Updates

2026

1. October 29, 2026ImprovedServers & Community

   Public server pages, cross-posts, profiles and devices

   • New: server owners can turn on a public page for their server at venoly.nl/s/<vanity> from Server Settings → Discovery.
   • Cross-posted announcements now follow the original: deleting, editing or setting the original to disappear does the same to every copy. A private announcement channel no longer copies its posts out, and you can only follow one that everyone in its server can read.
   • When a server passes to a new owner, its Telegram and Discord bridges are switched off instead of posting under the new owner's name; the new owner can link their own. A busy Telegram group can no longer flood its linked channel.
   • Servers made from a saved AI template keep Admin above Moderator and Member, and their rules are posted in #rules. Importing a Discord server into an existing one keeps channel names in any language. Restoring or cloning a server brings back disappearing-message timers.
   • Sharing an event tells you who can see it: only people with the link, or everyone on the public Events page while your server is in Discovery. The Bots page has a working Add to Server button and leaves out bots that are not public.
2. October 29, 2026FixedProfiles & Customisation

   Profiles, privacy and your devices

   • Your public profile page is shown only while "Who can see my profile" is set to Everyone, sections you hide in your profile layout are hidden everywhere, and "Who can see when you're online" now hides your custom status too.
   • A new custom status no longer disappears at once because of an old "Clear after" timer, and a Discord link you added by hand can be removed.
   • Username changes are limited to two an hour. Referral badges arrive once your friend confirms their email, and closed accounts no longer show up under mutual friends, friend requests or the referral leaderboard.
   • Signing out, or signing in as a different account, clears the previous account's drafts, queued messages, recent searches and Ctrl+K history from this device.
   • Reading a DM on one device clears its badge on your other devices, mention badges on the server list turn on live and clear when you read the message, and turning on captions right after a reconnect no longer drops you from the call.
   • The Plans page names the plan you actually have and shows an end date only when it has one; if a group plan you were in has ended, Settings → Subscription says so and another group can invite you.
3. October 29, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

   Catch me up and AI requests

   • Opening Home no longer makes AI summaries by itself: Catch me up lists your unread channels, and AI writes a summary only when you press Catch me up.
   • A voice-message transcript that fails is no longer saved as an empty transcript; Retry works once the service is back. FAQ auto-capture runs at most once every two minutes per server.
4. October 29, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

   Unsubscribe, report decisions and account deletion

   • Every announcement email from Venoly now has a working one-click Unsubscribe link, and Settings → Notifications → Email has an Announcements switch. The digest's Unsubscribe turns the digest off.
   • If you report content through the public form, we now email you our decision and how to ask us to look at it again.
   • Your data export now includes your subscriptions, blocks and more of what you wrote.
   • Kanban boards and cards, wiki pages and form answers made by someone who has since deleted their account stay where they were; the server owner takes over that person's forms.
5. October 29, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

   Link filters, audit log and banned media

   • Platform link filters now catch a blocked site however the link is written, including with a port, a trailing dot, a username or a query string.
   • Changes to a server's verification level, raid protection, lockdown and Auto-Mod now appear in its Audit Log, with who made them.
   • Join attempts a busy server refuses no longer count toward its join limit, so genuine newcomers are not locked out by them, while raid alerts still see every attempt.
   • Media that staff have removed can no longer be uploaded again in its original form, including portrait phone photos and videos.
6. October 29, 2026FixedServers & Community

   Every place you post follows the same rules

   • Suggestions, forms, decisions, boards, kudos, LFG posts, scrims, thread names, forum tags and listening-party titles now follow the same rules as messages: timeouts, account limits, AutoMod and the content filters apply. Lines bridged in from a linked Telegram group pass AutoMod and spam protection too.
   • Tips can only go to people who are in the server, and a repeat giveaway entry no longer refreshes everyone's entry count.
   • Governance proposals now close by themselves at their deadline. A slow-mode rule passed by a vote no longer overwrites a channel's own longer slow mode, and repealing it no longer clears every channel.
   • On kanban boards only a card's author, the board creator or a moderator can change its title and description; anyone can still move, assign and date cards.
   • A proposed decision can now be marked final by its author or the server owner. Onboarding answers suggest channels by name, and only ones the new member can see.
   • The birthday picker offers only the days each month has. Members with Manage Server can change the birthday channel or turn announcements off without re-choosing the role, but switching announcements back on with a role still needs Manage Roles.
   • A failed wiki edit no longer leaves a stray revision, and changing a suggestion's status keeps its note.
7. October 29, 2026FixedVoice & Video

   Games, leaderboards and rooms

   • Co-op Ascendant runs now count: every player gets their souls, XP and badges and appears on the leaderboards. If your very first run is a victory, your fastest clear is saved.
   • The Server vs Server board no longer shows a private server's name or icon to people who aren't in it. The XP, kudos, trivia and predictions leaderboards show current members only, and the predictions board counts only bets in channels you can see.
   • A level reward you add now goes straight to everyone already at that level, a profile streak that has ended no longer shows its old number, and Manage Server can delete a tournament.
   • Watch Together and the whiteboard need the same rights as sending a message in that channel, and sticky-note text goes through the server's filters.
   • Watch Together and Listening Party load nothing from the media's site until you press Join, the Join button names that site, and if the host moves the party to another site you are asked again.
   • Moderators with Manage Channels can run a stage and its Q&A, people with Manage Messages can remove questions, and spatial channels made by a moderator open with a map.
8. October 28, 2026FixedServers & Community

   AI characters: your server, your switch

   • AI characters now reply only in servers they are members of, and only in channels they can see and post in. They used to reply in servers they had never joined.
   • A server's owner, or anyone with Manage Server, can now switch AI characters off for the server in Server Settings → Overview.
   • Deleted, edited and disappearing messages are no longer shown to an AI character when it writes a reply, and mentioning someone whose name merely starts like a character's (for example @kaiser) no longer summons that character. Marketplace AI personas now carry the AI label everywhere.
9. October 28, 2026ImprovedSecurity & Privacy

   Your recovery email now helps you get back in

   • Password-reset links now also go to your verified recovery email, and when signing in asks for a code from your email you can have it sent to your recovery email instead. Each email says where else it went, and your main address is told when a code goes to the recovery one.
   • Setting or removing a recovery email now asks for your password, or a recent sign-in if your account uses Google or Discord only. Turning two-factor on or off for those accounts needs the same recent sign-in.
   • A recovery email added before today has to be confirmed again before it receives anything; Settings shows it as Unverified until you do. You can now also remove it there.
   • "Lock my account" now also cancels every pending code and reset link, and asks you to confirm your recovery email again, so an address someone else added cannot be used to get back in.
10. October 28, 2026FixedMessaging

    Uploads, notices, badges and calls

    • Animated PNG (APNG) avatars, banners, emoji and attachments now upload and stay animated.
    • An upload that is cut off or malformed now gets a clear "try again" error instead of "An unexpected error occurred".
    • Links in moderation notices and other messages from Venoly no longer show preview cards, and a moderator's reason or a server's name in them now appears as quoted text.
    • The mention badge on a channel now goes away when the message that pinged you is deleted or disappears.
    • A starboard copy of a message now disappears with the original, even if its author set it to delete while it was being starred.
    • Prediction cards now show the latest wagers and status when the list reloads.
    • A call you answer on one device stops ringing on your other devices.
    • Explore and invite pages now show a server's level badge.
    • Installing a role pack that would add no role is now refused with an explanation, and while you are timed out you can't record a decision (the app tells you why).
11. October 28, 2026ImprovedSecurity & Privacy

    Passkeys, backup codes and session alerts

    • Adding a passkey now asks for your current password first. If your account has no password, sign in again and add the passkey within 10 minutes.
    • You now get an email when a backup code is used to sign in, saying how many codes you have left, with a reminder to make new ones when only a few remain.
    • You now get an email when one of your devices is signed out because its session was used from somewhere else.
    • Message signing is now set up separately for each account, so a second account signed in on the same browser no longer uses the first account's signing key or setting.
12. October 28, 2026FixedMessaging

    Unread markers, mentions and disappearing messages

    • Polls, giveaways, starboard posts, birthday greetings, cross-posts, Telegram-bridge messages and AI character replies now light the channel's unread marker straight away, not only after a reload.
    • Turning off Mentions in Settings → Notifications now also hides the red mention badge and the mention pop-up.
    • A message that has disappeared no longer counts toward unread badges, the notification bell or the email digest, and can no longer be reacted to, edited or replied to.
    • A starred message you later set to disappear now leaves the starboard when it goes.
    • Keyword alerts now work for keywords that contain a backslash.
    • A poll now updates when the chat reloads, showing votes you cast on another device and polls that have ended.
    • A new forum post shows its author's name straight away instead of only after a reload.
    • Removing your reaction in a direct message that can't go through now tells you why instead of silently doing nothing.
    • Uploading a file type Venoly doesn't support now tells you so, instead of showing "An unexpected error occurred".
    • Your friends list now shows friends coming online and going offline as it happens, not only after you reload.
13. October 28, 2026FixedMoney & Plans

    Paid server levels, the server shop and packs

    • Servers on a paid plan now show the level they actually have in the sidebar, the boost panel and server settings, and voice quality follows that level.
    • The server shop marks a role you already have as Owned instead of letting Buy fail.
    • The plans page shows whether your plan renews or ends on a given date.
    • Installing an emoji or sound pack that would add nothing (every name already taken or unusable) is now refused with an explanation instead of being counted as installed.
    • When the AI emoji generator produces an image Venoly can't use, it now asks you to try a different prompt.
14. October 28, 2026FixedServers & Community

    Timeouts, scheduled posts, invites and group calls

    • AutoMod no longer cuts a longer timeout short: if a moderator already timed someone out for longer, that timeout stays, and leaving and rejoining the server does not end it.
    • Removing a timeout from someone who had none now says so, instead of saying the timeout is over.
    • A scheduled message no longer goes out while you are timed out on Venoly; you get a DM with your text so you can post it later.
    • Joins through a vanity link longer than 12 characters now show up in a server's invite analytics.
    • In a group call, answering by pressing Call instead of Accept now stops the ringing for the caller, and the call shows as answered instead of missed.
15. October 28, 2026NewSecurity & Privacy

    Sign out one device at a time

    • Settings → Login Activity now lists every device signed in to your account, with the one you are using marked "This device". Each other device has its own Sign out button, so you no longer have to sign out of everything to remove one you don't recognise.
    • Signing a device out ends its session straight away and forgets that it was trusted for 30 days, so it needs your code again next time.
16. October 27, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

    Privacy settings, trusted devices and time zones

    • If you are under 18, you can now set direct messages, calls, group chats and friend requests to "Nobody" in Settings → Privacy & Safety, and switch back again. Before, each row showed one greyed-out choice. The Security overview also shows "Add link only" friend requests by name instead of calling them "Nobody".
    • Settings → My Account now shows how many devices skip the second sign-in step because you ticked "Trust this device for 30 days", with a button to forget them all. The device list above it is now called "Recognised devices": removing a device there never did this.
    • Signing in on another device no longer replaces the time zone you picked in Settings → Language, and that page now shows the zone saved on your account. If saving a time zone fails, it now says so.
17. October 26, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

    Security fixes: sessions, names and moderation

    • Resetting your password, locking your account or signing out everywhere now ends every other session straight away. Before, a signed-out device could keep working for up to 15 minutes.
    • Turning two-factor authentication on or off now signs out your other devices.
    • "Lock account" now also signs out the browser you pressed it in.
    • Names that copy "Venoly" or staff titles with look-alike letters, or with hidden characters that flip text around, are no longer allowed.
    • Mentioning a role of more than 50 people now has the same one-minute cooldown as @everyone.
    • A disappearing message no longer shows up in reply previews, pins, search or your mentions once it has expired.
    • Server moderators can now cancel any prediction in their server, unless they have a bet on it. People who are not allowed to post in a channel can no longer start a prediction there.
18. October 26, 2026ImprovedSecurity & Privacy

    Add links: a QR code, and clearer answers

    • Your add link now has a QR code, so someone next to you can scan it with their phone camera.
    • Your add link works whatever your friend-request setting is, even "Nobody": it is your own invitation. Asking without the link still follows your setting.
    • Opening a link from someone you are already friends with, or someone you blocked, now says so, and the link stays usable instead of being used up.
    • When you turn 18, Venoly sends you a message saying your contact settings are unlocked. They stay as they are until you change them.
    • Signing in to an account that still needs a date of birth now goes straight to that step, then back to the add link or invite you opened.
    • If you sign up from someone's add link, you come back to it afterwards. Until your email is verified the page says so, instead of saying the link has expired.
    • If the person whose link you open had already sent you a request, the page now says you are friends.
    • Birthdays on profiles show the day and month only. The "Show my age" switch is gone, so nobody else ever sees your birth year.
19. October 26, 2026NewSecurity & Privacy

    SafeView: stronger protections for under-18s

    • If you are under 18, only friends can message you, call you or add you to a group chat, and you are left out of people search. These settings stay on until you turn 18.
    • New add links: in Friends → Add friend, "Show my add link" makes a link that lets one person send you a friend request. It works once, for 5 minutes. Anyone can switch friend requests to "Add link only" in Privacy settings.
    • People search now only shows people you share a friend or a server with. Anyone can hide from it in Privacy settings.
    • We now ask everyone once for their date of birth, and say your age back before saving it, so a typo gets caught. Other people on Venoly never see it.
20. October 25, 2026NewSecurity & Privacy

    A password alone no longer signs you in

    • After your password, Venoly now asks for a second step. With two-factor authentication on, that is your authenticator app. Without it, we email you a 6-digit code.
    • Tick "Trust this device for 30 days" to skip the code on a device you use often. Changing your password or signing out everywhere cancels every trusted device.
    • Signing in with Google, Discord or a passkey works as before.
21. October 25, 2026ImprovedSecurity & Privacy

    Clearer, more honest safety pages

    • Our privacy, child-safety and support pages now describe exactly what Venoly does today. We removed promises about features that were not built yet and response times one person cannot keep.
    • When Venoly staff open message content to handle a report or an appeal, it is now recorded with the reason in a log that the staff tools cannot change or delete. Your data export lists those times, except reads for a child-safety report or a safety investigation.
    • AI characters now say they are AI when you ask, and show an AI label instead of the Verified badge.
    • Names that pretend to be Venoly or its staff are no longer allowed.
22. October 25, 2026ImprovedSecurity & Privacy

    No more slurs in names

    • Usernames, display names, server nicknames, bot names and AI persona names can no longer contain slurs or strong profanity, including spaced-out or look-alike spellings.
23. October 25, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

    Support tickets: live replies, reminders, and a smoother queue

    • When support replies to your ticket, you now get it in your DMs — no more refreshing to find out. An open ticket also updates itself while you are reading it.
    • If a ticket is waiting on you, we send a friendly reminder before it goes stale, and only close it automatically after a follow-up with no reply — replying any time reopens it.
    • You can now rate the help you got, and close your own ticket, right from the ticket page.
    • For the support team: tickets left unattended past their response time now nudge the assigned agent and escalate on their own, the queue shows waiting and resolved tickets instead of hiding them, and selecting a ticket no longer reloads the whole list.
24. October 25, 2026FixedServers & Community

    Muting a server or channel now really silences it

    • Mute actually stops the noise now. A muted server or channel no longer pushes to your phone, lights up the notification bell, or bumps your unread and mention counts — including @everyone and role pings.
    • Timed mutes work too: a mute you set to last an hour is now honoured and expires on time, instead of being treated as permanent.
25. October 25, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

    “Sign out everywhere” now also cuts off push and connected apps

    • The account-security panic button used to end your sessions but leave signed-out devices still receiving push notifications and connected third-party apps still authorised. It now removes both, so “sign out everywhere” really means everywhere.
26. October 25, 2026ImprovedSecurity & Privacy

    New-account safety limits now cover role pings and DMs

    • A brand-new account’s first ten minutes already couldn’t post links, attachments or @everyone in a channel. That guard now also blocks role pings, and it applies to direct messages too — so a throwaway account can’t blast a role or send scam links to strangers before anyone notices.
27. October 25, 2026FixedMoney & Plans

    Spending server currency no longer pauses your earnings

    • On servers with an economy, placing a bet, buying from the shop, or receiving a payout no longer resets the short cooldown on earning currency from chatting. Your messages keep earning as normal.
28. October 25, 2026ImprovedVoice & Video

    Do Not Disturb now quiets calls, reminders and moderation alerts

    • An incoming call no longer rings out loud while you’re on Do Not Disturb — the call card still appears so you can answer if you’re looking, it just stays silent.
    • Reminders you set and moderation notices no longer buzz your phone while you’re on Do Not Disturb. They still arrive in the app and wait for you there.
29. October 25, 2026FixedVoice & Video

    Live captions stay inside the call

    • In a group direct message, live captions from a call now reach only the people actually in the call — someone in the conversation who hasn’t joined no longer sees a running transcript of it.
30. October 25, 2026NewMessaging

    Role and @everyone mentions now notify people

    • @everyone, @here and role mentions now notify people. @here reaches only people who are online. @everyone and @here need the Mention @everyone permission and can be used once a minute per server; a role can be mentioned by anyone only when “Allow anyone to @mention this role” is on. If a mention like that notified nobody, you’re told why.
    • Role mentions show the role’s name in its colour. Your notifications say when someone pinged a role you have or used @everyone or @here, and the inbox’s Mentions filter includes them.
    • The “Suppress @everyone and @here” and “Suppress All Role @mentions” server settings now work.
    • Do Not Disturb holds back notification sounds, pop-ups and push notifications, and the bell still collects them. It now also holds after you reopen the app. People you set to “Always notify me” get through Do Not Disturb and quiet hours in the app too.
    • A message sent on a slow or shaky connection is no longer posted twice when it’s retried. If sending takes too long, Venoly checks again instead of handing the text back to you.
    • Expired disappearing direct messages no longer show in the conversation, the DM list, unread counts or reply quotes before they’re cleaned up.
    • When a direct message or a group invite can’t go through, the message no longer says which privacy setting or block stopped it.
31. October 25, 2026NewMessaging

