- MBraille-Test - lists.mpaja.com

MBraille 0.9.5 Update - Make a Wish
by Harri Pasanen Feb. 7, 2026

Feb. 7, 2026

Hi everyone, I’ve just released version 0.9.5. This update involved a lot of work under the hood, and I haven't had the chance to test every scenario thoroughly yet. Please let me know if you run into any unexpected issues. For the next release, I plan to pause on big new features to focus on stability and documentation. My main goals are: Filling gaps in the help documentation. Writing automated regression tests. General bug fixing and polishing. I do have a few smaller enhancements on my to-do list, specifically adding cheat sheets for interactions. The idea is that you could type the following to open them: help gestures help commands That said, if you have a feature request—small or large—that you'd like to see, please speak up! And as always, let me know if anything in this new version isn't working properly. Best, Harri

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v0.9.5: Remodeled the House
by Harri Pasanen Feb. 7, 2026

Feb. 7, 2026

Hi all, This release grew bigger than I intended, full change-log below, with some embedded questions. Next release will have less new features and more clean-up. I need to work on the help as well. # Version 0.9.5 Remodeled the house. Cool new and rewritten features. ## New Features * **Context sensitive help gesture** Hold dot 1 and swipe up with 2 fingers. * If you are in a text buffer, this announces your current filename, if it is open read-only, the word and character count, and if it has been modified. * If you are in command mode, it announces that. *Notes:* I'm planning to improve context-sensitive help in the future, possibly including a verbosity setting so that beginners can get more help (which might affect announcements elsewhere). Are there any announcements you would like to skip or shorten as an experienced user? * **Braille native file selector** The file selector I wrote for opening files initially was very bare-bones—kind of meh—but fully functional under iOS VoiceOver. However, for some reason, TalkBack really struggled with it (at least on my somewhat old Android 13 phone). Only "explore by touch" worked; I could not move the focus with swipes, and there were other glitches. So I thought I could do better. How about braille supremacy? I rewrote the file selector to be MBraille native, using MBraille gestures. **How it works:** When you issue the `open` command, it will list all the files in the MBraille document folder, one per line. The list acts like an MBraille text buffer. You can navigate and search the list like any MBraille text: * Hold dot 3 and swipe left or right to go to the next or previous file. * To select and open a file, swipe down for a newline (like pressing Enter on a PC). * If you want to dismiss the file selector, just swipe up with 4 fingers. The context-sensitive help tells you these basics. * **Close command** This empties the current buffer and renames it to "Unnamed." You would usually use this only if you have finished editing a file and want to start something new. If the current file has a name and is modified, you will be prompted to save your work. * **Keyboard Layout Reset** Sometimes the keyboard layout could get accidentally tangled and become hard to reset. I added a button to the end of settings to force a reset of the keyboard layout. * **Layout Verification** I also added layout verification. If the layout looks unreasonable, it is not accepted, and MBraille asks you to try again. Let me know if it is too strict and you cannot define your favorite layout any longer. *Thanks to Johanna for alerting me to this.* * **Force TTS Engine in Settings** In settings, you can now force VoiceOver or TalkBack to be used even if the braille table changes. I'm not sure how multilingual those voices are, but if I understood correctly, TalkBack and Eloquence should know how to switch readers for different languages. In any case, I think it will get better over time. * **Aliases: Extra Spicy** Aliases have been there for a long time, but now they got extra spicy. A new feature is **command aliases**, which are aliases that only work when they are the first word in the command buffer. Perhaps an example is the best way to explain them. If you put the following line in `alias.mb`: `command ml: mail mbraille-test(a)lists.mpaja.com` That will create a command alias called `ml`. Now, when you swipe up with 3 fingers, type `ml`, and swipe down, it will launch the mail app, using the current buffer as the mail body and the "To" address pointing to the testers' mailing list. I chose `ml` as shorthand for "Mailing List," but feel free to choose your own aliases. Other examples: ```text command fr: lang fr command en: lang en command w: whatsapp family ``` Now the new commands would be `fr`, `en`, and `w`. These would change the language to French, change the language to English, and open WhatsApp to send a message to your family (assuming you have a group called "family" in WhatsApp). **Gesture Binding:** There is one more new feature with aliases. I've reserved 4 gestures you can bind to an alias. The gestures are: **Hold dot 5 and swipe Up, Down, Left, or Right.** The syntax for these is: ```text bind-5u: existing-alias-name bind-5d: existing-alias-name bind-5l: existing-alias-name bind-5r: existing-alias-name ``` Again, some examples. Let's assume your `alias.mb` has the lines: ```text gbyf: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. bind-5u: gbyf ``` Now, when you are writing in MBraille, if you hold dot 5 and swipe up, the phrase "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish." is inserted at the cursor! You can also bind the gestures to command aliases. So, to switch the braille table to French with a gesture, you could do: ```text command fr: lang fr bind-5r: fr ``` To change aliases, just edit the `alias.mb` file and save it. All aliases are re-read from the file when it is saved or when MBraille starts. Note that when `alias.mb` is the file being edited, all aliases are disabled. ## Fixes * Fixed many hiccups with self-voicing where it would not say everything or would not stop on a long text even if the user tapped a dot. * Polished the accessibility announcements in the Settings screen. * Probably some other fixes I forgot to write down. Best regards, Harri

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Working with other applications
by Harri Pasanen Feb. 1, 2026

