IPFS Desktop Files

[!NOTE] This release was brought to you by the Shipyard team and IPFS community.

Highlights

🧊 Updated Kubo to v0.43 and Electron to v43

Bundled Kubo is now v0.43.0. See Release Notes for Kubo v0.43.0 for the full list of changes, key highlights below. Electron is now v43 (Chromium 150).

🗂️ Files No Longer Freezes During Garbage Collection

Adding, renaming or deleting in the Files screen while garbage collection was running could leave Files stuck for good: every later action hung, and restarting IPFS Desktop did not clear it. The two now take turns. A file whose data cannot be found anywhere also gives up with an error instead of waiting forever and blocking everything behind it. (details)

🔒 Security Fixes

Worth updating for. A remote peer could make your node's memory grow until you restarted it, using a transport every install listens on by default. (details)

📡 Your Node Announces What You Keep, Not What You Browsed

Until now your node advertised every block it held, including everything picked up while browsing. It now announces your pins and the files in the Files screen. Expect less background traffic and CPU, and no more advertising content you only looked at once.

Change it any time under tray icon's Settings → Provide Strategy, where All Files, Pins, and Browsing Cache (default) restores the old behavior.

[!IMPORTANT] This is applied to existing installs on first launch, unless you had already set Provide.Strategy (github.com) yourself. If you were deliberately re-announcing content you fetched for others, switch back from the tray.

Files you add or pin are now announced immediately, rather than at the next reprovide cycle, so a link you copy right after adding a folder works sooner for the person you send it to.

🆕 New Installs Add Files as CIDv1

A fresh install now imports with the modern IPIP-499 profile: content you add gets a bafy... or bafk... address instead of Qm..., and files are split into 1 MiB chunks. Existing repositories keep the format they already use, since changing it would change the addresses of everything you add from then on.

Either way, pick what you want under tray icon's Settings → CID Profile.

🎨 Updated WebUI

The Web UI has been updated to v4.13.0.

• Sharing IPFS Links settings let Share Link hand out a native ipfs:// address or a link to your own node, instead of a public gateway. IPFS Desktop opens ipfs:// links through your local node.
• Deleting several files at once offers to remove their pins again, so batch deletes no longer leave the space unreclaimed.
• A failed IPNS publish now tells you why instead of sitting on a finished-looking progress bar.

🔕 Fewer Update Popups

Waking your laptop or losing Wi-Fi no longer produces an Update Download Failed dialog when the background check cannot reach GitHub. Real failures during a download still surface, and Check for Updates in the tray still reports what went wrong.

What's Changed

• fix(updater): mute transient update-check errors by @mikelsr in https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop/pull/3170
• chore: update stale github repo urls by @lidel in https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop/pull/3171
• chore(deps): bump actions/checkout from 4 to 7 by @dependabot[bot] in https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop/pull/3178
• chore(deps): bump actions/cache from 5 to 6 by @dependabot[bot] in https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop/pull/3179
• chore(deps): bump actions/setup-node from 6 to 7 by @dependabot[bot] in https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop/pull/3184
• feat: webui 4.13.0 by @lidel in https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop/pull/3185
• fix(ci): skip windows signing without secrets by @lidel in https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop/pull/3186
• feat: kubo 0.43.0, electron 43 by @lidel in https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop/pull/3188
• fix: kubo config defaults suited to desktop by @lidel in https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop/pull/3194
• feat: new repos import as CIDv1 from IPIP-499 by @lidel in https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop/pull/3195
• fix: robust provide strategy detection by @lidel in https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop/pull/3196

Full Changelog: https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-desktop/compare/v0.49.1...v0.50.0