    Attach videos, audio and documents

    • You can now attach videos, audio, PDFs and text files, not only images, with upload progress. Videos play in the chat, and other files show their name and size. For now a file can be up to 25 MB, or your plan’s limit if that is lower.
    • The message box counts against your real limit (your plan’s, or 4,000 characters in direct messages), shows how far over you are, and won’t send a message that’s too long. It no longer cuts pasted text short without telling you.
    • Long drafts, up to 16,000 characters, are kept when you switch channels or reload.
    • Earlier versions of an edited message are shown only to its author and to people who can manage messages in that channel.
    • With message signing on, editing a message signs the new text again on that device, and registering a new signing key no longer makes your earlier signed messages read “Invalid signature”.
    • “Catch me up” appears again when you open a channel with unread messages, and summarizes what came in since you last read it.
    • Clicking a message in channel search or the quick switcher jumps to it. Search says when you’re searching too fast instead of showing “No results”.
32. October 25, 2026FixedServers & Community

    Fixes for servers, games and community tools

    • A prediction can now be cancelled, and every wager is refunded. Its creator can cancel it, or anyone with Manage Server once the creator has left. Deleting a channel refunds its open predictions.
    • Tournaments: a player can report their own match only as a win for their opponent. People with Manage Server can record any result and correct one until the next match is played. Tournaments no longer go over their size when several people join at once.
    • A server’s daily bonus is now paid with each member’s first message in that server each day (UTC). Before, it could be set in the shop but was never paid.
    • Only people who can see a giveaway’s channel can enter it, and winners are drawn only from entrants still in the server. A giveaway without a valid duration shows an error instead of lasting one minute.
    • Scrim controls appear for the server owner and people with Manage Server, and a scrim’s creator who left can no longer change it. “Previous track” in a listening party goes back to the track before, and a new trivia game is no longer deleted 30 seconds after the last one ended.
    • Anonymous forms take one response per member. Kanban due dates show correctly, recurring calendar events from over a year ago appear again, the starboard no longer posts a message twice, and skipping a focus block early no longer counts it as done.
    • Birthday wishes go out only while your birthday is visible to everyone, and members keep a birthday role they already had. Your member-directory entry is deleted when you leave a server.
    • A kick reason now appears in the audit log. Banning someone already banned is refused, and member counts no longer drift when non-members are banned or two moderators kick the same person.
    • Deleting a channel removes it from the sidebar of everyone who could see it, closes its call (stages included), and never shows a private channel’s name to anyone else. Deleting a server cancels its paid plan first.
    • Server icons, banners and invite splashes must be PNG, JPEG, GIF or WebP images of 10 MB or less. Bots can no longer post during a server’s maintenance window unless they have Manage Server.
    • Server analytics shows real reaction counts, and leaves once they are being counted. The boost perks listed in Server Settings and on the website now match what each level unlocks.
    • Webhooks can switch back to all channels and drop their secret, and one badly saved webhook no longer stops the others. Installing a template from the marketplace saves a private copy, and private bots are no longer listed.
    • People who can manage messages can now open Server Settings → Members to warn someone, and Governance is open to every member from the server menu.
33. October 25, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

    Sign-in, support site and security fixes

    • Signing in with a passkey now asks for your two-factor code when two-factor authentication is on, and your sign-in history says how you signed in.
    • We now email you when two-factor authentication is turned off, a passkey is added or removed, or a recovery email is set on your account.
    • support.venoly.nl: accounts with two-factor authentication can sign in, sign-up sends you to venoly.nl where accounts are made, and replying to a ticket no longer blanks the page.
    • Reaching the limit on one feature no longer blocks unrelated ones, and a session you signed out is treated as signed out everywhere straight away.
    • Uploaded files are now backed up every six hours along with the database. The Privacy policy and Subprocessors page describe live captions and upload caching exactly as they work.
34. October 24, 2026FixedVoice & Video

    Live captions only cover your own voice

    • Live captions now cover only your own voice. While you have captions on, short clips of your microphone are turned into text, which appears for everyone in the call who has captions on. Nobody else’s microphone is sent because you switched captions on, and captions are not saved.
    • A DM call now survives a short drop in your connection: if you’re back within 30 seconds, you’re put back in the call. The call bar says “Reconnecting…” while that happens.
    • Only the people who started or answered a DM call can connect to it.
    • Joining a stage leaves your voice channel or DM call, and joining a voice channel or call leaves the stage, so your microphone is only live in one place.
    • The connection indicator in voice channels shows your real connection quality instead of always saying Excellent.
    • The camera and screen share buttons tell you when you need the Video or Stream permission, instead of failing after you pick a screen.
    • When several people share their screen you can choose whose to watch, and Expand gives the share the whole panel.
    • Soundboard sounds play for everyone in the call, including people reading another channel.
    • In spatial rooms, distance now sets the volume: full volume inside the inner ring, fading to silence at the outer ring.
35. October 24, 2026ImprovedSecurity & Privacy

    Safer sign-ups and sessions

    • Signing up with Google or Discord now asks for your date of birth before you start. You need to be 13 or older; if you are not, the new account is deleted.
    • Devices you sign out remotely, with Log out all or by changing your password or email, no longer keep receiving your notifications. The device you made the change on keeps its own.
    • Reserved usernames such as “venoly_official” or “adm1n” are now refused at sign-up, as they already were for renames.
    • When a Google or Discord sign-in matches an email that already has an account, the message now says how that account signs in. Google sign-in shows an error instead of staying on “Signing you in…” when your account can’t be loaded.
    • You no longer stay shown as online when your connection drops while the app is still connecting.
    • Scheduled messages and scheduled server announcements are now stored encrypted until they are posted.
    • A full account ban no longer blocks an internet address that two or more other active accounts also use, so other people on a shared network can still sign up and sign in.
36. October 24, 2026FixedServers & Community

    Fixes for servers, imports and bots

    • Importing a server from Discord now keeps private channels private, including servers where @everyone sees nothing until it gets a role. Imported roles no longer get Administrator unless you choose to keep it, and a new server keeps its Discord #general under its own name.
    • Temporary channels: when several channels on one server ran out at the same time, the server could be left with no channels. One now always stays until the server has another, and a voice or stage channel that runs out also ends its call.
    • SVG uploads display again, including files saved by Inkscape and Illustrator. Styles that would load something from another site are removed.
    • If you leave a server and come back, its onboarding questions are asked again and you get the roles they give.
    • Servers built with AI no longer keep an extra #general next to the planned channels, and you get the new server’s live updates right away.
    • Global search: a server you are not in opens the join screen instead of your friends list.
    • The public share card no longer shows badges you chose to hide, and only opens for an exact username.
    • When an account is deleted for good, the server events and giveaways that person created stay, with everyone’s RSVPs and entries, and pass to the server’s owner. Their scheduled posts that have not gone out are deleted.
    • Turning off “Public Bot” now really means only you can add your bot to a server, and private bots no longer appear in the bot directory. The developer portal shows the reviewer’s note when a bot isn’t approved or is suspended, shows the Bot Developer Terms in full, and gives the real reason when signing in fails.
37. October 24, 2026NewSecurity & Privacy

    Appeal a decision from inside Venoly

    • You can now appeal a suspension, a termination, a posting limit or a warning from the Venoly team inside Venoly. If you can sign in, go to Settings → Account standing and choose Appeal this decision.
    • If your account is suspended or terminated, the sign-in screen offers Appeal this decision. You can also go to venoly.nl/appeal, enter your account’s email address and use the code we send you, which works even if you have lost your password.
    • You have 6 months from the decision, and each decision can be appealed once. A person reviews every appeal, where possible someone other than the person who made the decision; when that is not possible, the record says so. You get the outcome and the reasons by email, and in the app when you can sign in. We aim to decide within 14 days.
    • A ban or warning inside a server is appealed to that server’s own moderators, who can switch appeals off for their server.
    • The Transparency report now shows live appeal figures. Email to appeals@venoly.nl still works if you cannot use the form.
38. October 24, 2026NewApps & Platform

    A Home screen that is yours

    • Home now shows what you chose: your pinned conversations and channels with their unread counts, your favorite servers, upcoming events in your servers, and threads you follow that have new replies.
    • Use Pin to top on a conversation or a channel and it appears on Home. Pinned conversations are now saved to your account, so they follow you to every device; pins you made earlier in a browser move over the first time you open Venoly there.
    • Star a server on Home, or right-click it in the server list and choose Add to favorites.
    • Mark yourself Interested in an event straight from Home.
    • Starting a thread or replying in one follows it, and Follow or Unfollow at the top of a thread changes that. Opening a thread marks it as read.
39. October 24, 2026FixedMessaging

    A round of fixes across messages, DMs, settings and admin

    • Direct messages: you can see when the other person is typing again, and it clears as soon as their message arrives. Leaving a group chat removes it from your other devices straight away, and ends a call you were in there.
    • Changing your password or email, or logging out other sessions, no longer signs you out in your other tabs in the same browser.
    • Voice works in spatial rooms again (opening one used to disconnect its audio), and after a connection drop the other people move again.
    • A refused call can no longer reopen with an old connection, and a refused "Join call" no longer connects you anyway.
    • Fixed a channel showing up twice after you create it, the sidebar briefly showing the previous server’s channels, a microphone staying on after leaving a voice-message recording, lost characters in whiteboard notes, and policy code shown out of order.
    • Server settings: role reordering works for people with Manage Roles, Audit Ledger’s Load more loads the next page, a refused permission change is undone on screen, and the welcome screen saves only valid channels.
    • Settings: a failed status save no longer says it was saved, sign-in history shows why a sign-in failed, and the mic test and camera preview switch off when you close Settings.
    • An edited signed message no longer shows a green "Signed" badge: its signature covers only the first version.
40. October 24, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

    Better link previews and search results

    • A link to any of Venoly’s public pages (Features, Security, the legal pages, the comparisons, Docs and more) now shows that page’s own title, description and preview card in chats, social posts and search results, instead of the home page’s.
    • Page titles no longer repeat “Venoly” twice, the preview card has been refreshed, and old addresses such as /desktop and /press now redirect properly.
41. October 24, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

    Games, in one place

    • A new Games page (Home → Games, or Ctrl+G) holds Ascendant and Server Empire.
    • The VenGames collection of mini-games and the floating gamepad button in the corner are gone. Your Ascendant and Server Empire progress is unaffected.
42. October 23, 2026ImprovedProfiles & Customisation

    Your banner, the way you framed it

    • When you upload a profile banner you now choose the part that shows: drag the picture, zoom to fit, apply. What you framed is what everyone sees.
    • Profiles show the banner whole, at the same 5:2 shape you framed it in, instead of a thin strip cut from the middle. The hover card shows a slightly shorter slice, as before.
    • Very large banners are shrunk to 1600×640 on upload, so they load fast and the 10 MB limit is no longer the only ceiling. Animated GIFs upload as they are.
    • The status page no longer lists account, server and message counts.
43. October 23, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

    The status page tells the truth, and is in the menu

    • venoly.nl/status is rebuilt on the new design: the headline is the state, every published service is listed with its status, the last 90 days are drawn per service from the incident log, and the incidents themselves appear with their latest update. The old page showed three fixed “No incidents reported” rows whatever had happened.
    • It loads quickly now. Two large blurred shapes that animated forever behind the page were what made it slow and stuttery; they are gone.
    • It checks again every minute while the tab is open, pauses in a background tab, and has a Check again button.
    • Status is in the site menu next to Download, and in Settings under Support as System status.
44. October 23, 2026NewApps & Platform

    Smooth mode, and a word about the apps

    • Smooth mode in Settings → Performance: scrolling is handed to the graphics chip, Jump to present and jumping to a message glide instead of cutting, lists glide, and menus, panels and messages that arrive while you watch ease in. On phones too. Off by default and saved on this device only, because it uses more memory and battery; it works alongside Performance mode on an older device, and Reduce motion still wins.
    • With Smooth mode on, reaching the top of a channel on Android no longer pulls the whole app into a page refresh.
    • Now and then Venoly suggests the desktop or Android app, whose alerts do not depend on a browser tab. It waits a day or two, comes back every week or two at most, and has a Never show again button. Settings → Notifications can switch the suggestion back on.
    • A channel no longer sometimes opens a couple of hundred pixels above its latest message while a platform announcement is showing.
45. October 23, 2026FixedMessaging

    Fixes across messages, calls and the Explore page

    • On a phone browser, alerts for new messages and mentions now actually appear. They played a sound and showed nothing.
    • The Messages list shows who is online again — every conversation was marked offline — and it updates as people come and go.
    • “Mark everything as read” now also clears your direct messages, so their badges no longer come back after a reload.
    • A conversation you closed comes back when someone writes in it, instead of staying hidden for good.
    • Typing indicators work in direct messages again.
    • A call that cannot go through (for example to someone who blocked you) stops straight away instead of ringing for 45 seconds.
    • Pin and Unpin are only offered when you are allowed to pin in that channel.
    • Polls and scheduled messages, which only work in server channels, no longer show up in direct messages.
    • The Catch-up summary banner shows up again on channels with five or more unread messages.
    • Blocked words that start or end with an accented letter, another script or an emoji are now caught by AutoMod.
    • The link filter no longer blocks “netflix.com” when “x.com” is blocked — only that site and its subdomains.
    • Invite pages and Explore show the real number of people online; both used to show 30% of the member count.
    • Votes can no longer be taken back after a poll has closed.
    • The Clear button next to Now playing appears once you set a game.
    • A failed status save now says so instead of reporting success.
    • A new channel no longer appears twice for the person who made it, and a new LFG post no longer shows up twice.
46. October 23, 2026ImprovedServers & Community

    Server nicknames, and replies that show who you are answering

    • Server owners, and anyone with the Manage Nicknames permission, can now change a member’s nickname. Right-click the person and choose Change their nickname, or use the pencil in Server Settings → Members. Only the owner can rename the owner.
    • The line above a reply shows the person’s picture and the name they use in that server, instead of a letter.
    • A nickname shows up straight away on messages as they arrive, and everyone sees a change without reloading.
    • Edit Nickname in the server menu opens a proper dialog on phones too.
47. October 22, 2026ImprovedMessaging

    Mentions stand out

    • An @mention in a message is now a highlighted name you can tap to open that person’s profile, instead of plain text. @everyone and @here are highlighted too.
    • When you type @, the people who spoke most recently in that channel or DM are at the top of the list. In a DM it suggests the people in the conversation.
    • Fixed: choosing a status opened your own profile as well, and a profile with the Storm effect showed as a blank white box when animations were reduced.
48. October 22, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

    Venoly on your phone, tidied up

    • The Messages tab now opens your conversations, with Friends one tap above them. It used to open Friends, and your DMs were hidden in the menu.
    • Channels and DMs have one header with a back button, instead of a second "Venoly" bar above it.
    • A Send button appears in the message box once you have typed something.
    • Holding a message opens its actions as a sheet from the bottom of the screen, with bigger reaction buttons.
    • Announcements take one line at the top; tap one to read it.
    • A message that is only a GIF or picture link shows the picture without the long address above it.
    • Settings ends with Log out, and the menu at the bottom of the channel list has room for your name again.
    • Fixed: "Create a server" on the home screen did nothing on a phone; the marketplace buttons ran off the screen; system messages were squeezed into half the width; opening a private profile said "User not found".
49. October 22, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

    Privacy fixes you will notice

    • Logging out now stops that browser or phone receiving your notifications. Before, they kept arriving after you signed out, even if someone else signed in there.
    • Videos you upload no longer carry the place they were filmed. Phones store a location in the file; it is removed when you upload.
    • Invisible and Do Not Disturb stay as you set them: another of your devices waking up no longer shows you as online.
    • Someone you have blocked no longer shows up in your mention badge, your Activity inbox or your matchmaking suggestions.
    • Changing your password or email, or logging out everywhere, now also signs out the apps you connected. They will ask for permission again.
50. October 22, 2026NewApps & Platform

    The Android app is here

    • Download the Venoly app for Android from the Download page: notifications, calls that keep going with the screen off, and venoly.nl links that open straight in the app. The page walks you through installing it.
    • Signing in with Discord in the Android app now goes through a browser tab, the same route Google sign-in takes.
    • The log-in and sign-up pages have a Back button and evenly spaced fields.
51. October 22, 2026NewApps & Platform

    A searchable FAQ with every answer

    • A new page, All questions, answers more than a hundred questions about accounts, privacy, safety, servers, calls, plans and more, with a search box to find the one you need. Open it from the FAQ on the home page or the FAQ page.
    • It also states our promise in writing: messaging, servers and calls stay free, and nothing that is free today will be moved behind a paywall.
52. October 22, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

