it looks:

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Stack SE goes public

Stack SE* is the Beta Testing version of Stack. So far it was accessible only to us the founders. However, as the number of Stackers is growing, so is our code, and we need to be much more careful when releasing updates. Hence, internal testing is not enough anymore. For that reason, we have decided to make Stack SE accessible to those who want to help us in this process.

If you want your Stack to have this purple logo and join the club of Stack Beta testers, just write us in Live Chat and we will send you the download link

Pros:

• You’ll be first to get access to all the new features
• You will have two different Stacks, Stack SE and Stack Production
• You will have access to our Slack Channel and a bigger say on the direction of the product

Cons:

• You’ll get updates on Stack SE every week and some of them will be buggy
• In the worst-case scenario, we miss a blocking bug and you might need to re-install Stack SE

*SE stands for Stackers’ Edition

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Minor New Features

Duplicate the card from its address bar

Sometimes there is a case when you need to duplicate the card you are working with. This feature makes it super easy. Double click on the name of the card at the top bar, and duplicate it in a Ghost Card.

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Added new native card — Help Center

As we are adding more and more features, so is increasing the number of your questions on how to do certain things in Stack. For that reason, we have integrated a new card — Help Center. It contains 50+ articles and answers to the most frequently asked questions.

Check it out and get your questions answered instantly!

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Integrated ChatBot in Live Chat

We have had up to 3 000 live chat conversations in the last three months only. And more than half of the queries were simple “how-to” stuff.

Given that we do not have a dedicated customer support team, answering all your questions without compromising response time, turned out to be impossible. Nonetheless, almost 60% of the queries were so simple, if we had a chatbot our users would not have had to wait.

For that reason, we have created Ståkï — our first ChatBot.

Ståkï is smart enough to answer almost all your how-to questions and can also forward you to us if needed instantly.

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Major Bugfixes

• Fixed: Instagram video stories didn’t play
• Fixed: Instagram stories made Stack go fullscreen
• Fixed: MS teams notifications
• Fixed: Whatsapp notifications
• Fixed: StackVideo fullscreen

Other changes

🐞 Minor bug fixes
⚡️ Performance improvements

Release date 10.07.2020