Summer '26 Stage 2 release notes Audience Mode, Reactions & Expandable Menu 🎭 Audience Mode + Raise Hand Per-room audience mode toggle. Audience members get canPublish=false, canPublishData=true (they can chat/react but not broadcast audio/video). Stage members (owner/mod/promoted speakers) keep full publish grants. Promote/demote uses LiveKit UpdateParticipant for live grant changes with no reconnect, AND persists stage membership to DB so grants survive reconnect/refresh/token regen. Toggling audience mode mid-room iterates current participants and updates their grants live, with a broadcast data message for immediate UI sync. ✋ Raise Hand lk.raisehand topic carries { event, participant_identity, pubkey?, display_name? } — LiveKit identity is used for tile mapping and promote actions, pubkey only for profile display. ✋ indicator on tiles + a moderator queue list in RoomControls with "Bring to stage" action. Twitter-Spaces-style layout: stage tiles in grid, audience as a compact avatar strip; verified on small mobile screens. 🎉 Emoji Reactions on Tiles lk.reactions topic { emoji, participant_identity } renders a floating emoji overlay on the sender's tile that fades over ~4s. Client-side rate-limited. Reuses the EmojiPickerPopover from Stage 1 with a limited reaction set. ⌃ Expandable "^" Vertical Menu New ExpandableMenu replaces the leave slot in the custom control bar. A chevron "^" expands upward into a vertical list: Raise Hand, Reactions (mini emoji popup), and Leave (red, destructive style). Sits above the video layer and transparent chat layer with top z-index; works within the existing mobile floating pill bar CSS. special thanks to @buttercup @yeghro Sooly, Tomekk , Reed, Tigs and AJ for helping out with testing #updates

Whoever it was that SUPERCHARGED our #ZapGoal to reach this month’s goal THANK YOU! 💜✨

Thanks 🔥💜

Are you seeing the epic feature we’re bringing to Hivetalk? Help us keep this FREE by helping is reach our July #ZapGoal at https://honey.hivetalk.org/dashboard (Can’t zap? Repost to help us reach more people as we #grownostr 💜⚡️)

Damus Relay now removed from list of Hivetalk relays for profile searches. If there is a WOT relay or similar relay for profile lookups you would prefer, please feel free to let us know what you'd like to have. #updates

Summer '26 Stage 1 Release Highlights for the current release! Out today! ⚡ Zap Notifications in Chat When a participant zaps another participant, a structured ⚡ system entry appears in chat: "⚡ sender zapped recipient, N sats ⚡". Uses a dedicated lk.zap data topic with a typed payload — not parsed from chat text, so it can't be spoofed. Sender and recipient display names are plumbed from the participant tile through to the payment modal. 🔒 Lock/Unlock Disconnect & Toast Visibility Reproduced and fixed the lock/unlock disconnect behavior live (two-browser test). Restyled the disconnect/reconnecting toast to amber/orange so transient connection states are clearly visible against the video layer. 😀 Emoji Picker in Chat A small curated emoji popover in the chat input — inserts at cursor, no new dependency. Componentized as EmojiPickerPopover for reuse by Stage 2 reactions. 💾 Download Chat Transcript Download icon in the chat header serializes the current chat to [HH:MM] Name: message lines and downloads as a .txt file. Room name is sanitized for the filename; falls back to hivetalk-chat-{date}.txt when no room name is available. 🔇 Mute Screenshare Audio (Per-Viewer) Speaker toggle on the screenshare tile mutes ONLY the ScreenShareAudio publication for the local viewer — does not affect video, the mic track, or other participants. Mute state is tracked per participant + publication SID so it survives track re-publishes. 🛡️ Moderators Approve Lobby Joiners Fixed the broken moderator lobby-approval flow. Root cause traced through the promote path — live LiveKit participant attributes now correctly reflect moderator="true", and mods can approve/deny lobby requests end-to-end. Regression test added. special thanks to @buttercup and @yeghro #updates

Hot fix for zaps not working from July 2 Special thanks to Jordi for finding this one!

Hot fix deployed for the 4 hour room bug. Previously all rooms were closing at 1 hour. Now permanent rooms are back to 4 hrs #updates

We have 5 new releases in the works. Every week there will be new hivetalk release, new features, new updates, bug fixes, hot fix pushes. keep your eyes peeled 👀, this is going to be the most aggressive push out for Q3 2026! #updates

You asked for it, we delivered - Amber sign in ! If you're an Amber user and are up for some testing, please hit reply to this note and we'll set you up.

We'll continue with our weekly testing sessions next week. Keep your eyes peeled as we start to push new releases every week. 🔥 #updates

We just closed, but the link is available if you wanna test out the new features at https://stagetwo.hivetalk.org/dashboard Will try to hop in if i see a room open :)