    Security and reliability fixes

    • Signing in with a password and an authenticator code works again, and a failed sign-up keeps what you typed.
    • Image attachments in DMs upload again, and reading a DM clears its notifications.
    • Blocks and your "who can message me" setting now apply to every message, edit and reaction, not only to starting a conversation.
    • Signing out of a device, changing your password or "sign out everywhere" can no longer be undone by an old session.
    • If you signed up with Google, your Gmail address is no longer shown on your profile.
    • Invisible now really shows you as offline everywhere, including member lists.
    • Server owners and managers can edit and delete any event; moderators see Delete on messages; Server Settings opens for anyone with a settings permission.
    • The channel editor, the Forms page and the bot invite page no longer break, and a reconnect now catches up on messages you missed.
53. October 22, 2026NewProfiles & Customisation

    New badges, and every badge has its own art

    • Five new official badges: Founding Member, Ambassador, Artist, Support Hero and Content Creator.
    • A new badge you earn on your own: Verified Creator, once your Marketplace work is verified.
    • Every badge now has its own drawing instead of a shared icon on a coloured square, so Chatterbox, Event Winner and Referrer no longer look the same, and Server Booster is a pink gem.
54. October 22, 2026FixedProfiles & Customisation

    Your status and theme stay put

    • You no longer flicker to Offline when Venoly restarts a server, refreshes a page or drops the connection for a moment: offline is only shown after you have really been gone for a few seconds.
    • A theme could vanish after a reload and only come back after saving another setting, when an old marketplace colour set was still stored. It no longer paints over the theme you picked.
55. October 22, 2026NewMoney & Plans

    Marketplace: signed releases, verified creators, official themes and templates

    • Every version of a marketplace item is now a signed release. On an item, Check signature confirms that what you are about to install is exactly what Venoly signed; Releases shows the history and notes.
    • Creators Venoly has verified carry a tick beside their name.
    • Four official themes (Midnight Harbour, Paper Lantern, Moss & Stone, Neon Arcade) and four server templates (Gaming Squad, Study Group, Creative Studio, Developer Community).
    • Changing a public item, or making an item public, now sends it back for review before it is listed.
56. October 22, 2026NewMessaging

    Folders for your DMs

    • Under Direct messages, + Folder makes a folder, like Friends or Work. The folder button on a conversation files it; a conversation can sit in more than one. Pick a folder to see only its conversations, or All for everything.
57. October 22, 2026ImprovedMessaging

    Mark DMs as unread, and DM badges that survive a reload

    • Right-click a message in a DM → Mark as unread, as you already could in channels.
    • Fixed: unread badges on DMs disappeared whenever you reloaded Venoly. They now come back with the right count.
58. October 22, 2026NewMessaging

    Drafts, and a way back after jumping to a reply

    • Home → Drafts lists every message you started and did not send, with where it was. Open one to carry on, or delete it.
    • Jump to the message someone replied to, and a "Back to where you were" button takes you straight back.
59. October 22, 2026NewMessaging

    Translate before you send

    • Type a message, press the translate button by the message box and pick a language: you see the translation first, then use it or keep your own words. Venoly remembers the language you picked.
60. October 22, 2026NewMessaging

    Choose your one-click message actions

    • Settings → Chat → One-click actions: pick what appears when you point at a message (reply, react, thread, translate, edit, copy, pin, bookmark, forward, delete) and put them in your order. Everything else stays under More.
    • Add up to three one-click reactions to the strip, so your usual emoji is a single click away.
61. October 22, 2026NewMessaging

    Disappearing DMs, and messages that delete themselves

    • In a DM, the timer button next to the call buttons turns on disappearing messages (1 hour to 1 week). Everyone in the conversation sees who changed it, and new messages show how long they have left.
    • Right-click your own message → Delete after… to have it go in 10 minutes, an hour, a day or a week. Change your mind with Keep it.
    • Right-click your message → Hide link previews, for when a link should stay just a link. Moderators can do this in their channels too.
62. October 22, 2026ImprovedProfiles & Customisation

    Official badges, redrawn

    • New Venoly artwork for official badges: Venoly Staff (a hammer and wrench) and Partner (two linked strokes), which also marks partner servers.
    • Venoly Staff now appears by itself for people on the Venoly team, and Partner for owners of a partner server. Both lead the badge row.
    • New badges the team can give: Beta Tester, Translator, Security Researcher and Event Host. Hype Crew and Supporter, which nobody held, are gone.
63. October 22, 2026ImprovedProfiles & Customisation

    Online means online

    • While you are on Venoly you show as Online. Auto-idle is now off unless you turn it on in Settings → Presence, and an automatic Idle is never remembered for your next visit.
    • Busy, Away, Do Not Disturb and Invisible still stay until you change them.
    • The browser tab now says where you are (#channel | Server, a DM, Settings) instead of keeping "Log In" after you sign in.
64. October 22, 2026FixedProfiles & Customisation

    Themes stick, and right-click menus work again

    • A theme you pick now stays after a reload and on other pages. A marketplace or custom palette left on from before was quietly painting over it; picking a theme now switches those off, and Appearance shows when it was saved.
    • Light themes no longer wash out: with a background behind the app, light panels stay at least 90% solid so text keeps its contrast.
    • Right-click a member → Roles, Badges, Notifications (mute) and Invite open and can be clicked again. Their lists were drawn under the page, so clicks went straight through.
    • Setting your status no longer fails with "This username is reserved" for accounts that already have such a name.
65. October 22, 2026FixedApps & Platform

    Notifications settings open again

    • Settings → Notifications crashed instead of opening. It opens again, with the new People list: everyone you set to always notify or muted, each with a way back to the default.
66. October 22, 2026NewProfiles & Customisation

    Showcase, audience preview and your timeline

    • Settings → Profile → Showcase: pin up to 6 posts and projects (with a link) to your profile. Move it up or down, or hide it, with the other profile sections.
    • See your profile as a friend, someone in your servers or anyone else: a list of what each can see and do, worked out from your privacy settings.
    • Login Activity now opens with your timeline: sign-ins, servers you joined or made, new friends and badges.
67. October 22, 2026NewServers & Community

    Build onboarding questions without code

    • Server Settings → Tools → Onboarding Editor is now a builder: write questions and answers, choose which question an answer leads to, and pick the roles and channels each answer gives.
    • A live preview beside it shows what a new member sees; click through it to check every path. Problems such as a question nothing leads to are listed before you publish.
    • The JSON view is still there for advanced edits.
68. October 22, 2026NewServers & Community

    Schedule server maintenance and announcements

    • Server Settings → Schedule: plan a maintenance window of up to 7 days. During it only people with Manage Server can post, and members see a notice in every channel from a day before until it ends.
    • Schedule an announcement for a set time in any channel you can post in, optionally pinned. It goes out as you, and only if you can still post there then.
    • Backups & History: only the owner can delete a snapshot someone else took, and restores leave the AI switch and Discovery tags alone.
69. October 22, 2026NewServers & Community

    Server backups, history and cloning

    • Server Settings → Backups & History: take a snapshot of your server's settings, channels, roles and channel permissions, or have one taken daily or weekly. The newest 30 are kept.
    • Open a snapshot to see what restoring it would change. Owners can restore one: what changed goes back, deleted channels and roles come back empty, and anything added since stays. A snapshot of the moment before is saved first, so a restore can be undone.
    • Owners can clone the server into a new one of their own, choosing whether channels, roles, channel permissions and settings come along. Members, messages and pictures stay behind.
70. October 22, 2026NewServers & Community

    Change many channels at once

    • Server Settings → Channels → the tick button: select channels (a category ticks everything in it), then move them to a category, set slow mode, lock or unlock posting for @everyone, or delete them, up to 50 at a time.
71. October 22, 2026NewSecurity & Privacy

    More say over who reaches you

    • Privacy & Safety → Calls: choose who can ring you from a DM. Anyone else can still message you.
    • Group chats: choose who can add you to a group DM.
    • Servers and friends in common: choose who sees them on your profile.
    • DM greeting: a short note shown at the top of a new conversation with you, like how you prefer to be contacted.
    • Security → Idle devices: sign out a phone or browser you have not used for 7, 30 or 90 days.
72. October 22, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

    Accessibility: animation speed, saturation, and switches that now work

    • Settings → Accessibility → Animation speed: Quick, Standard or Smooth. Dialogs now also animate when they close instead of vanishing.
    • Colour saturation (down to grey) and Reduce transparency (solid panels, no background behind the app). High contrast, colour-blind mode and saturation now stack instead of overriding each other.
    • Fixed: Keyboard navigation, Screen reader optimisation, Animated emoji, Autoplay GIFs and Sticker animation were saved but did nothing. Now the focus ring is thicker, new messages are read out, and GIFs, server emoji and stickers hold still until you hover them.
    • Reduce motion can also be switched from the Accessibility page.
73. October 22, 2026NewProfiles & Customisation

    Away notices, scheduled statuses and quiet days

    • Settings → Presence: set an away notice (Away, Asleep, Busy, AFK or your own words) with an end time. Someone who opens a DM with you sees it once, with OK or Continue, and people who mention you see it under the message box. You can give a server its own message.
    • Status schedules switch your status and custom status on by themselves, like Busy and "At work" on weekdays.
    • Choose your own auto-idle time, from 1 to 240 minutes.
    • Quiet hours can now cover only the days you pick.
    • Right-click someone → Notifications to always hear from them (even in quiet hours) or to mute them. Settings → Notifications lists everyone you changed.
74. October 22, 2026NewServers & Community

    Server badges

    • Server Settings → Badges: make your server's own badges (an emoji, a name, a colour) and give them by right-clicking a member → Badges. People with Manage Roles can manage them.
    • Badges show in the member list and on profiles opened in that server, always named as that server's badge. They grant no permissions, and names that look like official Venoly badges are not allowed.
    • A badge goes when its holder leaves the server.
75. October 22, 2026NewSecurity & Privacy

    Prove a website is yours

    • Settings → Connections → Websites you own: add your domain, publish the code Venoly gives you as a DNS record or a small file on the site, and press Check now. Verified websites show on your profile with a check mark; typing a link never made one verified.
    • Codes last 48 hours, and Venoly checks verified sites again every week. Remove the code and the check mark goes.
    • If your profile is friends-only, your links and websites are now friends-only too. They used to show to anyone.
76. October 22, 2026NewMessaging

    GIFs from GIPHY and KLIPY, and memes

    • The GIF button works: search GIPHY and KLIPY together (All) or one at a time, with trending GIFs when you have not typed anything.
    • Memes: pick an Imgflip template, write your lines and send it. Captions go through the same content filters as messages.
    • Searches go through Venoly, so the GIF sites never see your account. They are listed on the Subprocessors page.
77. October 22, 2026NewServers & Community

    Server themes, and a tidier Server Settings

    • Server Settings → Theme: give your server its own colours, font and background (picture, GIF or video), with a live preview. Venoly refuses colours that would be hard to read.
    • The owner can make the theme the one everyone sees in that server. It only applies while you are in that server, never changes your own settings, and people who use high contrast keep their own colours.
    • When a theme is not required, members can switch it on for themselves from the server menu (Use server theme).
    • Server Settings is grouped by what you are doing: Server, Channels & roles, People, Community, Safety and Integrations.
78. October 22, 2026NewProfiles & Customisation

    Backgrounds, music, more fonts and crimson colours

    • Put a picture, GIF or video behind Venoly (Settings → Appearance → Background): upload one or paste a link. Choose how see-through the panels are, darken or blur it, and whether it moves. Menus and dialogs stay solid so text stays readable, and videos pause while Venoly is in the background.
    • Background music: upload a track or paste a link and play it while you chat. It plays only on your device, never into calls, and never starts on its own; there is a play button at the bottom left.
    • Nine more fonts: Minecraft (the pixel font by Craftron Gaming), Press Start 2P, VT323, Atkinson Hyperlegible and Lexend (both made for easier reading), Nunito, Space Grotesk, Comic Neue and Merriweather. Each one downloads only when you pick it.
    • Crimson, dark red, blood moon, wine and ember name plates, and your message colour can now be a blend of two or three colours. Very dark colours are lightened a little so people can still read your name.
79. October 22, 2026NewServers & Community

    Arrange your server by dragging, and channels with their own icons

    • Drag channels and categories in the sidebar to reorder them, move a channel into another category, or take it out of all categories (drop it above the first one). On a phone, hold a channel for a moment, then drag. If saving fails, everything moves back.
    • Right-click a category to rename it in place, delete it (its channels stay), create a channel in it, move it up or down, collapse every category, or mark it as read. On a phone, hold it and let go.
    • Channels can have their own icon: an emoji, one of the server's emoji, or an uploaded picture, shown in the list and the channel header. They can also have a name colour and a longer description.
    • Temporary channels: give a channel an end time and Venoly removes it then.
    • Slow mode skips the roles you choose, and always skips people who can manage messages or channels.
    • Each channel can set its own message box: the placeholder, a starting text people fill in, whether pictures are allowed, and the longest message. Venoly enforces the last two, not just the box.
80. October 22, 2026ImprovedProfiles & Customisation

    Busy and Away, and status dots that sit where they should

    • Two new statuses: Busy (people see you are busy, notifications still arrive) and Away (stays until you change it, unlike Idle). Do Not Disturb still mutes everything.
    • Each status has its own shape as well as its colour: a moon for Idle, a bar for Do Not Disturb, clock hands for Busy, a ring for Offline. Yellow, orange and red no longer have to be told apart by colour.
    • The status dot on the Friends page sat below the picture instead of on its corner. Fixed.
    • A new profile picture or name now shows for everyone straight away, in the member list, DMs, friends and messages already on screen, instead of after they reload.
    • Animated WebP profile pictures stay animated; they used to be saved as their first frame. Profile pictures and banners now have to be images.
81. October 22, 2026FixedMessaging

    Scrolling that stays where you put it

    • Scrolling down a conversation no longer jumps you back up, and it stops at the latest message instead of drifting past it. With Performance mode on, messages used to change height as they came into view; they no longer do.
    • Firefox opens a DM at the latest message again. It used to open a page or two above it and fetch history you had not asked for.
    • Loading older messages keeps the line you are reading exactly where it was, and a message arriving while you read further up no longer moves you. Once you reach the start of a conversation, Venoly stops asking for more.
    • A DM now opens with who you are talking to, like Discord: their picture, name and username, the servers you share, and Add friend, Block and Report. Channels get a "Welcome to #channel" header at the start of their history.
    • Clicking Reply puts the cursor in the message box, so you can type straight away. Escape cancels the reply.
    • The buttons along the message box line up, the box grows as you type a longer message, and the games button no longer sits on top of it in DMs.
82. October 21, 2026NewVoice & Video

    Calls that stay with you, and a right-click for people

    • A DM call now sits above the conversation, like Discord: you keep reading and typing while you talk, with mute, deafen, camera, screen share, captions and settings in one bar.
    • Calling someone shows them ringing (their picture ripples, and you hear it ring out); they get a card with a ringtone and Accept or Decline. Unanswered calls stop after 45 seconds.
    • Calls leave a line in the DM, like Discord: "Luna started a call that lasted 4 minutes.", "You missed a call from Luna.", and a Join call button while one is still going.
    • Leaving a group call only takes you out of it; the others keep talking.
    • Calls and voice channels stay connected when you open another channel, server or settings. The bar at the bottom of the sidebar shows where you are, and its mute and deafen buttons really mute your microphone now.
    • Deafen silences everyone you hear (it used to only turn your mic off), and undeafening puts your mute back how it was.
    • Screen sharing works in DM calls too, at 1080p with sound, and stopping it from the browser bar no longer leaves the button lit.
    • New Settings, Voice & Video: choose your microphone, speakers and camera, test your mic, set the call volume, push to talk with your own key, noise suppression and a camera preview.
    • Right-click anyone, in the member list, on a message, in your DMs or friends, for their profile, mention, message, call, a private note, invites, friend and block. In a server, people allowed to see them also get roles, time out, kick and ban.
    • Right-clicking empty space no longer opens the browser menu; it still works on links, pictures, selected text and text boxes.
83. October 21, 2026FixedMessaging

    Messages that read properly again

    • Messages from different people had no space between them, so a conversation read as one block. Each new person starts a little lower again, and the spacing slider in Appearance works.
    • Replies show the quoted message inside the reply itself, with a line from the avatar up to the person being answered, and a reply to you or a message that names you is highlighted.
    • Direct messages now look and work like server channels: dates between days, formatting, link previews, files and voice notes, and you can reply in a DM (the Reply button used to do nothing there).
    • The timeout, forward and edit-history windows open over the whole app instead of being squeezed inside the message list.
    • The server you have open is marked with a pill on the left of the server list again, and Home is marked when you are in your DMs or friends.
    • With the cookie banner open, the app no longer slid up and cut off its own top edge.
84. October 21, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

    Friends, DMs and the small screens

    • The Friends page has a proper tab row — Online, All, Pending, Blocked and Add friend — that fits on a phone instead of running off the edge.
    • The direct-message list, the thread panel, pinned messages and search now look like the rest of the chat: same colours, same type, no slide-in animations.
    • Forgot password, reset password and the verification screens share the login layout, so the whole sign-in journey is one place.
    • On phones: the X that closes the side menu is reachable again, the game button no longer sits on top of the You tab, and holding a message opens its menu (the hover strip is gone on touch screens).
    • The ownership panel on a phone is a list of areas, each opening full screen with a back button — the same shape as Settings.
85. October 21, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

    Settings, in one voice

    • Every settings area now reads the same way: a title, a line on what it does, and groups of plain rows with the switch or choice at the right.
    • Switches are green when on; choices sit in a small segmented control; the one Save button, where an area has one, is at the top right.
    • Chat, Performance, Accessibility, Notifications, Privacy, Advanced, Language and Developer were rebuilt row by row; the others got the same colours and sizes.
    • Appearance no longer swaps the whole app to your device's font the moment you open it. Venoly Sans is the default; the device font is a choice.
86. October 21, 2026ImprovedMessaging

