Introducing Fluid 2.0!

We are excited to announce the release of Fluid 2.0 Beta. This update represents a significant leap forward from Fluid 1.0 with a major rewrite of the internal architecture.

Here’s what’s new:

• Fluid 2.0
• Networking Enhancements
• Surround Sound
• Dynamic Audio Input Switching
• Web-Base High Performance Remote Desktop and Screen Sharing
• How to start testing Fluid 2.0 Beta 

Fluid 2.0

Experience improved performance with Fluid 2.0, designed to support more colors and deliver faster speeds on modern hardware such as Apple Silicon and contemporary PCs.

1. Superior Color Fidelity: Fluid 2.0 offers up to 50% better color fidelity than Fluid 1.0. This means richer and more vibrant visuals, making your remote sessions look better than ever.
2. Enhanced Visual Clarity: You'll enjoy sharper, clearer images and videos without any increase in data usage. Fluid 2.0 provides up to 50% more visual clarity using the same bandwidth as Fluid 1.0. 
3. Advanced Compression: Optimized for both productivity applications and full-motion video, Fluid 2.0 delivers smoother and more detailed visuals. This ensures a better experience whether you're working on documents or streaming videos.
4. Support for Newer Codecs: Fluid 2.0 supports newer codecs with the ability to move to full hardware-based encoding and decoding. We will announce new features for this soon.
5. Backwards Compatibility: The clients and Connect apps are fully backwards compatible with older versions of the client or Jump Desktop Connect, ensuring a seamless upgrade without any worries.

Fluid 2.0 is enabled by default when connecting to Jump Desktop Connect 7.x or later. However, you can switch back to Fluid 1.0 via the menu option (Remote -> Codec).

Networking Enhancements

Our revamped networking stack makes Jump more resilient to networking errors. It adapts to and recovers much quicker from bandwidth problems, and scales up faster to higher bandwidth connections.

Surround Sound

Teams Enterprise customers can now enjoy built-in support for 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound. The new Mac audio driver can handle up to 8 channels of audio. On Windows, it will automatically stream up to 8 channels if the host machine is set to use 8 channels. Clients will intelligently down-mix or up-mix as needed, making it perfect for tasks like video editing, gaming, and immersive audio experiences. A new Fluid performance stat called AudioChannels shows the maximum number of channels being streamed from the remote machine.

Dynamic Desktop Audio Input Switching

Switch desktop audio inputs at run-time. This allows you to change your audio setup without interrupting your session, providing flexibility and convenience.

Web-Based High-Performance Remote Desktop and Screen Sharing

1. Fluid 2.0 now supports connecting to machines directly from any web browser! You don't need to download a native client anymore. Experience zero friction, high performance remote desktop and screen sharing straight from your web browser. Simply log into your account at https://app.jumpdesktop.com, click My Computers and then click the computer to connect. Any computers running Jump Desktop Connect 7.0, and computers that you have access to will be listed there. Simply click to connect!

2. When Jump Desktop Connect 7.x is installed on the host machine, screen sharing links, users will see an option to connect via a native app or directly from their web browser:

3. Teams users will see Connect buttons with drop-downs where they can select the native app or web browser experience.

Tips: For best performance use Chrome or Edge. Don't worry, we will be optimizing for Safari and Firefox performance as we progress in the beta.

Downloads

These new features require Jump Desktop Connect 7.0 and new versions of Jump Desktop for Windows, iOS and Mac. At the moment these releases need to be downloaded manually. Over the coming weeks, we will be rolling this out to the beta channel. 

Jump Desktop Connect on the host machine:

• Jump Desktop Connect Windows
• Jump Desktop Connect for Mac

Jump Desktop on your local computer:

• Jump Desktop for Mac 9.0
• Jump Desktop for Windows
• Jump Desktop in your browser (click My Computers)
• Coming Soon: Jump Desktop for iOS

This release addresses the following issues:

- Fixed: Users cannot log in if their local account requires a password reset.
- Fixed: On Windows, there are now virtual monitor fixes for headless machines with NVIDIA graphics cards.
- Fixed: On Mac, Adobe Premiere timeline movements are now smooth.
- New: Introduced a new Password-less Login feature for Jump Desktop for Teams users. This feature is always disabled by default on all existing and new installations. To enable this feature, open up Connect Settings and edit the Password-less login feature.
- New: Added support for disabling Privacy Mode and Audio Streaming via Connect Settings.
- Stability improvements.

Jump Desktop for iOS 9.8.0 was released today to the App Store. This release has bug fixes and improves compatibility with the latest version of iOS.

To enable privacy mode connect to your machine and click Remote -> Privacy Mode.

Teams users can also enforce Privacy Mode via Connect Settings:

Privacy Mode is currently available when connecting from a Mac to a Windows or Mac machine.

