Out with the new in with the old

Did you miss the original black Zello Talkscreen, or did you like the new re-designed one.  Doesn’t really matter, because now you can have both.  Zello+ now supports changing the look using themes.  You can switch between light and dark, look for even more choices in the future.  We might even let you create your own custom theme.

Changing the theme

Select ‘Settings’ from the navigation menu, then press ‘Visual theme’.  This takes you to the ‘Customize theme’ view.  The name of the current theme isdisplayed, press the indicator to choose a theme from the Zello servers.

Now you have the ‘Classic Talk Screen Dark’ theme installed.

What other themes would you like to see? Purple, lime green, Hello Kitty :)

What’s new for Zello and Zello+

Quick access to configuring ‘Trending channels’

Trending channels are set to ‘Filtered’ by default.  Press the wrench to access the settings for trending channels. To get the full list of trending channels select ‘All’

Blocked channel users

Have you ever wanted to know who blocked somebody from a channel?  Zello now shows which moderator blocked a user.  This information is also saved to your history feed.

Improved ‘Contact requests’ handling

Do you get a lot of contact requests?  Do you wish there was a way to decline or block them all at once?  We did too, so now you will find two new buttons on the ‘Contact requests’ view to either block or decline all the requests at once.  What’s the difference between blocking and declining you ask?  If you block a contact request you will never see another request from that user again (unless you unblock them).  If you decline a request you won’t see a request from that user unless they ‘Resend’ the request.

Turn off history

There is also an option to turn off history

We also fixed a bug with interruptions in Zelect channels. Plus a number of other bug fixes.

Zello  on

Where is everything?

The user interface of Zello+ has changed a bit from Zello 1.9.  Here’s a quick walk-through on navigating  Zello+.

Using the Zello+ navigation menu

Zello+ uses a “navigation menu” that the current screen hides. To view it, either tap the Menu button on the top left of most screens, or just slide the current screen to the right. Zello has a tab menu at the bottom of the screen for switching between the most used screens. Zello+ gives you quicker access to more features. For example, you can quickly access the last contact that you talked with by pressing the Microphone, located between the “Solo” and “Speaker” entries.

Accessing your profile

Zello: Press the “Edit” button on the “My Info” tab.

Zello+: Press the   icon on the navigation menu. You can now update the your status text in the profile.

Managing accounts

Zello: Press the “Switch accounts” button on the “My Info” tab.

Zello+: Press the   icon just left of the gear to see a list of your accounts. It’ll also give you the option to add an account or press the ”Edit accounts” to remove an entry from the list.

Using channels, contacts and recents

The list of channels, contacts and recents should still look familiar. Now you access them from the Navigation menu on Zello+ instead of the tab bar.

Navigating the talk screen

The talk screen on Zello+ has a fresh new look.  Zello+ displays the profile picture of the contact speaking to you.  Press the profile picture to see full profile for that user or channel.

Press the   icon to send an alert.

Press the  icon to “see” the details for this user or channel.  Pressing the eye flips you to the back side of the talk screen.  This is where you’ll find History, Profile, and for channels the active user list.

You now access solo mode and speaker on the Navigation menu in Zello+.

Zello: Access History by sliding up the history bar at the bottom of the screen.

Zello+: History now appears on the back of the talk screen, press to   icon to see it.  Press the   icon to delete messages and the  icon to share messages.

Zello+ displays a banner at the bottom of the talk screen to remind you that you are in “Busy” mode.  Sometimes users forgot they were in “Busy” mode and couldn’t figure out why they couldn’t hear messages.  A similar banner also appears when you are in “Solo” mode.

Stay tuned for more cool features in the upcoming Zello and Zello+ releases.

Everyone on the crawl should use the Zello channel to get information about the shuttle and what’s happening.  Zello will be using the channel for a fun contest.  Just download Zello, go to the channels tab, click add and search for Startup Crawl.

All the same channels are still available from search.  We plan to restore the feature with reporting and filtering.

Try the new “Trending Channels” section to find interesting live channels.  Just click the channel to listen in.

You’ll hear crude language and topics when browsing.  Please send a list of any especially offensive channel to support@zello.com and we’ll hide them from this list.

In the next release we’ll be adding user and channel profiles plus an report channel option for users.  These should improve Channel browsing.

Trending Channels replace the Featured Channels list.  The old approach sent everyone to a few channels.  They became over-populated and often harsh.  The new approach should give lots of healthy channels a chance to grow.

Channels will also get better with fewer disruptive “trolls” because they can’t keep creating accounts.

Trending channels is included in the iPhone 1.7 release and Android 1.36.  It is not yet available for Blackberry or Windows.

Get Zello for Android  Android release notes