    Messages, settled

    • Message rows are calmer: one hover shade, 12 px times beside the name, and reactions that no longer bounce or glow.
    • Hovering a message shows five actions and a More button; More opens the same menu a right-click does, with everything else in it.
    • Replies, threads, polls, attachments, link previews and code blocks sit on plain surfaces instead of outlined boxes.
    • Long platform announcements fold to three lines on phones with a Read more control.
87. October 21, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

    The public pages, plainly

    • Security, Features, Download, Plans, the FAQ and the 404 are rebuilt as plain pages: the security layers as a list with the live sign-in rule beside them, the features as working fragments of the app, every plan perk in one table.
    • Prices and limits on the Plans page now say exactly what the server enforces — storage, file size, message length and included boosts — and server plans are marked as not yet on sale.
    • Log in and sign up are one column on the page with the mascot beside it; the two-factor step has a proper backup-code mode, and every field is labelled for screen readers.
    • The member list on phones and tablets opens as a panel you can close — with a close button, a tap outside it, or Escape.
    • Plans inside Settings no longer show the public site header and footer.
88. October 21, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

    The app chrome, settled

    • One dark ground with thin lines between the server rail, the channel list, the conversation and the member list — no blurred bars.
    • Round server icons; the one you are in has a ring, unread ones a small mark.
    • The channel header shows search, pinned messages, a tools menu and the member list — the row of thirteen icons is gone, and the tools are the same at every window size.
    • A calmer composer; on phones the extra icons step aside for the text.
    • Settings on a phone is a list, then one area per screen with a back button; links from emails open the right area.
    • Home now answers "what needs me?": unread, mentions, requests and reminders as plain rows with counts, then your servers and what you missed.
89. October 21, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

    Voice channels, sessions and word filters: a round of fixes

    • Joining a voice channel from its own page no longer crashes the view; leaving it no longer leaves an error card behind.
    • "Log out other sessions" now also disconnects those devices on the spot instead of letting them stay connected until they reconnected.
    • Server word filters (blocked patterns) are checked when you save them: a pattern that cannot be matched safely is refused with the reason, and matching is case-insensitive as before.
    • The Mentions inbox only shows messages from channels you can still read.
    • Links in emails now open the right Settings section (for example the new-login alert opens Login Activity), and the sender address reads Venoly, Emmen.
    • A crash caught by the recovery card is now actually reported, as the card said it was.
90. October 21, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

    Docs, legal pages and the changelog share one readable layout

    • Every long page — the docs hub, architecture, protocols, self-hosting, developers, the Engineering Constitution, the For-AI knowledge base, Terms, Privacy, the Law of Venoly and all legal pages — now uses the same layout: a contents list that follows you, a comfortable reading width, and full-contrast text.
    • Nothing was cut: the word counts of every page were checked before and after. The numbered clauses stay numbered; the decorative boxes, fade-ins and tiny uppercase labels are gone.
    • Tables fold into label/value pairs on phones and code blocks scroll inside their box instead of pushing the page sideways.
91. October 21, 2026NewApps & Platform

    A new front page, built around the app itself

    • venoly.nl now opens on a working slice of a real server: type a message, toggle a reaction, and try any of the 31 themes on it before you sign up.
    • Underneath it: three promises we refuse to make and what is true instead, the actual login-guard policy as code, the plans in plain words, and the questions people ask — no cards, badges or stock pictures.
    • The public site shares one navigation and one footer, every control shows a clear focus ring for keyboard users, and the cookie notice keeps to its own row instead of hiding the page.
92. October 21, 2026FixedApps & Platform

    Subtle colours, borders and highlights now show up as designed

    • A styling bug meant hundreds of soft tints across the app — selected items, badges, icon tiles, hover states, focus rings, dimmed backdrops — never rendered at all, and many outlines fell back to a harsh light-grey border instead of their intended subtle colour.
    • They all render now, in every theme, so cards, buttons and highlights look the way they were meant to.
93. October 21, 2026ImprovedSecurity & Privacy

    You now get an email whenever your password changes

    • Every password change — from Settings, through a reset link, or set by Venoly staff when recovering an account — now sends a "Your password was changed" email with the time, device and IP, so you find out straight away if it wasn't you.
    • A password reset has to actually replace your password: setting the same one again is refused, and the reset link keeps working so you can pick a different one.
    • Passwords need at least 8 characters everywhere now. Changing it from Settings used to accept a single character.
94. September 6, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

    Refreshing the security puzzle no longer counts as a login attempt

    • Loading a new captcha, refreshing your session and signing out were all being counted as "authentication attempts", so a busy household sharing one connection could trip the brute-force guard on the signup page and be locked out of everything for a minute. Only real password, 2FA and reset attempts count now.
    • The captcha itself has its own sensible limit, and if you do hit it the dialog tells you how long to wait instead of just saying it failed to load.
95. September 6, 2026FixedMessaging

    'Mark Unread' on a vanished message no longer unreads the whole channel

    • Marking a message unread right after it was deleted used to move your read marker to the very beginning of the channel — every message lit up as new. It now tells you the message no longer exists and leaves your place alone.
    • A failed Mark Unread (offline, lost access) now shows why instead of silently doing nothing.
96. September 6, 2026FixedServers & Community

    Joining a server twice at once no longer errors

    • A double-submitted join — a second tab, or a retry after a slow first response — used to answer with an error even though you had joined, and could count you twice in the member total. Both the invite and the direct join path are now idempotent.
97. September 6, 2026ImprovedProfiles & Customisation

    Sending a request to someone who already asked you makes you friends

    • If someone has sent you a friend request and you send them one back, you are now friends straight away and the DM opens — instead of "Friend request already pending" and a trip to the Pending tab.
    • Muting or unmuting a channel or server that fails now says so, rather than the button silently doing nothing.
98. September 6, 2026FixedMessaging

    Edits and deletes that the server refuses are undone on screen

    • Editing a channel message is now confirmed by the server. If it is refused — too long, or the edit did not reach us — the original text comes back and the toast says why, instead of the edit looking applied until your next reload.
    • Same for deleting: a delete that does not go through puts the message back rather than leaving a gap that reappears later.
    • DM edit and delete errors now show the actual reason instead of a generic "Failed" toast.
99. September 6, 2026FixedMessaging

    A DM that fails to send no longer disappears

    • When a direct message is refused — too long, the other person has blocked you, or their privacy setting stops it — your text goes back into the composer and the toast says why, instead of vanishing with "Failed to send message".
    • DMs typed while you are offline are now queued and sent when you reconnect, just like channel messages. The bubble shows "Queued — sends when you're back online" until it goes through.
    • Length errors now read as plain limits ("Direct messages can be at most 4,000 characters") instead of validator jargon.
100. September 6, 2026FixedApps & Platform

     The status page's 90-day history now comes from the incident log

     • The per-service uptime bars on venoly.nl/status were a generated pattern that changed on every visit. They now reflect the published incident log: a day is marked degraded or down only when an incident affecting that service overlaps it, and hovering a day names the incident.
     • Days with nothing published show as operational, and the page says so — it reports what was logged, not an external probe.
101. September 6, 2026FixedProfiles & Customisation

     Your plan's bio length and clip slots now show up in Settings

     • The profile editor capped everyone at a 500-character bio and 3 clip-gallery slots — the Free numbers — even when your plan grants more (Aurora: 2,000 characters and 12 clips). The form now uses your plan's real allowance.
     • A clip upload refused because the gallery is full no longer leaves the video sitting in storage.
102. September 6, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Reminder quick-sets and event times respect your timezone

     • The "15 min", "30 min" and "1 hour" reminder buttons no longer fill in a time that is already in the past if you live east of UTC (they were rejected with "Reminder must be in the future"); every quick-set now lands exactly where it says.
     • Editing a server event no longer shows — and re-saves — its start and end shifted by your UTC offset, and events you create are stored at the moment you picked no matter where you are.
103. September 6, 2026FixedMessaging

     Notifications open the right conversation

     • Clicking a DM notification in the bell or the Notifications inbox now opens that DM — it used to land on the Friends list.
     • Friend-request notifications open the Pending tab of Friends; accepted requests open your friends list.
     • DM and friend-request notifications say what happened ("sent you a message", "sent you a friend request") instead of "mentioned you in #".
     • Each new DM or friend request raises one desktop alert, not two.
     • A message link that points further back in history now keeps loading older messages until it finds the message, instead of stopping after one page.
104. September 6, 2026FixedMessaging

     Message links land on the message

     • Opening a message from a notification, a mention, search or a copied link now scrolls back through history to reach it — before, anything older than the newest 50 messages was quietly ignored and you were left at the bottom.
     • The same links now work in DMs, which used to open the conversation without jumping to the message at all.
     • Once you have been taken to a linked message, new messages arriving no longer yank the view back to it.
     • Scrolling up to load older history no longer shows it as "50 new" on the jump-to-bottom button.
105. September 6, 2026FixedMessaging

     Voice messages in DMs play inline and arrive instantly

     • Recording a voice message in a DM now shows up for both of you straight away — before, neither the sender nor the recipient saw it until a reload, and the recipient never got a notification.
     • DM voice messages play in an inline player instead of appearing as a "voice.webm" download link.
     • "Show transcript" now works on voice messages in DMs, not just in server channels.
106. September 6, 2026FixedServers & Community

     "Back to server" takes you back to the server

     • Opening a server without a specific channel — the "Back to server" link on the FAQ, Tickets, Quests, Teams, Automations and Server Profile pages, "Enter server" at the end of onboarding, or a plain /channels/<server> link — used to drop you on the Friends list. It now opens the server's first text channel, as it was always meant to.
107. September 6, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     No more surprise sign-outs when browsing quickly

     • Since the web app moved its session into a secure cookie, the request guard had been treating every signed-in browser as an anonymous visitor and counting the whole household behind one connection together. Click through channels briskly for a minute and everything started answering "too many requests" — sometimes bouncing you to the login page. Signed-in sessions are now recognised properly, so only real floods trip it.
     • A one-off hiccup while the app restores your session (a throttled or failed request) no longer makes it forget you are signed in.
108. September 6, 2026FixedMessaging

     GIF picker no longer sends placeholder tiles

     • The GIF button showed twenty grey "GIF 1…20" placeholders, and picking one posted a long block of gibberish into the channel. The picker now searches through Venoly's own API (so your IP and search terms never go to Tenor from your browser) and says plainly when GIF search is not set up yet.
109. September 6, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Custom server emojis now show up in chat

     • Emojis uploaded in Server Settings → Emoji were insertable from the picker but always appeared as plain :name: text in messages. They now render as the image — in new and old messages alike — and a freshly uploaded or deleted emoji is reflected without a reload.
110. September 6, 2026FixedMessaging

     Stickers show up in DMs

     • A sticker sent in a direct message appeared as an empty bubble for both people. Stickers now render in DMs the same way they do in server channels.
111. September 6, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Reaction roles follow your reaction

     • Reacting to a reaction-role message gives you the role, and removing your reaction takes it away again. Previously only reacting counted — removing the reaction did nothing, and reacting a second time quietly took the role away while the emoji still showed as yours.
112. September 6, 2026FixedMessaging

     Reactions in DMs show up straight away

     • Reacting to a direct message saved the reaction but did not draw it — for you or the other person — until the conversation was reopened, which made it look like nothing happened. DM reactions now appear (and update) live, the same way they do in server channels.
113. September 6, 2026FixedMessaging

     See and cancel your scheduled messages

     • A message you scheduled with the clock button could not be seen or cancelled afterwards — it just went out at the chosen time. The clock button now opens your queue: every message you have scheduled, in every channel, with a Cancel button. With a draft typed it still schedules that draft, and shows what is already queued underneath.
114. September 6, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Public Discover works again, and sign-in takes you where you were going

     • The public Discover page (venoly.nl/discover) showed "Something went wrong" instead of servers. It renders again, and each card now leads somewhere real: the server's public page when it has one, otherwise straight into the in-app join.
     • Joining from a server's public page while signed in used to bounce you back to Discover with no way to join. It now opens the join prompt in the app for that server, and tells you why if the server is not open for direct join. Invite-only servers say so instead of showing a Join button.
     • Signing in (or up) after being sent to the login page — from a support ticket, an event, a team member's "Ask a question", an app authorisation, or any link that needs an account — now returns you to that page instead of the friends list. Discord and Google sign-in included. When your session expires mid-app, signing back in returns you to the page you were on.
     • Tag chips on a server's public page now filter Discover as intended.
115. September 6, 2026FixedMessaging

     Message threads work again

     • "Create Thread" on a message always failed with "Failed to create thread" — the request was being sent in a shape the server rejected, so no thread was ever created. It works now.
     • Messages with a thread show a "N replies" chip underneath; click it to open the thread. The count updates live as replies come in.
     • Your threads inbox (Notifications → Threads) now opens the thread itself instead of dropping you at the top of the channel.
     • Choosing "Create Thread" on a message that already has one opens the existing thread instead of erroring.
116. September 6, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     Your online-status privacy setting now applies everywhere

     • Settings → Privacy → "Who can see when you're online?" only governed live status updates and your friends list. Member lists, profile cards, DM conversations and "now playing" still showed your real status to anyone. They now all respect the setting: Friends shows it to friends only, Server Members to people who share a server with you, Nobody to no one.
     • "Server Members" used to behave like "Nobody" for live updates — the people in your servers never saw you come online. They do now.
     • Profile Visibility → "Server Members" is now enforced: someone who shares no server with you gets "This profile is members-only" instead of your full profile.
117. September 5, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Trivia games survive a server restart

     • If the server restarted mid-game (which happens on every update), the trivia countdown froze at 0:00, answers were refused as too late, and the host could not start a new game in that channel for up to an hour. The game now picks up where it left off the next time anyone looks at it or answers.
118. September 5, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Focus rooms no longer skip the break

     • With two or more people in a focus room, everyone's timer hit 0:00 at once and each one told the server to move on — so the break was skipped straight into the next focus block, and your focus minutes were counted once per person in the room. The server now advances one block exactly once, and the manual Skip button works the same way.
     • Shared rooms — the whiteboard, watch and listening parties, breakout rooms and co-op lobbies — no longer lose a change when two people act at the same moment.
119. September 5, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Trivia counts every answer

     • When several players answered a trivia question at the same moment, only some of the answers were kept — the rest were silently dropped and those players got no points for the round. Every answer is recorded now, whoever clicks first.
120. September 5, 2026FixedVoice & Video

     Spatial voice channels can be created again

     • Picking "Spatial voice" when creating a channel had returned an "invalid option" error since May — the server never accepted the type the button sent. It creates the walk-around room now, with the lounge layout attached.
     • Joining a spatial room actually connects your microphone now; the voice-token step used to refuse anything that was not a plain voice channel.
     • Spatial rooms with people in them show up under "Who's live" on Home, and the Join button opens the room itself instead of an empty text view.
121. September 5, 2026FixedMessaging

     The pin counter on the channel header works again

     • The small number next to the pin icon at the top of a channel had been stuck at zero since March — it read the wrong field from the server. It now shows the real count and moves the moment someone pins or unpins a message.
     • Staff: the user detail page listed "0 active" boosts for everyone, and the email broadcast preview said it would reach 0 users. Both now show the real numbers.
122. September 5, 2026FixedProfiles & Customisation

     Notification settings follow you between devices

     • The Notifications page never loaded what you had saved — on a new device it showed the defaults, and the first toggle you touched quietly wrote those defaults back over your real settings. It now shows your saved values everywhere.
     • The "Login alerts" switch in Chat Settings had the same problem and could show On while alerts were actually off.
     • Quiet hours are now kept in the timezone you see on screen. Before, unless you had picked a zone in Language & Region, the server applied your window in UTC — an hour or two off for most people, so pushes still arrived inside it.
123. September 5, 2026FixedMessaging

     Reminders you missed while away now catch up with you

     • A reminder that came due while you had no Venoly tab open used to fire into the void — it left your Reminders list and nothing ever told you. Now it is shown the next time you connect, marked as missed with the time it was due.
     • A reminder that fires while you are online still pops up right away, as before.
124. September 5, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     Replies stay inside the channel

     • A reply can only quote a message from the channel it is posted in. Previously the reply preview would quote any message by id — including one from a channel you could not see — and ping its author.
     • Replying to a message that was deleted in the meantime now tells you so instead of failing with a generic error.
125. September 5, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Role changes take effect while you are looking

     • When someone gives you a role (or takes one away, or edits what a role can do), the buttons that depend on it — the channel "+", the settings gear, invites, nickname — now update on the spot. Before, you saw the buttons of the roles you had when you opened the server, until you reloaded.
     • Server Settings does the same: the tabs you can open follow your permissions live.
126. September 5, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Timeouts now cover everything, not just plain messages

     • A member who has been timed out by a moderator could still open threads, write forum posts and replies, create polls, forward and schedule messages, upload files, react, and join voice — only the ordinary message box refused them. Every one of those now says how long the timeout has left.
     • Timing someone out while they are in a voice channel ends their call right away.
127. September 5, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Live updates now follow who is allowed to see what

