Bell 0.7.0: Bamboo alerts and a cleaner black heart

Bell 0.7.0 brings a new notification sound and a cleaner black reaction heart.

The new sound is called Bamboo. It is an original soft, hollow wooden tap lasting 600 ms. New installations use it for normal and prominent conversation alerts.

If you are updating, what you hear depends on your Android version and the choices you have already made. On Android 11 and later, Bell moves an existing alert to Bamboo only when it can confirm the sound was never changed from the old default. Sounds you picked, including a default you selected on purpose, stay as they are. So do alerts you have blocked, muted or made silent, alerts whose importance you changed, and newer Bell alert settings already on your phone, including restored ones. On Android 8 to 10, existing alerts keep their current sound, because Android cannot confirm whether that sound was chosen. Existing settings for the alert mode without sound are preserved.

The black reaction heart no longer sits on a white circle. It now has a black fill and a thin neutral outline that follows the shape of the heart. The other quick reaction emoji have also lost their filled backing. The red ring, check and pulse still appear only after delivery of your reaction is confirmed by a relay acknowledgement or a verified relay echo, as before. The tap area and the way you choose an account for quick reactions are unchanged.

One known keyboard limitation is unchanged in this release. Tab and Shift+Tab navigation can remain inside inline media. Use touch to move to other controls.