In Kemble Work’s Activity, Save view now has a Where: pick any of your own sidebar sections, or channels by name, and the view shows only what happened there. It follows your sections as you change them, and never shows a channel you can no longer open. In All, what your VIPs sent you that is still unread sits first, marked VIP; press VIPs first to go back to plain time order. Every Activity row’s menu — the ⋯ at your desk, a long press on your phone — now has Remind me, with the same times as Later, and Mute conversation, for as long as you choose.
In Preferences › Notifications › VIPs you can give your VIPs a sound of their own on each device, and choose whether they reach you while your notifications are paused — on your phone, on this computer, in Kemble Desktop and by email. It stays on unless you turn it off. Apps and workflows can be VIPs too: add an app your workspace has installed from Preferences, or a workflow from one of its rows in Activity.
On your phone, swipe a row to the left to deal with it. In Activity a swipe clears the item, and Put back is right there; in your DMs and on Home it marks a conversation read, or unread again. Every swipe is also in the row’s menu, so a screen reader or a keyboard can do the same, and with Reduce motion on, the row stays put. And there’s a third way to open a conversation: start at the newest message, but keep the rest unread until you scroll up to them or mark them read. Choose it in Preferences › Appearance › Messages & media.
When someone adds you to a channel in Kemble Work, the channel now tells you who or what did — a default channel everyone starts in, your organization’s directory, a workflow, an invitation, or a channel shared with another organization — once, at the top. Got it puts it away on all your devices. Manage conversations can show the channels you haven’t read in 30 days, 3 months or 6 months, each with when you last read it; tick the ones you want and mute or leave them together, with Undo. At most once a month, your sidebar may suggest a tidy-up when a few channels have gone unread for 3 months. It only looks at your own reading, never leaves or mutes anything by itself, and you can turn it off in Preferences › Appearance › Sidebar.
Choose what a screen reader says for each message in Preferences › Accessibility › Message verbosity: the name, the time, the words, attachments, the edited mark, the replies count and reactions, each on or off, with a preview. Press Alt and a number (⌘⌥ and a number on a Mac) to hear one of the last nine messages again without leaving the message box, and Alt+0 to hear what the conversation holds. In Kemble Work, Ctrl+Alt+S (⌘⌥S) tells you how many mentions, unread direct messages and thread replies are waiting, and ⌘C or Ctrl+C on a focused message copies its words. All of it is on the shortcut sheet, in Kemble Work and Kemble Circle.
Preferences › Appearance › Text font lets you choose the face Kemble draws your messages and menus in: Kemble’s own, Atkinson Hyperlegible Next — drawn so no letter is mistaken for another — your device’s own font, or monospace. It follows you to every device you sign in on, and Kemble serves the font itself, so choosing it tells no font service anything.
Kemble Work has three new themes: Midnight, near-black for OLED screens and dark rooms, and High contrast and High contrast dark, where every word is at least 7:1 against what is behind it and the focus outline is bolder on every control. Turn on Colour-blind friendly colours, in Kemble Work and Kemble Circle, and active, live and done show in violet, away in amber and busy in red, so none depends on telling red from green; your own reactions get a heavier ring, charts swap their green for violet, and each status keeps its own shape as well.
Press Edit on a picture waiting to be sent to crop it (freely, square, 4:3 or 16:9), turn it, draw on it, blur part of it or block it out. Blur turns the area into large squares, so words under it can’t be read back — handy for a screenshot with a password or a customer’s details in it. Undo and Start over are there, and everything works from the keyboard. Pictures now wait on your device until you send the message, so once you edit one, only the edited picture ever leaves your device. The same editor is in Kemble Circle’s message box and in Kemble Work’s New message.
Alt text reminders, in Preferences › Accessibility: turn them on and Kemble asks for a description when you send a picture without one. Add one there and then, or choose Send anyway. On a phone it never pauses: the picture shows a small ALT + badge until you describe it. Workspace owners and admins can turn reminders on for everyone in Workspace settings › Accessibility.