     • A member who was kicked, banned or left a server kept receiving that server's live messages, typing indicators and voice events until their connection happened to reset — nothing revoked the live feed when the membership ended. The server now disappears from their sidebar the moment it happens and no further events reach them.
     • Making a channel private (or changing who may see it) took effect live for everyone in the server: the channel now vanishes for members who lost access and appears for members who gained it, without a reload.
     • The same goes for roles. Being given the role that unlocks a private channel makes the channel appear straight away; losing that role (or the role being deleted) hides it again and stops its live feed. Reaction roles, level rewards, onboarding grants, shop role purchases, invite-reward tiers and birthday roles are all covered.
     • AI characters no longer flicker offline every few minutes. The periodic presence cleanup treated them as crashed sessions because they have no socket connection; the built-in characters and any installed marketplace persona now stay online as intended.
     • Voice calls end when they should. Being kicked or banned from a server, leaving it, or losing access to the voice channel you are in now disconnects you from that call (and drops you from the participant list for everyone else) instead of leaving you on the line until you hung up yourself.
     • Joining a server from Discover, creating one (from scratch, a template or a Discord import), or being added by staff now connects you to its live feed immediately. Before, only invite-link joins did; the other paths left you without presence, channel and voice updates for that server until your connection reset.
     • The member list updates itself when someone joins or leaves the server, instead of waiting for you to switch channels.
128. September 5, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     Security-code emails now say what the code is for

     • The email that carries a one-time security code (confirming a new email address, for example) showed the literal text "{$action_label}" where it should have said what you were confirming — a placeholder the sender was filling under the wrong name. Every code still worked; the email just did not explain itself. It now reads "Use this code to confirm your new email address".
129. September 5, 2026FixedMoney & Plans

     The boosts included with Aurora and Supernova are back

     • Aurora includes 2 server boosts and Supernova 4, but since late May the only boosts you could place were ones the Venoly team had granted by hand — the plan-included ones were advertised and never delivered. They now show up under Settings → Server Boosts as "Included with your plan" and can be placed on any server you belong to; they stay there for as long as you subscribe and come back when you cancel or downgrade.
     • The one-click Boost button in the server menu uses a plan boost first and only spends a granted credit when none is free.
     • Boost Level 2 unlocks 150 emoji slots — the pricing and features pages said 100, which was already the Level 1 number.
130. September 5, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     A mistyped two-factor code no longer costs you a full re-login

     • Since late August each two-factor prompt was single-use, but the sign-in form did not know that: after one wrong code the next try was refused with "This 2FA challenge was already used" and you had to go back and type your password again. A wrong code now simply lets you try again on the same prompt — the per-account attempt limit is unchanged.
     • If a prompt has genuinely expired (they last five minutes), the form now returns you to the password step with a clear message instead of leaving you on a screen no code could pass.
131. September 5, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     "Remember me" now actually remembers you for 30 days

     • Ticking "Remember me" at sign-in was meant to keep you signed in for 30 days, but one of the two pieces of the session still ran out after 7 — so if you were away for more than a week you were asked to sign in again anyway. Both pieces now expire together, and every visit extends the session as before.
     • Sessions that have expired are now removed from our side within six hours instead of lingering. The Privacy page describes the exact lifetimes.
132. September 5, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     Profile pictures from Discord and Google sign-in now live on Venoly

     • If you signed up with Discord or Google, your profile picture was loaded from their servers every time someone looked at it — so Discord or Google saw the IP address of everyone who viewed your profile. The picture is now copied onto Venoly at sign-up, through the same virus scan and metadata strip as an uploaded avatar, and the existing accounts were converted.
     • Discord deletes old profile pictures when you change yours, which quietly left 22 accounts with a broken avatar. Those now show the initial instead; upload a new picture in Settings → Profile whenever you like.
133. September 5, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     Bridged channels say so, and only the linked chat can post through them

     • A channel bridged to Telegram or Discord now shows a "Relayed to …" marker in its header, and the Privacy Policy explains what a bridge sends where. Before, members had no way to know their messages were leaving Venoly.
     • A Telegram bridge accepted messages from any chat the bot could see — anyone who found the bot could post into the Venoly channel by messaging it directly. Only the chat the owner linked is accepted now.
     • Webhook "member joined" and "member left" events fired whenever a member came online or went offline (ignoring their status-privacy setting), not when they actually joined or left. They now fire on real joins, leaves, kicks and bans.
     • Discord webhook URLs for bridges are now sealed at rest like the other integration credentials, and every call to Telegram or Discord times out after 10 seconds instead of holding the send path open.
134. September 5, 2026ImprovedSecurity & Privacy

     AI emoji and AI characters: what leaves Venoly, said plainly

     • Server Settings → Emojis → "Generate with AI" now says where your description goes (pollinations.ai draws the image), and the Subprocessors page lists that service. The generated image also goes through the same checks as any upload before it is stored.
     • The Privacy Policy and the Law of Venoly said AI characters were inactive and ran on our own hardware. Neither was true any more: characters are live and, like the other AI features, their replies are generated by Groq. Both pages now say so, and list every AI feature that sends text to Groq.
     • An emoji name is now unique within a server (case-insensitive). Two emojis with the same name could be created before, and only the first was ever reachable.
     • Deleting an image attachment now also deletes its thumbnails — 57 sets of thumbnails from long-deleted images were still on disk and have been removed.
135. September 5, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     Old profile media is really gone

     • Replacing or removing your avatar, banner, profile song, notification sound or a clip now deletes the old file from our storage. Previously the file stayed reachable at its old link.
     • When an account is permanently deleted after its 30-day window, its profile media files are deleted with it.
     • The same now holds for servers: a replaced icon, banner or invite splash, a removed emoji, sticker or soundboard sound, and everything belonging to a deleted server are removed from storage — unless another server or marketplace pack still uses the same file.
136. September 5, 2026ImprovedServers & Community

     Decisions update live

     • A server's Decisions page now picks up new, superseded and deleted decisions as they happen instead of only on reload.
137. September 5, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Moderation notices say what actually happened

     • A warning, timeout or removal in one server now arrives as "Warning in <server>", "Timed out in <server>" or "Removed from <server>", naming the server and — for timeouts — how long it lasts. These used to read "Account Muted" or "Account Suspended", which wrongly suggested your whole account was affected.
     • If repeated warnings put your account into limited standing, the notice now says so and until when, instead of leaving you to discover it when a message fails to send.
     • Each moderation notice appears once in your inbox instead of twice.
138. September 5, 2026FixedApps & Platform

     Platform announcements are actually shown

     • Announcements posted by the Venoly team now appear as a strip at the top of the app (dismiss each one with the ×). The posting tool has existed since the admin panel was built, but nothing on the user side ever displayed them.
139. September 5, 2026FixedMessaging

     Thread replies arrive live

     • Replies in a thread now appear for everyone who has the thread open, without closing and reopening it. Your own reply also shows your name and avatar straight away instead of a "?" until the next reload.
140. September 5, 2026FixedServers & Community

     The verification challenge no longer gets stuck

     • If a friend request or server join failed after you solved the challenge (for example "Friend request already pending"), the challenge stayed open and every further attempt answered "This challenge has already been used". It now closes and shows the real reason; a mistyped code is shown inside the challenge with a fresh one to solve.
141. September 5, 2026ImprovedServers & Community

     Per-member channel permissions, and permission changes in the audit log

     • Server Settings → Channels → Permissions → "+" now lets you pick a member as well as a role — type a name to search the roster. Member overrides were already honoured by the server; the editor just could not create one, and any that existed showed as "Unknown Member".
     • Every change to a channel's permission overrides is now recorded in Server Settings → Audit Log ("Updated Channel Permissions", with how many roles and members are affected). Before, opening a private channel to a role left no trace.
     • On servers with the "member for 10 minutes" verification level, creating a poll, forum post or thread too early now says so, instead of claiming you lack the permission.
142. September 5, 2026NewSecurity & Privacy

     Change your email address from Settings

     • Settings → My Account → Email → Change. Enter the new address and your password; we send a 6-digit code to the new address and only switch the account once you enter it. Your old address gets a heads-up, and every other signed-in device is signed out.
     • Changing your password no longer signs you out of the device you changed it from — only your other sessions are ended.
143. September 5, 2026NewVoice & Video

     Voice channels can have a user limit

     • Server Settings → Channels → pick a voice channel → User limit. Set 1–99 to cap how many people can be in it at once; anyone else gets a clear "channel is full" message instead of a silent failure. Members with Manage Channels can set it. Temporary channels spawned from a Join-to-Create hub inherit the hub's limit.
     • A full channel now refuses you before your microphone connects. Previously the refusal only arrived after the media connection was already up, so you could be in the call without appearing in the member list.
144. September 5, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     Art Gallery: adult category switched off until an age check exists

     • The Art Gallery's "NSFW" category is hidden for everyone until Venoly can verify a viewer is an adult. Those works were also showing up inside the ordinary "Pixel Art" and "Digital" filters, and Venoly admits members from 13 — so they were reachable by anyone signed in. The images are no longer part of the public site either.
145. September 5, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Harden Server, Discovery and lockdown now do what they say

     • Server Settings → Harden Server now applies real settings. Each level sets the verification level and raid protection together and the card lists exactly what it changes — before, picking a level stored a label and changed nothing, while promising "No new joins" and "CAPTCHA on join". A server shows no level until you apply one.
     • Manual lockdown (Raid Protection → Lockdown) now refuses every join, invite links and the Discover page alike. It used to be ignored unless automatic raid protection was also switched on, and joins from Discover skipped lockdown and the verification level entirely.
     • Discovery category and tags are finally saved: the category filter and tag chips on the Discover page had been empty since launch because nothing stored them. Tags are lower-case letters, digits and dashes, up to ten.
     • Overview (name and description), Discovery, Auto-Mod and Harden Server now save for members with Manage Server — those tabs were drawn for them but every save was refused, and Auto-Mod failed to load at all. Bridges and Invite Embed are owner-only and are no longer shown to other members.
     • The Audit Log now records role changes — created, edited, deleted, given to or taken from a member, with the member's name — plus Discovery and Harden Server changes. Role changes were never written before, even though the log had labels for them.
     • Members with Manage Server can now delete any invite from Server Settings → Invites — the delete button was drawn for them but only worked on invites they had created themselves. Invite creation and deletion are now written to the Audit Log with the invite code.
     • Raid Protection no longer offers an "Action" choice (captcha / block / kick): all three did exactly the same thing, because every join already requires a captcha and a spike simply refuses further joins for the rest of the minute. The join-rate description now says so. Saving one Raid Protection field no longer resets the others, and turning lockdown on works even on a server that never opened Raid Protection before.
146. September 5, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Verification, soundboard and onboarding settings that do what they say

     • Server Settings → Verification now shows the level you actually saved (it always showed "None"). "High" is now enforced: new members must be in the server for 10 minutes before they can post, and "Very High" behaves the same for now — owners and administrators are never held back.
     • Soundboard clips are uploaded to Venoly (MP3, OGG, WAV, FLAC or WebM, up to 2 MB) instead of being linked from another site, so a clip can never send everyone in a voice channel to an outside URL.
     • Verification, Raid Protection, Widget and Onboarding settings now save for members with Manage Server, and the Soundboard for members with Manage Emojis & Stickers — those tabs were shown but every save was refused unless you were the owner.
     • Auto-roles need Manage Roles, can only be roles below your own highest role, and a newly added one shows its name straight away instead of a blank row.
147. September 5, 2026NewServers & Community

     Server support tickets you can actually open

     • Servers that switch on tickets now get a "Support Tickets" entry in the server menu, where you can open a private request to the server team, follow the thread, reply and close it.
     • The "Enable Tickets" switch is now enforced — tickets cannot be opened on servers where it is off — and a ticket without a subject or an empty reply is refused instead of failing silently.
     • Server Settings → Tickets works again for owners: the switch showed OFF whatever you had saved, "View All Tickets" never appeared, and changing the per-user limit quietly switched tickets off. Members with Manage Server can now run the desk too (settings, priority, status, assignee).
148. September 5, 2026ImprovedServers & Community

     Reaction roles and timeouts now say what happened

     • Reacting on a reaction-role message toggled the role silently — no confirmation, nothing visible — so people reacted again and removed the role they had just picked up. You now get a toast naming the role that was added or removed.
     • A staff timeout (or its lifting) is announced the moment it happens, rather than surfacing only as an error on your next message.
149. September 5, 2026FixedMessaging

     Pins update live for everyone in the channel

     • When someone else pinned or unpinned a message, your view did not change until you reloaded the channel — the pin icon stayed where it was and the Pinned panel kept the old list. The server was already broadcasting the change; the app just never listened. Now the icon flips and an open Pinned panel refreshes the moment it happens.
150. September 5, 2026FixedServers & Community

     "Export Server Data" actually downloads something

     • The export button in Server Settings → Delete Server has never worked — it pointed at a route that did not exist, so every click ended in an error. It now downloads a JSON snapshot of your server: settings, categories, channels, roles, emojis, invites, FAQs and the member list (usernames, nicknames, roles, join dates). Messages are not included; they belong to the people who wrote them.
     • Owner-only, like the rest of that section.
151. September 5, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     Aegis Co-pilot queue is moderators-only

     • On servers with the Co-pilot enabled, any member could open the recommendation queue, ask it to profile another member and approve or reject items. Reading, generating and deciding now require a moderator permission (Manage Server, Moderate Members, Kick or Ban) — the owner can still delete entries.
     • Server Settings only lists the AI Automations, Monetization and Onboarding Editor tools for the server owner, since those pages are owner-only anyway; the Co-pilot link follows the same moderator rule.
152. September 5, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Channel categories work properly from Server Settings

     • The Channels tab in Server Settings now shows your real categories. Creating a "category" there used to produce an odd text channel instead of a folder, and choosing a category for a channel never saved.
     • You can create, rename and delete categories from that tab, add a channel straight into a category with its "+", and drag channels to reorder them within a category.
     • Anyone with "Manage Channels" can manage categories — it was owner-only before, even though the buttons were shown to everyone with the permission.
     • The "Join to Create" toggle on voice channels now saves. It looked enabled but was silently ignored, so temporary channels were never spawned.
     • Renames, moves and reorders now show up live for everyone in the server instead of after a reload.
153. September 5, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Webhooks can now be managed by anyone with the "Manage Webhooks" permission

     • Giving a role "Manage Webhooks" used to be cosmetic: the webhook settings appeared, but every action was refused unless you were the server owner. Roles holding the permission (and Administrators) can now list, create, edit, test and delete webhooks.
154. September 5, 2026FixedServers & Community

     The "Change Nickname" role permission now actually does something

     • Switching "Change Nickname" off for a role used to change nothing — every member could still set a server nickname. It is now enforced: without the permission, "Edit Nickname" disappears from the server menu, the nickname field in Server Profile is locked, and the request is refused if sent anyway. Existing nicknames stay as they are.
     • To keep things exactly as they were, every server's @everyone role has been given Change Nickname. Nobody loses the ability unless the server owner now turns it off.
     • Saving your Server Profile no longer re-sends an unchanged nickname, so bio and colour still save on servers that lock nicknames.
155. September 5, 2026FixedServers & Community

     The "Create Invite" role permission now actually does something

     • Switching "Create Invite" off for a role used to change nothing — every member could still generate invite links. It is now enforced: members without the permission no longer see "Invite People" in the server menu, and the request is refused if they try anyway.
     • To keep things exactly as they were, every server's @everyone role has been given Create Invite. Nobody loses the ability to invite unless the server owner now turns it off.
     • The invite dialog now tells you why an invite could not be created instead of silently doing nothing.
156. September 4, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     Deleting your account now works the way the Privacy Policy says

     • Delete Account deactivates your account immediately and permanently removes it — messages, DMs, uploads, memberships, everything — 30 days later. Until then you can have it restored by emailing support@venoly.nl from the account's email address. It used to be scrubbed on the spot with no way back, while your messages stayed behind.
     • If you try to sign in during those 30 days you are told the exact deletion date and how to restore the account, rather than being treated as banned.
     • Servers you own are handed to their longest-standing admin (or member) when your account is purged, and deleted only if nobody else is in them.
157. September 4, 2026FixedMoney & Plans

     Monetization products pick a real role or channel

     • Creating a paid role or channel-access product now offers a picker of your server's roles and channels instead of a box to paste a UUID into. A typo there used to be accepted and only fail after a buyer had paid.
     • If the role behind a product is deleted later, a purchase still completes (and the server logs it) rather than getting stuck.
158. September 4, 2026FixedApps & Platform

     Error messages say what went wrong

     • Forms, Decisions, Marketplace, Monetization, Onboarding, Reminders, Kudos, Soundboard, Copilot and a dozen other screens used to answer every refused action with a generic "Failed" — the real reason from the server (a limit, a missing permission, a bad value) was fetched but never shown. They all display it now.
159. September 4, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Server templates work again

     • Creating a server from a template — your own snapshots or anything in the gallery — failed every time with an "invalid input" error. It creates the server now, with the template's channels, categories and roles intact.
     • Templates that do not include an @everyone role (the AI-generated ones) now get the standard default role, so people who join the new server can actually see its channels.
160. September 4, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Reaction roles and the birthday role follow the role hierarchy

     • Creating a reaction role or setting the birthday role used to accept any role in the server — including ones above the person setting it up. Both now apply the same rule as assigning a role by hand: you can only bind roles below your own highest role.
     • The birthday and starboard channels are now checked to belong to your server, and reaction roles can only be attached to messages in your server.
161. September 4, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     AI helpers stop at private channels

     • Thread summaries, smart replies, the assistant's channel context and catch-up only checked that you were a member of the server, not that you could see the channel — so a private channel's recent messages could be summarised for anyone in the server. Every one of them now uses the same per-channel view check as the chat itself, and global catch-up skips channels you cannot open.
162. September 4, 2026FixedMessaging

     Error messages say what went wrong again

     • About thirty server-side validation errors — slow-mode wait times, timeout durations, slash-command names, FAQ capture, voice clips, bulk delete and more — were reaching the app with an empty message, so you saw a generic "something went wrong" instead of the actual reason. The text now comes through.
163. September 4, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     Saved messages respect where you can actually read

