Fairer games: every shuffle, deal, die and role now comes from ChaCha20 (RFC 8439), keyed for each game with 256 random bits from the server’s cryptographic source. Until now they came from a generator with a single 32-bit state, so a player who knew their own cards and the board could, in principle, try every state and work out everybody else’s hand. Games already running when this went live carry on with a fresh key; the cards already dealt stay as they were.
Circle’s voice rooms and stages now follow the reference image. The call bar has Invite at its left edge and Pop out and Full screen at its right, with the grouped controls centred between them; where the window is narrow, those three move into More first, together. Full screen puts the whole room full screen, Escape leaves it, and its menus, windows and notices all work while it is. The header shows the room’s name and topic, and at the right only its chat and one More menu (Pinned messages, members, Search this room, room status, Recordings, Keyboard shortcuts); a stage’s header opens the stage’s chat. Captions is a split button like the microphone: its arrow chooses the language (Auto, العربية, English) and opens your transcripts before captions are ever on, and CC starts them in that language.
On a phone, the Circle call bar is icons only, in one row that stays on screen at every size, upright or on its side. The microphone has its own options half, like the camera; React, Invite to room and Captions moved into the bar, and whatever does not fit is in the bar’s ⋯ menu. Record in a voice room’s ⋯ menu or a stage’s sheet is one button offering the whole room or sound only. A hand you cannot raise on a stage can be reached with the keyboard and says why, on a phone and on a desktop. A game you are playing on a phone fills the whole screen.
Games: a game opened from the Activities window now starts at its top, with its seats and Start in view. Tarneeb’s card says 4 players (computer players fill empty seats), searching the shelf in Arabic finds Backgammon (طاولة) and Ludo (لودو), and on a phone the Dots and boxes lines are larger targets. Circle spaces that saved a full game list before the six new games went live now get them, as intended.
Your camera sends what it really captures: 1080p goes out as 1080p only when the camera gives a 1080p picture, a room set to 720p asks your camera for 720p, and in a small peer-to-peer Link 1080p goes out when there is one other person and 720p when there are more. Tooltips no longer sit on top of a window their button opened. Changing the captions language is never refused, however quickly you change your mind: the room switches to your latest choice within a fraction of a second, and the Captions switch no longer sticks on “Turning captions off…”.
Names and the message box: a person joining a room, a speaker in a transcript and whoever started a Link are named at once when Kemble already knows them, and otherwise a quiet placeholder holds the place until the name arrives. The @ and # lists in the message box stay open while you write a QA note or a window opens over them, and a channel in Circle’s # list can be chosen with the mouse in every browser. When a Circle community first opens, the first key you press shows the conversation at once, and an Enter pressed in that moment only shows it, so nothing is sent unseen. Leaving a room that was full screen no longer hides the app’s notices for the rest of the session.