Hacienda 1.3

This week your desktop starts talking back. The media you put on a space is now something people can gather around — comment on it, see where the conversation is happening, and get pulled back in when it moves. Plus groups graduate into real places, applications get friendlier, you choose where DFOS drops you in, and a stack of fixes.

Below is the usual build-side feature rundown for Hacienda 1.3, shipped from all of us together here in New York.

Media

Open any video, track, or image on a space desktop and a full comments rail opens right alongside it — comment, @mention members, drop an emoji, upvote, edit or delete your own. Every track in the docked mini-player gets its own comment button, so you can talk over a song without leaving it. The sidebar tells you who added the file, when, how big it is, and gives you a clean download.

And you can see where people are talking at a glance. When someone comments on something on the desktop, that tile lights up with a live activity dot. Open it and the dot clears; you only ever see dots for activity since you last looked. It turns a desktop from a shelf of files into a room you can read.

To close the loop, media now notifies. When files land on a desktop, folder, or group you can see, you get a single grouped heads-up — "Yancey added vid.mp4 and 5 other items to Field Recordings" — that drops you exactly there, even into nested folders. Tune it per space in your settings.

Groups

Your groups now live right in the sidebar, nested under their space with a sliding selector and unread dots, so you can see them and hop between them at a glance. Open one and it's no longer a folder-style card — it's a full desktop of its own, with its own wallpaper, avatar, breadcrumb, and a menu for members, invites, and settings. You can give each group its own backdrop, so a single space can feel like several distinct rooms.

This is just the start of a wave of group changes that we have been jamming on this week as a part of larger shifts in how spaces are structured.

Applications

If you run a space, your applicant queue now works like a real inbox. You can message an applicant straight from the accept/reject screen — to welcome someone in, or to explain a no — without having to let them in first. You can ban a repeat-griefer directly from their application, and accepted applicants show their member number. Pending applicants no longer surface member-only controls by mistake.

Desktop

DFOS now lets you choose where it drops you in. A new Default screen setting decides what you open to — your last-visited desktop (the new default), the exact screen you were last on, or your most-active space. Settings got tidier in the same pass: Chat and Feature access are now one Features panel.

Fixes

• Improved post reply threading. Reply to a reply and it tags the exact person you clicked and records the exact comment you're answering — threads no longer collapse under the top author. The blog/newsletter comment composer got the same fix, and mentions resolve even for people who only have a display name.
• Fixed DM issues. Hit Message on someone and the conversation opens with their name and avatar in the header — even for a brand-new chat or someone from a space you don't share. The blank "who is this?" inbox glitch is gone, and profiles now load for people you share no space with.
• The chat reply backlink is tidy. The "replying to…" pill is one clean line now, names the media type (Audio, Image, Video, File) when the original had no text, and never breaks sideways on mobile.
• Media handling in the composer. Dragging an inline image to reposition it no longer leaves a duplicate, and iPhone stops greying out voice notes and other audio attachments.
• Smaller stuff. Renamed tracks show their name everywhere (including the mini dock), non-owners no longer see a dead Edit menu in the viewer, older internal post links resolve instead of 404'ing, joining a multi-key paid group scrolls properly on mobile, and long topic titles stop overlapping their room header.

Many thanks to the power users and feature abusers leaving excellent notes for us here in NCE, via the desktop feedback form, and lovingly blowing up our DMs (keep it coming!!).

Later this week

A few things need a bit more time in the oven. All will land this week before Ilya and I head back home:

Cross-space treasury. You'll be able to include another space on a split payout, so collaborations across spaces can route money cleanly the same way splits already do inside one. The consent flow and the plumbing are in place; we're finishing the last mile.

The final media cutover. All your private images start serving from DFOS's own delivery infrastructure — faster, higher quality, and noticeably snappier outside the US, along with deeper privacy.

Media inside long posts. Audio and video stop being note-only and start embedding directly inside long-form posts — drop a track or a video into a blog post or newsletter and it plays in place.

You'll also see some additional profile visibility controls ahead of getting platform identities on the open protocol. The DFOS Protocol spec is now v1 feature-complete and frozen.

More soon ✌️