     • Saving a message now requires that you can see the channel it lives in. Previously a saved-message entry could be created for any message ID, which then showed its text in your Saved Messages list even if you had never been in that server.
     • Saved Messages from a server you have since left no longer appear, and ones from a channel you lost access to show a placeholder instead of the text — you can still remove them.
     • The same rule now applies to reminders that point at a message, and forwarding a message into a read-only channel is refused like any other post there.
164. September 4, 2026FixedMessaging

     Polls actually show up in the channel now

     • Creating a poll from the composer now posts it into the channel as a message with a live poll card — vote, see the tally update in real time, and watch the countdown if it has an end time. Previously the poll was saved but never displayed to anyone, including its creator, the moment the "Poll created!" toast appeared.
     • Deleting the poll message deletes the poll and its votes, so anyone who can delete messages can take a poll down.
165. September 4, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Read-only channels are read-only everywhere, and polls stay inside their server

     • A channel where *Send Messages* is denied is now also closed to threads, forum posts and replies, polls and `/tts`. Each of those had its own posting path that never checked the permission, so a "read-only" announcements channel could still be posted into through a thread or a poll.
     • Polls can only be viewed and voted on by members who can see the channel they were posted in. Previously anyone signed in could vote on — or clear their vote from — any poll on the platform if they knew its id.
166. September 4, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     Blocks and DM privacy now cover group DMs, notifications and calls

     • The "Nobody" and "Server members" options for *Who can DM me* and *Who can send friend requests* finally save. They were listed in Settings → Privacy but the save silently failed every time, so the two strictest settings could never actually be used.
     • Group DMs respect blocks and your DM privacy setting. Someone you blocked — or anyone, if your DMs are set to friends or server members only — could previously add you to a group DM and message you there. Creating a group or adding members now applies the same rules as a direct DM.
     • If someone in a group DM blocks you, you can no longer post in that group (they keep the group; you can leave it). Blocking someone also stops their notifications and calls from reaching you.
167. September 4, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Read-only channels work now

     • The Send Messages permission is now enforced for everyone. Deny it for @everyone on a channel and members get a read-only composer instead of a text box — before, the toggle changed nothing and anyone could still post (bots were the only ones it ever applied to). Server owners and Administrators are unaffected; a role or member with an explicit allow on the channel can still post.
     • Scheduled messages follow the same rule: you can only schedule into a channel you can post in, and a scheduled message is dropped if that changes before it fires.
168. September 4, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Ascendant runs save again, and a few things that quietly did nothing

     • Finishing an Ascendant run now records your souls, XP and leaderboard entry — every run-end had been failing behind the scenes since mid-August, so nothing was saved.
     • The server wiki page list loads again; it always came back empty before.
     • Unread badges now show for announcement, forum and rules channels, and for the main community channel — badges were only ever counted for plain text channels.
     • Looking for Group posts can attach a voice channel again: the voice channel picker was always empty, and picking one by hand failed.
     • A server slowmode rule passed through governance now actually applies to the server's channels (and lifts when the rule is repealed) — before, the vote passed and nothing changed.
     • Creating a channel with a name that already exists says so, instead of "an unexpected error occurred".
169. September 4, 2026FixedMessaging

     Unread badges stay honest when messages are deleted

     • Deleting the newest message in a channel no longer makes the whole channel light up as unread for everyone who had read up to it.
     • Mark as read in a channel's right-click menu now works — it silently did nothing before.
     • Marking a channel read right after a message was deleted no longer fails behind the scenes.
     • Staff viewing a member's boosts from the admin page no longer get "permission denied", and marketplace items submitted by staff go live without waiting in the review queue.
     • Messages that arrive while you're already in a channel or DM are now marked read as you see them, so they no longer come back as unread on your next reload or other device.
     • Messages sent while offline now show Sending… or Queued until they actually go out, and they go out as soon as Venoly is reachable again — not only when your device's network comes back. A queued reply also keeps replying to the right message.
170. September 2, 2026FixedMessaging

     Attachment-only messages send again, and every upload is scanned

     • Sending an image, file or voice note without a caption no longer fails with "message content is required" — an attachment is enough.
     • Images and voice notes sent from the chat box now take the same path as every other upload: virus-scanned, counted against your storage, and subject to the same size and content rules. Previously this one route skipped all of that.
     • AI features that read a channel (smart replies, summaries, the assistant's channel context) once again see readable messages instead of encrypted blobs.
171. September 2, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Delegated server permissions now actually work

     • Members you granted Manage Roles, Manage Emojis or a moderation permission were still told "only the owner can do this" for reaction roles, custom emoji and member warnings. Those checks now read your role permissions correctly.
     • The reaction-role and widget channel pickers were always empty, so nobody — owner included — could create a reaction role from the UI. Fixed.
     • Stage channels: joining no longer lets a member pick their own role. You start in the audience; only the owner, a Manage Channels holder or a current speaker can bring you on stage, set the topic or move someone back to the audience.
     • Looking up a server's LFG posts or trivia leaderboard now requires being a member of that server.
     • The audit-ledger Verify button reported tampering on every entry with more than one field. It now uses the same integrity check the rest of the ledger uses.
172. August 31, 2026ImprovedSecurity & Privacy

     Everything sensitive is now encrypted at rest

     • Your messages, DMs, email address, IP history, birthday and other personal data are now stored encrypted with AES-256-GCM or ChaCha20-Poly1305, each value bound to its own database row, under keys the database itself never holds. A stolen copy of the database or a backup is unreadable without those keys.
     • Message search still works without a readable index — it runs on a keyed, blinded index that reveals term-frequency patterns, not words. Prefix matching (like typing half a word) is the one thing it cannot do.
     • Database backups are sealed with the same system, and lookups like signing in by email use keyed blind indexes instead of plain hashes.
     • Honest limits, as always: the running server holds the keys (that is deliberate — moderation has to be able to read content), so this protects stored copies, not a compromised live server. The Privacy Policy and the Law of Venoly describe exactly what is and is not covered.
173. August 23, 2026NewApps & Platform

     The Venoly Engineering Constitution is public

     • New page at venoly.nl/vec — the Engineering Constitution, the 84-article specification that decides what has to be true before any change ships here. It binds the people who work on Venoly and the automated agents that work alongside them, and it is public so you can read exactly what we hold ourselves to.
     • The same page lists the open-source tools we publish at github.com/Venoly-BV — all MIT-licensed and free to use, including the agent stack the Constitution ships inside and a from-scratch x86 bootloader.
174. August 21, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

     Support is one click away

     • Added a Get help button (life-ring icon) to the bottom user bar, right next to Report a bug — it opens the support ticket page directly. Opening a ticket was buried in Settings before, which made it hard to find.
175. August 21, 2026ImprovedSecurity & Privacy

     Support tickets in the owner panel + child-safety reporting

     • Support tickets are now in the Ownership Panel (Moderation → Support Tickets), not just the staff portal — with per-status counts and an "Active" view so the queue never looks empty when tickets are simply in progress.
     • The Report menu has a dedicated Child safety / CSAM option that routes straight to the Child Safety Unit’s queue, separate from general moderation.
176. August 21, 2026NewServers & Community

     Private channels, and a pile of fixes

     • Private channels — flip the Private toggle when creating or editing a channel and it disappears from the sidebar for everyone except the roles and members you allow (managers always keep access). Set the fine-grained access in the channel’s Permissions tab.
     • Fixed the reaction emoji picker overlapping itself — emoji now have room to breathe and are easy to pick.
     • Fixed your theme resetting to default after a restart or update — custom themes now load instantly from cache on boot.
     • Half-screen windows are first-class now: the channel toolbar collapses into a tidy menu, and you can collapse the whole channel sidebar (and bring it back from the server rail) to reclaim width.
     • The top-servers list on the admin dashboard shows real member counts again.
177. August 21, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

     A real developer platform

     • Bots are no longer stuck to one channel — a new bot API lists every channel a bot can reach across the servers it’s installed in, so bots work server-wide.
     • Meet venoly.js, our official bot SDK: a clean Node client for the API and gateway. It ships with the platform now; npm publish follows.
     • Bot tokens stay separate from your account, are shown once, can be regenerated if leaked (every regeneration is logged), and leaked-token abuse is on the developer per the Developer Terms.
178. August 20, 2026NewProfiles & Customisation

     Your chat, your rules

     • Chat spacing you control — new "Space between message groups" slider (0-24px) in Settings → Appearance, with a Discord-style 16px default. Messages from the same person stay tight; new authors get air.
     • 13 new themes — Crimson Red, Crimson Purple, Pine, Velvet, Obsidian, Espresso, Royal, Synthwave, Sakura, Storm, Honey, Void, and Blackout: full black, every surface #000, for OLED purists. The theme picker got a popup browser so Appearance stays tidy.
     • Venoly Sans — our very own typeface is now the default: derived for Venoly with a touch more breathing room between letters for a calmer read. All previous fonts remain in the picker.
     • Custom nameplate colours — pick any colour for your name, not just presets. And the RGB nameplate actually cycles now (it was frozen), plus nameplates finally show on your name in chat.
     • 8 new avatar frames — including properly animated ones: Halo and Orbit spin, Heartbeat breathes, Prism cycles the spectrum. Sakura, Abyss, Crimson and Mono round out the set.
     • See colours your way — a new toggle lets you view everyone’s custom name colours as the default colour, just for you. Role colours always stay.
     • The profile "pulse" effect now radiates from your avatar instead of drawing a stray circle over your interests, and the 100+ games arcade lives at the top corner of your Home tab.
179. August 20, 2026NewApps & Platform

     A brand-new homepage

     • venoly.nl got a ground-up redesign: the banner art now sits in a browser-window showcase with the mascots re-staged around it, a bold solid-blue stance band ("No ads. No trackers. No chat control."), an honest "What we don't claim" ledger, a bento feature grid with real Venilator policy code, and a cleaner ruled layout throughout. Log out (or open an incognito tab) to see it.
180. August 20, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Channel management for moderators

     • Members with the Manage Channels permission can now actually manage channels: the right-click Edit and Delete entries, the little + next to category names, and Create Channel / Create Category in the server menu all follow the permission instead of being owner-only. (The server always enforced the permission — the buttons were just hidden from everyone who held it.)
181. August 20, 2026ImprovedMoney & Plans

     One way to buy a plan

     • Spark, Aurora and Supernova now upgrade through the same checkout as Premium — pick a tier on the Plans page and pay, no waiting. The old "upgrades are activated manually, DM @founder" instructions are gone because they stopped being true.
     • Links like venoly.nl/aura?plan=user_spark now open checkout for that tier directly.
182. August 20, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

     Crisper icons in more places

     • Link previews in chat now show proper icons for GitHub, YouTube, Spotify, Twitch and friends instead of emoji lookalikes — and game & discovery category chips got the same treatment. Emoji stay exactly where they belong: your messages, reactions, statuses and custom content.
183. August 20, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

     Sharper text, private fonts

     • Venoly has a new default typeface: Instrument Sans — crisper at small sizes and easier on the eyes in long reading sessions. Prefer the old look? Inter, Poppins and JetBrains Mono are still there in Settings → Appearance, joined by the new default.
     • Fonts now load straight from Venoly instead of Google's servers — pages render faster and your IP address is no longer shared with a third party just to draw text.
     • Code blocks, timestamps and other monospace text now actually render in JetBrains Mono — a long-standing bug made them silently fall back to the regular font.
     • Slightly lightened the dimmest text shade so timestamps and hints meet WCAG AA contrast on every surface.
184. August 17, 2026NewProfiles & Customisation

     RGB nameplate

     • New nameplate style: RGB — your name as one solid colour smoothly cycling the entire colour wheel, gamer-setup style. Rainbow stays if you prefer the gradient. Settings → Appearance.
185. August 17, 2026NewMoney & Plans

     Premium, and plans you can share

     • Meet Premium (€2.99/mo) — a way to support Venoly that supersizes your customization: 2,000-character bio, 12 clip slots, more typing styles. Everything stays free; Premium just makes yours bigger.
     • Family & Friend plans! One subscription covers up to 5 people — you pay, your circle gets the perks. Around 40% cheaper than five solo subscriptions. Pick "Family" or "Friends", invite by username, done.
     • Existing Spark, Aurora and Supernova subscribers: the new customization perks are already included in your tier at no extra cost.
     • Both are on the Plans page with PayPal checkout — rolling out now, so if the button politely declines, try again soon.
186. August 17, 2026NewProfiles & Customisation

     Clips, profile layouts, and share-worthy profile links

     • Clip gallery! Add short videos to your profile from Settings → Profile — they show in a grid on your profile card.
     • Rearrange your profile: reorder or hide any section (bio, prompts, song, clips, activity…) with the new Profile Layout editor.
     • Sharing your venoly.nl/u/username link now unfurls into a proper profile recap card on Discord, WhatsApp and in Venoly chats — only if your profile is public, and private profiles stay completely invisible.
187. August 17, 2026NewProfiles & Customisation

     Make typing yours

     • Custom typing indicators! Pick "is yapping", "is venting", "is plotting" and friends, an emoji, write your own short one, or hit Surprise Me and let the AI invent one. Set it in Settings → Profile.
     • Your bio grew: 500 characters instead of 190. More room to be you.
     • New badge visibility menu — hide any badge you'd rather not show on your profile.
188. August 16, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Channel right-click menu does what it says

     • "Edit Channel", "Delete Channel" and "Mark as Read" in the channel right-click menu were silently doing nothing. Edit now opens the channel editor, Delete asks and deletes, and Mark as Read clears the unread badge.
189. August 16, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Invite links truly work now

     • Opening any invite link showed "Invite Invalid" no matter what — a security header on the invite page was silently blocking it from talking to Venoly at all. The page can breathe again: it shows the real server and the Join button works.
     • Same fix applies to public server pages (/s/yourserver).
190. August 16, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Joining a server lands you in the chat now

     • Joining a server — through an invite link, the Join box, or Discover — dropped you on a broken, empty channel screen. You now land in the server’s first channel, ready to chat.
     • Old links to that broken screen quietly fix themselves and take you to a real channel.
191. August 16, 2026FixedMessaging

     Link previews are back

     • Links posted in chat had quietly stopped unfurling — every preview came back empty. Previews now render again for regular sites, big pages like GitHub, and sites reachable over IPv6.
     • Sharing a vanity invite (like /invite/chillhub) in chat or on Discord/WhatsApp now shows the server's own name, art and custom embed instead of a generic Venoly card.
192. August 16, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Vanity invite links actually invite people now

     • Boost Level 3 vanity links (like /invite/chillhub) said "Invite Invalid" to everyone who opened them. They now resolve to your server and work as a real, never-expiring invite — in the invite page and the Join box alike.
     • Vanity joins show up in your invite analytics under the vanity name.
193. August 16, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Creating a server works again

     • Solving the captcha when creating a server kept answering "captcha verification required" — your correct answer was being dropped on the way to the server. Server creation now goes through first try.
     • If something else goes wrong after the captcha, you now see the actual error instead of the challenge popping up again.
194. August 15, 2026FixedProfiles & Customisation

     Custom themes now color the whole app

     • Your custom theme used to paint the sidebar and not much else — the main panel, hovers, inputs and dividers stayed stock dark. Every surface is now derived from your palette, so the whole app finally matches.
     • Switching the custom theme off cleanly hands colours back to your chosen preset.
195. August 15, 2026NewProfiles & Customisation

     Four new themes, eight new effects, roomier profiles

     • New looks in Settings → Appearance: Crimson, Ember, Mint and Steel — each a complete theme, top to bottom.
     • Eight new profile effects: Lanterns, Comets, Waves and Galaxy join the animated set; Holographic, Carbon, Sunburst and Noir join the stills.
     • Profiles got a wide two-column layout — about, prompts and activity on one side, badges and mutuals on the other. No more skinny scroll-forever card.
196. August 15, 2026FixedMessaging

     Chat sits where it should

     • In quiet channels the conversation floated to the top of the screen with a big dead gap above the message box. Messages now hug the composer, like you'd expect.
     • Staff chips now show the exact rank — Co-Founder reads Co-Founder, not Founder.
197. August 15, 2026NewMessaging

     Official staff are now unmistakable

     • Venoly team members now carry a Staff chip next to their name in chat — and the founders a gold Founder chip. If the chip isn't there, it's not us.
     • The chip can't be imitated: it comes from the server, not the profile — and it never touches role colours, name accents or your custom theme.
198. August 14, 2026NewApps & Platform

     Spotted a bug? Tell us in one click

     • New Report a bug button in the bottom-left user bar — the little bug next to the settings gear. Describe what broke; the page you were on is attached automatically.
     • Reports go straight into the dev workflow, get verified against the code, and fixed. Today's profile and theme fixes started as reports exactly like these — keep them coming.
199. August 14, 2026FixedProfiles & Customisation

     Your profile no longer forgets itself

     • Opening Settings → Profile showed empty boxes even when you had a bio, about me and pronouns saved — and hitting Save Changes from there genuinely erased them. The editor now always starts from what you actually saved.
     • The same bug quietly reset banner colours, profile effects and display mode. All of it sticks now.
     • If your bio or about me got eaten by this, we're sorry — you'll need to re-add them once. They'll stay put this time.
200. August 14, 2026FixedProfiles & Customisation

