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Release Notes

What each release changed, newest first. Firmware comes from the installer; the version a machine is running is in the system menu under About. Studio always runs the newest one.

Every release replaces the whole flash image, /home included. Copy anything you want to keep off the device before flashing — see Console.

2.1.0 — 2026-09-09

Applies to Modern, Retro, the simulator and Studio.

New

  • Family mruby Studio. The firmware is compiled to WebAssembly and published, so the desktop, the editor and the sound chip run in a browser tab with nothing installed. → Studio
  • The App Store. It heads the launcher, fetches a published list over Wi-Fi, shows what fits on this machine and installs into /app/usr. On both boards and in the browser.
  • System services (Modern). Small resident jobs: the clock sets itself from the network, the machine publishes its own address, and text can be read aloud. The list is a file you can edit. → System Services
  • Colours you can change. The window frame, the desktop, the editor and the shell take their colours from the system theme, and any of them can be overridden by name in /home/colors.toml. The shell has a color command that writes it for you. → Colours
  • One table decides which app opens a file. A .md opens as a presentation, a .nsf in the music player, a .rb runs. → File Associations
  • New apps. PicoRabbit presents a slide deck written in Markdown, Robo Explorer is a maze you solve by writing the robot's brain, and Modern gains a video player, a microphone spectrum and a readout of its motion sensor. → Default Apps
  • Japanese in the editor. Kana input with Ctrl + Space, kanji on screen, and an editor that takes the whole screen.
  • Help on every method. F1 in the editor answers for all 577 of them, in two layers.
  • UI widgets. Buttons, lists, checkboxes and the rest, for apps that want them. → UI Widgets
  • FmrbNet.request. Fetch something without stopping the app, with the same code on a board and in the browser. → Network
  • The mouse wheel. The editor, the shell, the log and the file dialogs scroll with it.
  • Files and apps over Wi-Fi on Retro too. /fs and /app answer on both machines now; only the screen is Modern's. → Remote Desktop
  • Each board names itself. fmruby-XXXXXX.local, after its own MAC, and fmruby.local still answers. → Connecting to Wi-Fi
  • boot_splash and startup_app. Skip the logo and the jingle, or open one app as soon as the desktop is up. → The Desktop
  • WAV playback (Modern). play_wav mixes a file on top of the sound chip.
  • /home is yours. The samples, sprites, sounds and decks moved to /usr/share, and /home ships empty. → Files & I/O

Changed

  • on_event no longer needs super(ev). The base class keeps its own state in @_-prefixed names, and @running / @name are read through running? / name. Apps written against 2.0 keep working: an old super(ev) reaches an empty method. → FmrbApp
  • The theme presets are light, dark and cyberpunk. classic is gone; what it named is light.
  • The falling-block sample is BlockGame. Only the name changed.
  • flappy.rb is flappy.app.rb, like every other app.
  • Studio no longer offers colours on the page. Pick a theme in Config, inside the machine.
  • Modern's app pool is 1024 KB, and 2048 KB with large_memory = 1. Retro is unchanged. → Limitations
  • app_spawn_margin_kb decides how much internal RAM a start has to leave for the rest of the machine. → System Configuration

Updating

Retro has to be flashed on both chips

The protocol between the two chips went from 4 to 5, and the check is strict: a 2.0.x fmruby-graphics-audio against a 2.1.0 fmruby-core does not boot. Flash both from the installer. → Firmware Update

Modern is one chip and needs only the Tab5 firmware.

2.0.1 — 2026-08-08

A maintenance release. The flash image stopped carrying the caches a development machine leaves behind, [[launcher_exclude]] hides whole app categories from the launcher, and Retro's desktop wallpaper reaches the WROVER as it already did in the simulator.

Both chips are at protocol 4, as in 2.0.0, so a 2.0.0 board can take this on one chip.

2.0.0 — 2026-08-07

The release that added the second machine.

New

  • Modern (ESP32-P4). A stock M5Stack Tab5, flashed from the browser, with its own panel, speaker, touch screen and Wi-Fi. → Modern
  • Remote desktop. The Tab5 serves its screen over Wi-Fi, and a browser on the same network drives it with a PC keyboard and mouse. → Remote Desktop
  • FMRuby BASIC. A Family BASIC-compatible interpreter with its own text screen, sprites and sound. → MicroPython and BASIC
  • MicroPython. A .py file runs as an ordinary app.
  • MIDI. Serial MIDI out on the Tab5's GROVE port, MML from Ruby, and a player for standard MIDI files. → MIDI
  • A debugger on the device. Breakpoints and variables from the editor, and the same session over BLE or TCP from a PC. → Debugging
  • Ctrl + Tab. Switch between the running apps, and park a fullscreen one where it stands. → The Desktop
  • Per-app stack size. task_stack_kb in .app.toml, for an app that needs more than the default. → App Config
  • The Spinel ahead-of-time compiler became the standard engine for the kernel and the desktop, and the boot scan went from 13 s to 7.8 s.
  • The filesystem took its current shape: /app, /usr/share, /etc, /var — /data is gone.
  • Two fingers on the Tab5's touch screen are a right click.

Updating

Retro has to be flashed on both chips: the protocol between them went from 3 to 4.

1.0.0 — 2026-05-19

The first release. Retro (the narya-board) with the desktop, the launcher, the editor, the shell, tile maps and rounded windows, plus the sprite and map editors that run in a browser on the PC side.