Moons 2.2 came out yesterday. A few friends had been using it for a couple of days and their reactions pointed straight at things I’d missed. Putting an app in front of other people is always worth it, and nearly everything here came out of that.

Delete a mis-logged catch-up

Tapping WhatsApp on someone’s page logs a catch-up when you tap, not when you send, so a mistap or a change of mind still counted, and you were stuck with the wrong date.

Swipe the top row of someone’s history and it’s gone. They drift back out to wherever they were before.

Pick how someone gets called

Calls are a list you tick now, the same as the messaging apps. Phone call, FaceTime Audio, FaceTime, any combination of the three or none at all.

Messages joined the messaging list too, so you can switch it off for the people whose number you’d never actually text. Both lists sit in one sheet under Reach out on a person’s page, rather than the menus they were in before, which closed on every tap. Settings holds the defaults for anyone you haven’t singled out.

The orbit doesn’t pile up

People caught up with on the same day were drawn nearly on top of each other. Sitting close together is meant to happen. Stacking isn’t.

Crowding gets resolved sideways first now, while the fan still has room, and only pushes people in or out once it’s run out. Twelve people caught up today used to land 2 points apart with 64-point faces. Nothing touches now.

The rings behind everyone also used to shift as you swiped between groups, because their radius counted the people in the group you were looking at. They sit still.

The widget is the orbit

The medium widget was a leftover from an early design, a circle of dots around a bigger dot. It’s the fan now. You at the foot, three dashed rings, everyone arranged above you, the same as the app.

There’s a large one too, and it’s how I use Moons now. The fan with faces on it, and everyone who’s due listed underneath with a Caught up button each. Tap the button and the catch-up is logged without the app opening at all.

A way back from the drift

Keeping someone quietly parks them out of the orbit without deleting them, but the only door back was a label that appeared when somebody had drifted off on their own. Keep someone quietly with nobody drifted and there was no way in at all.

The label shows for either now, says which it means, and Settings has a permanent row called The drift. Bringing someone back also used to set their last catch-up to today, which claimed you’d spoken when you’d only stopped ignoring them. They keep their place.

Shake it

Shake the phone on the orbit screen and everyone swaps places around the fan. Distances stay exactly as they were, because distance is the only thing up there carrying any meaning. All that changes is who’s standing where.

It does nothing useful. It sticks, though, so you keep whichever arrangement you shook your way into.

---

Moons is on the App Store, under 10 MB, no account and no analytics. Three people free, £2.99 for all twelve.