     Custom themes stay on after a restart

     • Built a custom theme, watched Venoly forget it next launch? Changing another appearance setting right after flipping the custom-theme switch silently cancelled the save. Fixed — every appearance change now reaches your account.
     • Appearance settings also no longer overwrite your saved preferences just because you opened them in a fresh browser.
201. August 14, 2026FixedApps & Platform

     About tonight's outage — we're sorry

     • For stretches of tonight Venoly kept cutting out with 502 errors — pages not loading, messages not sending, logins bouncing. That was on us, and we're sorry.
     • The cause was a proxy misconfiguration on our API edge: one bad response could briefly convince it our whole API was down, knocking everyone offline for seconds at a time, over and over.
     • It's fixed at the root and hardened so a single hiccup can no longer snowball into a full outage.
     • Related: signing in with Discord had been failing with the same error for days. That's fixed too.
202. August 14, 2026NewMoney & Plans

     Free Aurora handouts have ended

     • Since launch we've been giving the Aurora tier away for free — to most of you, in fact. As of today, free Aurora (and free subscriptions in general) are no longer being handed out.
     • Already have Aurora? You keep it. Nothing changes for existing subscriptions — this only ends new giveaways.
     • Aurora returns as a proper paid plan when payments launch. Until then — thanks for being early.
203. August 14, 2026NewProfiles & Customisation

     27 profile effects — and now they actually move

     • Twenty new profile effects join the original seven: Confetti, Bubbles, Embers, Petals, Starfall, Orbit, Pulse, Autumn, Storm, Glitch, and a whole set of still finishes like Vignette, Film Grain, Gold Frame and Blueprint.
     • The picker in Settings → Profile now sorts them into Animated and Static so you can pick a moving scene or a subtle finishing touch.
     • The original effects were quietly broken — frozen in place, and Rain, Snow and Matrix invisible entirely. Everything animates properly now.
204. August 13, 2026FixedMessaging

     Search actually finds your messages now

     • Message search was returning nothing at all — for everyone, on every search. It now finds what you are looking for across your servers and channels.
     • You only ever see results from channels you have access to.
205. August 13, 2026FixedMessaging

     Direct message and friend notifications are back

     • DMs sent while you were offline left no trace — no push, no bell, nothing waiting when you came back. They now show up properly.
     • Friend requests and accepted-friend alerts were being dropped the same way. Fixed. A resent request refreshes the alert instead of piling up.
     • Mention alerts no longer quote messages from channels you cannot open.
206. August 13, 2026NewApps & Platform

     Design a bot with AI — no code required

     • In the developer portal, describe the bot you want and Venoly designs its whole personality — name, character, greeting and command ideas.
     • Generated bots are personas, not code: they chat in character and run safely on Venoly's own servers. Try your bot right there in the portal before you ship it.
207. August 13, 2026FixedMessaging

     Offline DMs, reactions and unread badges — messaging fixes

     • A DM sent to someone who's offline now reaches them — push notification, a bell entry, and an unread badge waiting when they return.
     • Reacting to a direct message actually sticks now, and unread badges update the moment a message lands in a channel you're not looking at.
     • Going invisible stays invisible — reconnecting no longer flips you back to online.
208. August 13, 2026NewApps & Platform

     Build bots on Venoly — the developer platform opens

     • Want to build a bot? Request developer access in Settings → Developer — the Venoly team reviews every request.
     • Approved developers get the in-app developer portal at /developer/portal: create applications, manage bot tokens and client credentials, set OAuth2 redirect URIs and generate invite links.
     • Credentials are shown exactly once and stored hashed — regenerate them anytime from your application page.
209. August 13, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     Privacy fix: your signup birth date stays private

     • If you never set a birthday on your profile, the date of birth from your signup is no longer shown to anyone as a birthday. It was only ever the day and month — never your year or age — but it now stays private unless you add a birthday yourself in Settings → Profile.
210. August 13, 2026FixedMessaging

     AI characters are responding again

     • AI characters had quietly stopped replying after a model change on our side. They are back and chatting.
211. August 13, 2026NewProfiles & Customisation

     More to your profile — and you decide who sees it

     • Your profile can now carry your birthday, a location, social links and interests — on top of the bio, pronouns, banner and profile song you already had.
     • Every one of the new fields has its own Everyone / Friends / Only me setting, so you can show your interests to everyone while keeping your birthday to friends.
     • Birthdays are private by default: the year (and your age) only shows if you switch it on — otherwise it is just the day and month. On the day, friends get a gentle nudge so nobody misses it.
     • Social links are checked to actually point where they claim — a GitHub link has to be a real github.com address — so profiles cannot be used to smuggle dodgy links.
     • Interests can seed Meet People: opt into a server matchmaking and you can fill your blurb straight from your profile in one tap.
212. August 13, 2026NewSecurity & Privacy

     Everyone on the Venoly team is now trained for the job

     • Every staff rank across all 14 departments now has structured training assigned to it — 15 modules covering moderation, child safety, customer support, legal and compliance, security, and more. The people who read your reports, answer your tickets and handle your data are taught how to do it before they do it.
     • Training is taken in order and it is not a formality: each module is a real guide with rules and an FAQ, followed by a quiz drawn at random from a much larger question bank, so nobody can pass by memorising last week's answers.
     • Written answers are read and signed off by the Founder personally, not marked by a machine — the judgement questions are the ones that matter most.
     • Why we are telling you: moderation decisions affect real communities, and you should be able to expect the person making them knows the rules they are enforcing.
213. August 12, 2026NewApps & Platform

     Notifications that reach you with Venoly closed

     • Venoly can now notify you in your browser even when the tab is shut. Turn on Settings → Notifications → Desktop Notifications and a DM, mention or keyword alert will reach you like any other app.
     • The notification shows who it is from — their picture, not the Venoly logo — so you can tell a DM from a mention at a glance.
     • Clicking one jumps straight to the conversation, reusing the Venoly tab you already have open instead of piling up new ones. ↩
     • It respects everything you have already set: quiet hours, per-type toggles and message previews all still apply.
214. August 12, 2026FixedVoice & Video

     Private voice channels are actually private now

     • If a voice channel is restricted so only certain roles can see it, the people sitting in it are no longer announced to the whole server. Until now everyone saw who had joined, even members who could not see the channel at all.
     • What you will notice: the member list beside a restricted voice channel may look emptier than you are used to. Nobody has left — you are simply only seeing the people you are allowed to see.
     • Channels that are open to everyone are unaffected, and nothing changes about who can join or hear what.
     • Separately, if you stay in a call for longer than a few minutes you will no longer occasionally linger in the channel list after disconnecting.
215. August 12, 2026FixedSecurity & Privacy

     Security hardening across accounts, uploads and servers

     • Two-factor authentication is now enforced strictly at every step of signing in. If you have 2FA switched on, your code is required — there is no path around it. Nothing about how you sign in changes.
     • Reactions now respect channel access. Someone who cannot see a channel can no longer react to messages in it or see who reacted.
     • Support tickets are readable only by the Customer Support team, on the live chat connection as well as in the dashboard — matching the rule already applied everywhere else. Your billing and account-recovery conversations stay with the people whose job they are.
     • Uploaded files are properly checked to be what they claim to be before they are stored, on every upload surface including avatars, banners, server emoji and notification sounds.
     • Bulk message deletion is now correctly restricted to the server it was requested for, and moderators you have granted the permission to can use it again — previously only server owners could.
     • You may be asked to sign in again once as part of this update. That is expected.
216. August 12, 2026FixedApps & Platform

     Reduced motion actually reduces motion now

     • If you turned on Settings → Appearance → Reduced motion, or asked for less motion at the system level, Venoly was quietly ignoring you — a single misplaced character in our stylesheet meant the whole rule was thrown away by the browser. Both now work everywhere in the app.
     • The in-app switch also used to be forgotten on every reload if your device preference disagreed with it. Your choice sticks now.
217. August 12, 2026ImprovedSecurity & Privacy

     A homepage with actual personality

     • The venoly.nl front page has been redesigned from scratch around our banner artwork — big poster headlines, the night-sky palette from the banner itself, and the two mascots stepping right out of its frame.
     • The fake "verifying chain" loading screen is gone, along with every entrance animation. The page is simply there the moment it loads — no waiting, no fade-ins.
     • Everything on it is true to the product: the pricing cards read from the same data as the plans page, and the feature cards show the real thing — Venilator policies, voice rooms, free animated profiles.
218. August 12, 2026ImprovedMessaging

     A 404 page worth getting lost on

     • Hitting a dead link now runs a (completely fictional) Venoly system diagnostic that works its way down the stack and fails on the route you asked for — mascot included, and she does not take it well.
     • The exact address you tried is shown back to you, and four ways out — home, back, Explore, your chats — appear about a second in. Each one has a keyboard shortcut, so H, B, E or C gets you moving without reaching for the mouse.
     • If you have reduced motion turned on, the animation is skipped entirely and the finished page is there immediately.
219. August 12, 2026NewSecurity & Privacy

     Team badges — you can now see who you are actually talking to

     • Everyone on the Venoly team now carries an automatic badge on their profile showing their department and rank — "Trust & Safety · Moderator", "Customer Support · Support Specialist", and so on. Each department has its own colour, so it is obvious at a glance.
     • The badge is derived from the rank itself, so it is always current — there is no separate thing to grant, and it can never say something the person is not.
     • Why it matters to you: if someone contacts you claiming to be Venoly staff and there is no badge on their profile, they are not. Nobody can fake one.
     • Support tickets are now handled only by our Customer Support team. Moderators and Trust & Safety no longer have access to them — your billing details, account recovery and private correspondence stay with the people whose job it is.
220. August 11, 2026NewSecurity & Privacy

     Spark, Aurora, Supernova — new plans with real limits behind them

     • The paid tiers have new names that actually tell you where you are: Spark (€0.99/mo — 3 GB storage, 25 MB files), Aurora (€4.99/mo — 10 GB, 50 MB files, 6000-character messages, 2 boosts) and Supernova (€9.99/mo — 25 GB, 95 MB files, 8000-character messages, 4 boosts). A spark, a sky, a star: the ladder reads itself. Free stays free with 250 MB.
     • Aura is the name of the whole thing now, not one middle tier — so your badge says Aurora or Supernova, and nothing is called "Basic" any more.
     • Server boost levels now have monthly prices — Boost Level 1 €2.99, Level 2 €6.99, Level 3 €12.99. (Corrected October 2026: they are not on sale yet, and a server's level comes from its members' boosts until they are.)
     • Honesty fix: the old plans advertised 50 MB and 500 MB uploads that nothing actually delivered. Every limit is now enforced from a single place, and the numbers on the pricing page are the numbers the server applies.
     • Cosmetics stay free forever — animated avatars, banners, profile effects and themes are not, and will not be, behind a plan. You pay for capacity, never for how you look.
221. August 11, 2026ImprovedMoney & Plans

     Server Empire: an in-game browser, more neighbors, shady internet hires

     • The computer now has a Browser tab — a mini browser inside the game with four sites: venlist (quick web gigs), serversfinder (recurring hosting contracts), freelance.pro (enterprise), and gigwerk (freelance ops talent). Leads refresh every ~5 in-game days.
     • Four more people on Elmwood Street: Elin (bookstore), Rafael (restaurant), Meera (photography), and Tomas (school district). The street doubled in length and now has trees, benches and lamps down its whole span.
     • Servers are properly multi-tenant now — the Customers tab groups tenants by server so you can see one machine hosting many websites at once.
     • Hiring off gigwerk is cheaper than the vetted local pool but risky: every 5 days each shady hire rolls against a reliability score. Fails cost money or uptime. Spend $220 on a background check to raise it.
222. August 11, 2026ImprovedServers & Community

     Server Empire grew a neighborhood — go find your own customers

     • Server Empire now has a real world outside your front door. Walk out of your bedroom onto Elmwood Street: a café, a design studio, an indie game studio, and a startup — each with a person standing outside who wants your help.
     • Talk to them (walk up, press E) to hear their problem and pitch a quote: Cheap / Fair / Premium. Higher tiers pay more but demand reputation. Every signed contract nets an upfront fee and recurring monthly revenue.
     • Servers now occasionally have incidents — overheating, disk failure, DDoS attempts. A modal pops up with three response options and clear consequences. Handle them well and reputation climbs.
     • Your home upgrades: Bedroom → Home Office → Server Room, each unlocking more rack slots, more space, and better working conditions. Open the console → Home tab.
     • The world is drawn with a proper scrolling camera now — bigger tiles, real furniture (bed, cabinet, UPS, AC units), grass, sidewalk, road, trees, benches, streetlamps.
     • Previous saves have been reset — the new save format is v2.
223. August 11, 2026NewMessaging

     Venoly: Server Empire — a new game to play from Home

     • A brand-new pixel-art management game — Server Empire — is now on the Home screen, right below Ascendant. Walk around a top-down home, buy hardware, assemble servers from real parts, rack them, sign customers and grow.
     • Sockets, form factors, RAM slots and PSU wattage all matter — the builder cross-checks compatibility before you press Assemble.
     • Start on home Wi-Fi, unlock Gigabit, 10 GbE and Fiber uplinks as your revenue grows.
     • Hire technicians, network admins and support staff — each grants a passive bonus. Your save lives in your browser, so pick up where you left off.
224. August 10, 2026NewMoney & Plans

     A page that answers “what would I even use this for?”

     • There's a new Usage page — first link in the nav on desktop and mobile — showing eight real ways people run Venoly: gaming clans, study groups, art collectives, dev teams, creators, friend circles, help desks and clubs. Each one lists the features that make it work.
     • A "See all features" button opens a searchable popup with every single feature in Venoly, grouped by area. Search it, filter it by category, or tap any of the core areas to jump straight into that section.
     • The "See features" link on the homepage now actually goes somewhere. ↗
225. August 10, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

     Void Mites swarm now, and swords hit softer

     • Void Mites went from a nuisance to a real problem: far more of them per arena, five times the health, and slower — you can no longer ignore them and you can no longer outrun a pack.
     • Every sword arc does 15% less damage. Fights last longer and positioning matters more.
     • New weapon: Bloodfang, a demon blade — +60% damage for 35% slower swings, 520 coins in the Inventory.
     • The late game moves into eleven new crimson rooms — cathedrals, prisons, ritual circles and a blood-lit sanctum for the final bosses.
226. August 10, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

     The whole cast is drawn now, and the bosses fight differently

     • Shadows are proper stalkers out of the dark, and the Venoly Core is now a Necromancer who raises the dead at you. The Architect at the Apex is an enormous tattooed brute.
     • Each realm guardian fights like the thing it looks like. The NightBorne is a duel — it chains fast charges and barely shoots. The Bringer of Death hangs back, casts volleys, and raises minions from the floor. The Apex turns all of it up at once.
     • Pillars, braziers and rubble are rendered as pixel art now, so the scenery sits inside the painted rooms instead of floating on top of them as crisp vector shapes.
227. August 10, 2026NewServers & Community

     El Diablo has entered the Abyss

     • Two new heroes sit at the top of the ladder, and both are hand-drawn pixel art with full animation. El Diablo (SS tier) — el demonio — swings a Hellfire Nova that burns everything in a huge arc in front of him, and Cataclysm detonates the entire floor around him. He is slow and he will get hit, but almost nothing survives being in front of him.
     • D3LTA2033 (S tier) is the fastest blade in the game — Blade Flurry cuts a wide arc twice as fast as anyone else, and Rush Step blinks straight through a line of enemies.
     • The realm guardians are real monsters now: the NightBorne and the Bringer of Death, both fully animated, replacing the drawn Warden.
     • Every swing throws a slash effect coloured to its hero — violet for the Vanguard, blue for the Seer, red for D3LTA2033, orange for El Diablo — and everything that dies bursts.
     • Hero select now shows what you are picking: power, speed, health and reach bars, a role, and a tier badge.
228. August 10, 2026NewApps & Platform

     Ascendant has real places to fight in

     • Every realm now has a hand-drawn room behind it instead of a generated skyline — a green ritual cavern, a dungeon corridor, a cathedral nave, and the throne room at the Apex. Boss fights happen in a crypt with a pentagram burned into the floor.
     • The way out is an actual animated portal now, not a drawn ring on the ground.
     • The arena floor was recoloured much darker so the painted rooms carry the atmosphere instead of competing with it.
229. August 10, 2026ImprovedMoney & Plans

     Ascendant fills the screen, and there’s an inventory now

     • The game was rendering in a small box in the top-left corner. It now fills the window at your display’s real resolution — no more squinting at a corner of your monitor.
     • Press O for the Inventory: six upgrades you buy with coins (Strength, Vitality, Swiftness, Focus, Keen Edge, Ward), three weapons that genuinely change how you fight — Ruinbrand hits far harder but swings slowly, Twin Fangs the reverse, the Void Scepter adds a projectile — and a live stat sheet. Every button shows its key underneath it.
     • Arenas are much fuller. The first floor is deliberately gentle — a handful of the simplest enemy while you find your feet — and it climbs steeply from there, floor by floor rather than only realm by realm.
     • Everyone moves and swings a little slower, so fights read as exchanges instead of a blur.
     • Boss arenas start empty — no pre-placed adds — and each realm’s Warden now fights differently. The Abyss favours spread bursts; the Inferno charges a long straight lance you have to step off; the Voidspire adds sustained spiral fire; the Apex uses all three.
     • Staff can now revoke a badge straight from a user’s profile in the admin panel.
     • And there’s a public roadmap at venoly.nl/roadmap — what’s shipped, what’s being built, what’s planned, and an honest list of what’s currently broken.
230. August 10, 2026NewServers & Community

