Release notes

VoxGuard 4.8.16

Full release notes for the controlled VoxGuard 4.8.16 release preparation and internal store upload.

Release date: June 4, 2026
Runtime version: 4.8.16+26060401
Prepared on branch: codex/release-4-8-16-2026-06-04

Focus

Release focus

VoxGuard 4.8.16 is a controlled release-preparation build focused on security, offline reliability, map/realtime stability, localization cleanup, and release automation hardening after the 4.8.15 preparation baseline.

The build was prepared locally, uploaded to TestFlight, and uploaded to Google Play Internal testing. External/public distribution still remains a release-owner decision.

Changes

User-visible changes

More reliable signed-in and signed-out session handling, including expired session recovery.
Better messaging reliability in simulator-covered send and two-user realtime flows.
Map views are less likely to show stale live-update snapshots after resume.
Help, support, profile, group, alert, and home/PTT surfaces received localization and wording cleanup.
Admin read-only views remain covered by release smoke testing.

Engineering

Technical changes

Implemented secure local token storage and updated iOS pod metadata for the secure storage plugin.
Hardened foreground service lifecycle handling.
Hardened offline sync queue draining and treated offline rate-limit failures as retryable.
Guarded map resume realtime subscriptions and live map snapshots.
Redacted invite tokens from deep-link logging.
Hardened message acknowledgement RPCs and revoked legacy orphan RPC access.
Added the N9 Supabase schema baseline and N12 RLS/policy performance remediation migrations.
Removed legacy map/runtime code, unused batch request manager code, and related obsolete tests.
Cleaned localization orphan/dedup coverage and added CI checks for l10n, debug prints, and skipped-test reason hygiene.

Release prep

Fixes made during this release run

Created the missing iOS simulator devices needed by the E2E release gate: iPhone 16 Pro iOS 26.4, iPhone 16 Plus, and iPhone 16 E2E C.
Fixed debug-only E2E auto-login so a persisted simulator auth session is cleared when the requested auto-login user differs from the stored session. This path is disabled for release mode.
Updated Maestro message-send flows to tap the visible send button text in Finnish or English instead of relying on a hidden or obscured semantic id while the iOS keyboard is open.
Updated the release build script so explicit environment overrides can win over .env; final artifacts were rebuilt with ENVIRONMENT=production.

Verification

Test and build evidence

flutter analyze: PASS.
flutter test: PASS, 2303 passing / 0 failing / 25 skipped.
Simulator E2E health check: PASS.
Targeted message_send simulator E2E after release-prep fix: PASS.
Release preparation for 4.8.16+26060401: PASS.
Quick simulator smoke: PASS, 7/7 scenarios.
Production artifact rebuild with ENVIRONMENT=production: PASS.
Store upload artifact, environment, and Fastlane preflights: PASS.

Artifacts

Release artifacts

Android App Bundle: app-release.aab
Android SHA-256: 9e2b50bd2ec2a15530fe03c8472419a2881833631e4534955aeed0a3b8dd6fd2
iOS archive: Runner.xcarchive
iOS IPA: VoxGuard.ipa
iOS SHA-256: 8935416f889ecbfa18fd211053f052729f9982b9c412a6f0d626a17aec64710c
Production build evidence was reviewed before upload.

Upload status

Internal store upload

TestFlight upload: PASS. Build 4.8.16 (26060401) uploaded, processed, and changelog set.
Google Play Internal testing upload: PASS. AAB uploaded to the internal track.
Public App Store release, external TestFlight distribution, and wider Google Play rollout remain separate release-owner decisions.

Limits

Known limits

The release was prepared from commit d33dfa08 plus release-prep changes committed as a3ef190b before upload.
Store-side tester assignment and final availability should still be verified in App Store Connect and Play Console after processing.