Feb. 1, 2026

Hi, If you are are an existing MBraille user, do you regularly use other applications from MBraille, like fantastical, notemaster, drafts, blindsquare, ... ? I'm just wondering what to keep and what to cut. Best regards, Harri

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v0.9.4 Dutch support, Android fixes
by Harri Pasanen Feb. 1, 2026

Feb. 1, 2026

# Version 0.9.4 Fixes: * On Android, if the MBraille Accessibility service was not already running, going to braille editor with TalkBack on would throw up a dialog advicing to turn on the accessibility service. But as it happened, that dialog was not accessible, and resulted in much confusion, effectively blocking any action. Now the dialog is accessible, and is show already at MBraille startup. * Dutch braille was basically unusable. I created a new liblouis table for Dutch to fix this. (submitted upstream https://github.com/liblouis/liblouis/pull/1915 if someone is curious). So welcome Dutch users. Best regards, Harri

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v0.9.3 available, Android goes to big leagues
by Harri Pasanen Jan. 31, 2026

Jan. 31, 2026

Hi All, New features: - Added MBraille Beta accessibility service. This means TalkBack can be left on and braille keyboard can still be used. - Kudos to Peter for pointing me in right direction in Android documentation. The approach is sufficently different from the way Apple does it, that I had not run across this possibility in my searching. You need to go to phone Settings -> Accessiblity and enable the MBraille Beta accessibility service Note: Android seems to reserve a small strip for TalkBack in screen edges, so you want to configure your layout so that it is a bit towards the center from the edges. - Markdown navigation mode. Useful for example when going through the help. When you open a file which ends in .md, it is interpreted as a markdown. Then in preview you can navigate also by headings. - Context sensitive help gesture, beginning of. Hold dot 1 and swipe up with two fingers. it will tell you if you are in command mode, or text mode, the current file name, if it is read only. Fixes: - Some missing translations added Disclaimer: I did not have time test much, my CPUs are still cooling down from all the builds I've done today. :) There are known rough edges related to language change and spelling, Best regards, Harri

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Accessing Help Menu
by Eileen Misrahi Jan. 31, 2026

Jan. 31, 2026

Hi Harri and All, This may be a silly question, but I want to access the help menu while in the Braille keyboard. I can't remember the gesture off hand. Can someone jog my memory- Thanks. Eileen Sent from my iPhone

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v0.9.2 small fixes
by Harri Pasanen Jan. 31, 2026

Jan. 31, 2026

Hi Quick fix that would have been a showstopper for many contracted braille users, plus hopefully finally the correct click sound. # Version 0.9.2 Fixes: * y and z were swapped in liblouis table when using contracted braille. UEB, French, Danish affected.* click sound changed once more Best regards, Harri

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v0.9.1 fixing and polishing
by Harri Pasanen Jan. 30, 2026

Jan. 30, 2026

# Version 0.9.1 Polishing and fixing only this time. * Changed the audio library used to a low latency one, so it should feel faster. * Cleaned up VoiceOver use in iOS, it should now use VoiceOver, with the speed you configured for VoiceOver. * Tuned the speed scaling of iOS self voicing, slowest was too slow, fastest too fast. This is platform dependent, so let me know how it feels now. * Changed the keyboard click sound * Announce beginning of text when deleting backwards by word, when nothing left to delete. (swipe left with two fingers) * Adjusted self voicing speed scaling for iOS * Self voicing on iOS can also now be interrupted, like on Android. It can still probably be improved, let me know if needed. Best regards, Harri

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v0.9.0, MBraille goes AI
by Harri Pasanen Jan. 29, 2026

Jan. 29, 2026

Hi all, Release time again. Slowly converging on MBraille 1.0, which will be a public store release and named MBraille 26. There are still some rough edges and missing features, but I hope most of the heavy lifting is done. Now this release is something I'm quite excited about and looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Changelog entry below. (Note that changelog is also a command in mbraille, where you can browse the history of changes for each release) # Version 0.9.0 This is a rather big release with fixes and new features. ## New features * yandex search, works like google search * option in settings to hear clicks for char entry * AI chat. Currently uses Gemini. Swipe up with 3 fingers and type ai followed by your prompt. Example ai write me a haiku about fish The answer will be inserted into your text at current cursor location. Without arguments gemini will use your current text as prompt and append it's response to the text. You can then continue the conversation just adding a new prompt in the end, holding dot 4 and swiping up to get your last command, which was gemini, and swiping down. This is a very powerful interaction model, better than the chat windows available in browsers, which require you to copy paste the answers. Important: the functionality has privacy implications, the test version uses free Gemini chat, where Google may use your data for training. For the final production version, I will switch to paid tier, where your data is not used for training according to Google Terms of Service. I'm wondering about announcements, now it says 'Response inserted' when you get an answer. Short answers could be just spoken directly... maybe a preference setting for this is needed. Anyway, let me know what you think. ## Fixes * lang command now also changes the spelling language * Android build in 0.8.0 had issues with liblouis, so Slovak, Danish, French at least were affected * Number entry in French fixed * voice feedback on number entry fixes for all supported languages * fixed argument passing to Google, DuckDuckGo and StartPage searches. * fixed sms command + phone number * improved some announcements for Android. * self voicing should now be interruptable, similar to VoiceOver. Best regards, Harri

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Back to work
by Harri Pasanen Jan. 27, 2026

Jan. 27, 2026

Hi all, I was planning to do a release today, but I did not manage to fix everything I planned to. I'll release it once I have caught up with my plan. Anyway, MBraille should now again make daily progress, even if no releases are coming every day. Best regards, Harri

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