     Ascendant: coins, cover, and two new things trying to kill you

     • Coins now drop from everything you kill, and you spend them on the spot — press 1 to heal, 2 to buy an instant level. Both get pricier each time you use them, so the question is always whether you need it now or later. ◈
     • Pillars and slabs are solid. You can’t walk through them, and neither can arrows — duck behind one and the casters lose their line on you. The casters have also been calmed down considerably: they fire far less often, stand further back, and their shots travel slower. Your own reach went up to match.
     • Two new enemies. Void Mites sprint at you, swell, and detonate — kill them at range or get clear. Sentinels advance behind a raised shield that shrugs off most of what you throw, and only drop it to swing. Wait for the swing.
     • A third hero: D3LTA. Faceless under the hood, throws piercing phase crescents and blinks through the line with Phase Rush. Unlockable for 1,400 souls.
     • And you can no longer get lost inside a boss — if something big is standing in front of you, your silhouette shows through it.
231. August 10, 2026ImprovedApps & Platform

     Ascendant is a side-on brawler now

     • The camera has come down off the ceiling. Ascendant is played from the side now, like a classic 2D RPG — you run left and right along a wide arena and step up and down the floor to line up your swings.
     • Every realm has a real backdrop instead of a tiled floor: violet spires over the Abyss, ember haze and burning ruins in the Inferno, collapsing stars above the Voidspire, and the God’s own monoliths at the Apex. They scroll in layers as you move, so the arenas finally have somewhere to be.
     • Arenas are several screens wide and lit by braziers, broken pillars and rubble you can walk behind — get behind a pillar and you really are behind it. Clear the arena and a portal opens at the far right.
     • Fighters further into the arena stand a little smaller, so a crowd reads as a crowd instead of a flat line.
232. August 10, 2026ImprovedServers & Community

     Ascendant has a cast now

     • Everything in Ascendant used to be a coloured circle — you, the things chasing you, even the bosses. Now everyone is an actual character: Ash swings a glowing blade, Luna trails an orbiting void orb, and each enemy is its own creature.
     • Shadows drift, the Corrupted casts from under a hood, the Void Entity rears back before it charges, and the Venoly Core hangs in the air spitting out minions. You can tell what is coming at you from across the room.
     • Realm Wardens are armoured knights whose plating takes on the colour of their realm, and the Architect finally looks like something worth dethroning — crowned, masked, wings of light.
     • Characters walk, swing and flinch, and they aim where you aim. Teammates in co-op show up as their own hero instead of a teal blob, and hero select now shows you who you are picking.
233. August 10, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Invite links now get you credit

     • Your referral link only counted if someone opened it and signed up right then — wander off to read the terms, or arrive on the homepage rather than the signup page, and your invite quietly went uncredited. The code now sticks with them for 30 days, wherever they landed.
     • Signing up with Discord or Google counts too. Previously those signups were never attributed at all, so both badges went unearned.
234. August 10, 2026ImprovedMoney & Plans

     A server menu you can actually read

     • The server menu had grown to nearly 40 items and ran off the bottom of the screen — if your window was short, Delete Server and Leave Server were simply out of reach. Everything now fits: features are tucked into three groups (Community, Games & Competition, Workspace) that you expand only when you want them.
     • Owner tools — AI Automations, Aegis Co-pilot, Raid Radar, Monetization, the Onboarding Editor and the Policy Marketplace — moved into Server Settings under a new "Tools" heading, so the menu stays about what you do day to day.
235. August 10, 2026NewMoney & Plans

     Creator programme

     • Make videos or stream? There’s now a creator programme at venoly.nl/creators. Permanent Plus, your server boosted to the top level and verified, a custom badge, and marketplace commissions we pay for. We’re upfront that there’s no cash yet — the full brief spells out exactly what you get and every reason you might want to say no.
236. June 2, 2026NewServers & Community

     Meet People (AI matchmaking)

     • Find people you’ll click with in a server (server menu → Meet People). Opt in, write a short interests blurb, and AI suggests members to meet — each with a ready-to-send icebreaker. Strictly opt-in: you’re only matched with others who opted in, and only your blurb is shared.
237. June 2, 2026NewVoice & Video

     Priority speakers

     • Server owners can mark someone as a priority speaker in a voice call — tap the megaphone on their tile. While a priority speaker is talking, everyone else’s volume automatically ducks so announcements and moderators cut through the noise.
238. June 2, 2026NewVoice & Video

     Translate live captions

     • Live voice captions can now be translated into your own language on the fly. Open the caption box in a call, pick a language, and everyone’s speech shows up translated — just for you. Works in voice channels, stages and DM calls.
239. June 2, 2026NewVoice & Video

     AI automations

     • Owners can set up AI auto-responders (server menu → AI Automations). Describe a trigger in plain English — “when someone asks how to join the Minecraft server” — and the bot replies automatically when a message matches the intent. No exact keywords needed.
240. June 2, 2026NewMessaging

     Server FAQ

     • Servers now have a built-in FAQ (server menu → FAQ) — searchable Q&A for newcomers. Owners can add entries by hand, or let AI auto-capture answered, recurring questions straight from a channel’s recent chat.
241. June 2, 2026NewMessaging

     Teams

     • Servers can run team competitions (server menu → Teams). Owners create colored teams; members pick one and every message they send earns XP for their team. The most active team tops the board.
242. June 2, 2026NewProfiles & Customisation

     Moments

     • Share a 24-hour Moment — a short note your friends see at the top of the Friends list. Tap your avatar there to post (it vanishes after a day).
243. June 2, 2026NewMoney & Plans

     Server quests

     • Owners can set activity quests with coin rewards (server menu → Quests) — members track their progress with a bar and claim the reward once they hit the goal. Pairs with the Shop.
244. June 2, 2026NewMessaging

     Server levels & XP

     • Chatting in a server now levels you up. Open the Leaderboard (server menu → Leaderboard) to see everyone’s rank + level and your own progress bar. Owners can set Level Rewards there so hitting a level auto-grants a role.
245. June 2, 2026NewServers & Community

     Daily streaks & Member of the Week

     • Stay active each day to build a streak (shown on your profile), and every server now spotlights its top contributor of the week at the top of the member list.
246. June 2, 2026NewApps & Platform

     Custom notification sounds

     • Upload your own alert sound in Settings → Notifications → Custom Sound. (Also fixed a bug where the app always played the default sound and ignored your choice.)
247. June 2, 2026NewMoney & Plans

     Server Shop & Rewards

     • Every message you send in a server quietly earns you coins — now you can spend them. Open the Shop from the server menu → “Shop & Rewards”. Owners set up the items and prices.
248. June 2, 2026NewServers & Community

     Per-server profiles

     • Be someone different in each community — set a per-server nickname, avatar, bio and name colour from the server menu → Server Profile. Falls back to your global profile anywhere you don’t override. Express Yourself, the finale.
249. June 2, 2026NewMessaging

     Express yourself in chat

     • Give your name a personal accent colour in chat — Settings → Profile → Message Colour. Server role colours still take priority. Express Yourself, drop 3.
250. June 2, 2026NewServers & Community

     Profile songs

     • Give your profile a soundtrack — upload a short clip in Settings → Profile → Profile Song and it plays from your profile card and public profile. Express Yourself, drop 2.
251. June 2, 2026NewServers & Community

     Profile prompts

     • Add fill-in prompt cards to your profile — “My go-to game is…”, “Ask me about…”, “Currently obsessed with…” and more (up to 4). Set them in Settings → Profile; they show on your profile card and your public profile. First drop of the Express Yourself update.
252. June 2, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Invite links that don’t expire

     • New invite links now default to “Never expire”, so the links you share keep working instead of quietly dying after a day. You can still pick an expiry when you want a temporary link.
253. June 2, 2026ImprovedMoney & Plans

     Higher-fidelity voice on boosted servers

     • Voice and stage channels now scale audio quality with the server’s Boost Level — up to 384 kbps at Level 3 (and on Venoly Partner servers, which sit at Level 3 permanently). More boosts, crisper voice and music.
254. June 2, 2026NewMessaging

     Quick search & actions in the sidebar

     • A new Search box sits at the top of your home sidebar — click it (or press Ctrl/K anywhere) to jump to servers, channels and friends, Ask Venoly, mark everything as read, set your status, switch themes and more.
     • Added a “View my profile” action to the command palette so you can pull up your own public card and About Me in one keystroke.
255. June 1, 2026NewMoney & Plans

     Generate server templates with AI

     • Server Template Gallery → “Generate with AI”: describe your community and AI designs a full server — categories, channels with topics, roles, a welcome message and starter rules. Preview and trim it, then save it to your gallery or spin up the server instantly. An Aura-subscriber & Venoly Partner perk.
256. June 1, 2026NewMoney & Plans

     Giveaways, Starboard, Suggestions & Birthdays

     • Giveaways: tap the button in a channel to run a timed giveaway — members enter, Venoly draws random winners, with anti-alt entry rules (account age + verified email).
     • Starboard: when a message gets enough reactions it’s automatically reposted to a highlights channel — a living feed of your community’s best moments. Set it up in Server Settings → Starboard.
     • Suggestions board: a new Suggestions page (from the server menu) where members post ideas and upvote them, and managers triage to Planned / Done / Declined.
     • Birthdays: add your birthday (month + day only) in Profile settings, and owners can have Venoly post a birthday wish plus a temporary birthday role (Server Settings → Birthdays).
257. June 1, 2026NewSecurity & Privacy

     New chat & message settings

     • Settings → Chat: a new home for how messages send and look. Choose whether Enter sends or adds a new line (Ctrl/+Enter to send), and pick when ||spoilers|| reveal — on click, on hover, or always shown.
     • Blur sensitive images until you click to view them, set a default emoji skin tone, and freeze animated (GIF) avatars to save data and battery.
     • Choose how long until you’re auto-marked Idle — or turn it off. And new-login email alerts let you know if your account is signed into from a new device or location (on by default for your security).
258. June 1, 2026NewMessaging

     Bridge a channel to Telegram or Discord

     • Server Settings → Bridges: connect a channel to a Telegram group (two-way — messages relay both directions and you can reply right from Telegram) or relay it out to a Discord channel. Perfect for communities living across platforms.
259. June 1, 2026NewVoice & Video

     Read any voice message

     • Tap “Show transcript” under a voice message to read an AI transcription of it — handy when you can’t listen out loud, or just want to skim.
260. June 1, 2026NewMessaging

     Make custom emojis with AI

     • Server Settings → Emojis → “Generate with AI”: describe an emoji (e.g. “a happy dancing taco”), give it a name, and Venoly creates a custom server emoji for you — no art skills needed.
261. June 1, 2026NewMessaging

     Import your Discord server

     • Moving from Discord? Open Add a Server → “Import from Discord”, paste a bot token, pick your server, and Venoly rebuilds it here — roles, permissions, categories, channels and custom emojis — in one go. Your token is used once and never stored.
262. June 1, 2026ImprovedMoney & Plans

     Venoly Partners now earn more

     • Partner servers keep 100% of tips and pay no platform fee on paid memberships or products — more of what your community gives goes straight to you.
     • Partner servers now rank first in Discovery, so far more people find your community.
263. June 1, 2026NewServers & Community

     A Features tab + Partner perks

     • A new “Features” tab in the sidebar lists everything Venoly can do — 80+ features grouped by what you use them for, each explained in plain English.
     • The Partners page now has a “See Venoly Partner perks” button showing exactly what a partnered server unlocks.
264. June 1, 2026NewVoice & Video

     Live captions in voice, Stage & DM calls

     • Turn on the new CC button in any voice channel, Stage, or DM call to see real-time captions of who’s saying what — powered by AI (Groq Whisper).
     • When anyone in the call turns captions on, everyone’s speech is captioned, so it works great for accessibility.
     • Every captioned call builds a transcript you can open from the call header. Captions are AI-generated and can be imperfect.
265. June 1, 2026NewMoney & Plans

     Venoly Partner servers

     • Standout communities can now be recognised as official Venoly Partners — they get a Venoly Partner badge next to their name and in Discovery, plus a permanent top-tier boost (every boost perk unlocked).
266. June 1, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Fixes: Party Finder, invites, joining & mobile

     • The Party Finder (LFG) loads again.
     • Joining a server from Explore now drops you straight into it — and tells you why if a join is ever blocked, instead of silently failing.
     • “Invite People” now opens a proper dialog to set expiry/uses and copy a shareable link.
     • Hardened the mobile sidebar so it no longer occasionally needs a page reload to recover.
267. June 1, 2026NewVoice & Video

     Never lose a message when you go offline

     • If you send a message while offline, Venoly now keeps it safe and sends it automatically the moment you reconnect — no more lost messages on a flaky connection.
268. June 1, 2026NewMoney & Plans

     Search across everything

     • A new Search page finds messages, people, servers and marketplace items across ALL your servers and DMs at once — open it from Ctrl/+K → “Search everything”. (Per-channel search still lives in each channel header.)
269. June 1, 2026NewVoice & Video

     Picture-in-Picture for screen shares

     • Pop a screen-share out into a floating, always-on-top window so it stays visible while you browse other channels or apps — tap the picture-in-picture button on the share.
270. June 1, 2026ImprovedMessaging

     Mobile gestures + smoother long channels

     • Swipe in from the left edge to open the server list, and pull down to refresh your Inbox.
     • Performance mode now skips rendering off-screen messages, so very long channels stay smooth on older devices.
271. June 1, 2026NewMessaging

     Ask Venoly — your AI assistant

     • Press Ctrl/+K and pick “Ask Venoly” to open an AI assistant that can summarize the current channel, recap what you missed, explain things, or help you draft a reply.
     • It’s aware of the channel you’re viewing, so “summarize this” and “what did I miss?” just work. Powered by Groq.
272. June 1, 2026NewMessaging

     Unified Inbox

     • One Inbox at /channels/me/notifications: mentions, replies and updates in a single filterable view (All / Unread / Mentions / Replies), with quick links to Threads, Bookmarks, Catch-up and Activity.
     • The notification bell’s “View All Notifications” now actually opens it.
273. June 1, 2026ImprovedMessaging

     A more native mobile experience

     • A bottom tab bar on mobile for one-tap access to Servers, Messages, Search, Inbox, and You — with unread badges.
     • Subtle haptic feedback when you switch tabs and send a message.
274. June 1, 2026NewServers & Community

     Command palette (Ctrl/ + K)

     • Press Ctrl+K (K) to jump anywhere AND run commands — switch theme, set your status, mark everything read, toggle Performance mode, mute/deafen, copy a channel link, and more.
     • Just start typing what you want: “theme”, “status”, “read”, “mute”, “fullscreen”…
275. May 31, 2026NewMessaging

     Mark messages as unread

     • Right-click any message and choose "Mark Unread" to come back to it later — the channel re-lights in your list and the "New messages" line reappears above it.
276. May 31, 2026NewMessaging

     Math & LaTeX in messages

     • Write formulas with $inline$ and $block$ LaTeX — they render cleanly in servers and DMs. Great for study and dev communities.
277. May 31, 2026NewMessaging

     Text-to-speech with /tts

     • Start a message with /tts and it’s read aloud for everyone in the channel who turns on Text-to-Speech (Settings → Accessibility).
278. May 31, 2026NewVoice & Video

     Temporary “Join to Create” voice channels

     • Mark a voice channel as “Join to Create” (Server Settings → Channels). When someone joins, Venoly spins up a personal voice channel for them and removes it automatically once everyone leaves.
279. May 31, 2026NewProfiles & Customisation

     Performance mode for older devices

     • A new Settings → Performance panel: turn off background blur, animations, shadows, and decorative effects to speed Venoly up on lower-powered devices.
     • Optionally stop GIFs and animated media from autoplaying — they show a still frame until you hover or tap, saving data and CPU.
     • One-tap "Performance mode", or fine-tune each effect. Saved per device.
     • Venoly auto-detects lower-powered devices and offers to enable it for you.
280. May 31, 2026NewSecurity & Privacy

     Custom CSS themes

     • Write your own theme in Settings → Appearance with a live preview, on top of the 14 presets and the color builder.
     • Share a look with friends by exporting a theme code and importing theirs.
     • Themes run sandboxed for your safety.
281. May 31, 2026NewMessaging

     Spoilers & syntax-highlighted code

     • Hide text with ||spoilers|| — click to reveal.
     • Fenced ```code``` blocks now render with proper syntax highlighting and a copy button, in both servers and DMs.
282. May 31, 2026ImprovedVoice & Video

     Server folders & voice tweaks

     • Drag servers to reorder them, drop one onto another to make a folder, and rename folders inline.
     • Push-to-talk now releases a touch more smoothly so the ends of your words are not clipped.
283. May 31, 2026FixedServers & Community

     Ascendant — polish & fixes

     • A big visual overhaul: gradient-lit realms, glowing enemies, particles, and screen shake.
     • Fixed the leaderboards and end-of-run rewards — your souls and XP now save correctly.
284. May 28, 2026NewServers & Community

     Ascendant — our flagship action-roguelite

     • Battle through four realms to the Apex God in a brand-new game at /main-game.
     • Real-time co-op, time-limited seasons, and server-vs-server leaderboards.
285. May 27, 2026NewMoney & Plans

     Messaging & money

     • Disappearing messages, Stage Q&A, and a creator Tip Jar.
286. May 26, 2026NewServers & Community

     Hang out together

     • Focus rooms, listening parties, a member directory, and Kudos to celebrate each other.
287. May 25, 2026NewSecurity & Privacy

     Productivity suite

     • A server wiki, kanban board, forms, and a shared calendar.
288. May 24, 2026NewApps & Platform

     Gaming hub

     • LFG party finder, tournaments, scrims, and live game presence.