We’re excited to announce that Jump Desktop for iOS 9.7.8 is now available! This new version includes optimizations for iOS and iPadOS 16, Retina support for Fluid connections and bug fixes.

Jump Desktop for iOS is available now from the App Store.

Jump Desktop for iOS 9.6.8 has the following changes:

• We've reverted back to the old Jump Desktop icon. Thank you everyone for the feedback! We're going back to the drawing board.
• In the last update we added the ability to lock the physical mouse cursor. In this update we've added support for customizing pointer acceleration and speed when the mouse cursor is locked. Adjust these settings in: Settings -> Mouse & Gestures -> Physical Mouse.
  
• Support for Cloudless Fluid connections
• Physical keyboard fixes
• Stability

In iOS 9.6.7 we added iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 compatibility. Also:

• We've updated to the new Jump Desktop icon. Let us know if you like it.
• We've added a new gaming gesture profile for Fluid! You can now control 3D first person games and 3D graphics applications by switching gesture profiles: Connect to a machine using Fluid and then tap the three dots at the top -> Settings icon -> Gesture Profiles -> Trackpad (Gaming) profile. This works with a physical mouse too!
• New Mouse Pointer Lock for iPadOS 14+ when using a physical mouse: This new feature makes it easier to use a physical mouse. It lets you lock the mouse pointer so that it always remains inside the remote screen. This way you don't have to worry about accidentally invoking the home screen bar or clicking on iPad's native UI buttons. To start using this feature open up Jump Desktop -> Settings -> Mouse and Gestures -> Lock Mouse Pointer -> ON. Quickly toggle this feature from the physical keyboard using the following shortcut: Cmd + Shift + P.
• Up to 2X Performance improvements for Fluid on newer iOS devices.
• Lots of bug fixes and stability work.

Jump Desktop Connect 6.5.x now ships it's very own high quality, low latency audio drivers for Mac. Third party drivers are no longer needed to stream audio from a Mac (though we will still support third party audio drivers).

The drivers are automatically installed when you install Jump Desktop Connect 6.5.x or later. Once installed you will see a new audio device called Jump Desktop Audio. Any audio sent to this device will be streamed to the Jump Desktop client.

The new audio drivers are compatible with macOS 10.10+ on Intel and Apple Silicon.

How to access Jump Desktop for Teams Beta

Visit: https://beta-app.jumpdesktop.com

How to get Jump Desktop for Mac Beta 

Open up Jump Desktop and click Jump Desktop -> Preferences -> General -> Check For Beta Updates and then click Jump Desktop -> Check For Updates.

If you don't see the Check for Beta Updates, you'll need to download the web version of Jump Desktop for Mac from here: http://jumpdesktop.com/downloads/JumpDesktopMac.zip

How to get Jump Desktop for Windows Beta

Open open up Jump Desktop for Windows -> File -> Settings -> Updates -> Check the checkbox Beta Updates and click Check for updates.

How to get Jump Desktop for iOS Beta

Send us an email: support@jumpdesktop.com and let us know you want to be included in the Testflight iOS Public Betas.

How to get Jump Desktop Connect Beta

Most of the beta features require new Jump Desktop Connect apps on the host machines. To update to the beta, open up Jump Desktop Connect and then click Settings -> Updates -> Beta updates. Then click Check for updates.

Jump Desktop Connect has a built-in technology that tries its best to create an end to end encrypted connection between machines, even if there is no direct path between the two hosts using indirect networking routes and relays. This feature frees up users from manually opening ports and configuring network settings. However, this also creates problems in locked-down environments where administrators need to control when a user is allowed to connect.

You can now configure Jump Desktop Connect to allow connections only when there is a direct networking path between the devices.

In this mode, Jump will never fallback on relay servers or take indirect networking routes. So for example, if a user tries to connect without VPN enabled from another network, the connection attempt fails because Jump will not be able to find a direct route between the user and the target machine.

Note: In this mode, Administrators must make sure that their firewall rules allow the VPN IP address pool to communicate over UDP with the host machines. Connections will fail otherwise.

How to configure Direct Connection Mode

1. You'll need to make sure you're using the Lock down settings feature with your computer.
2. In your Connect Configuration, make sure Direct Connections Only is checked
   
3. Save your settings.
4. To test and see if these settings are working, try connecting to the machine from an outside network or a from a mobile network.

Lock down settings let you enforce settings for the Jump Desktop Connect app from your team's web dashboard. Once settings are assigned to a machine, it can not be changed from the Jump Desktop Connect app running on the host machines.

You can apply settings to individual machines on your team or to entire access groups. 

Requirements 

• Currently only available for Teams Enterprise billing plan.

How to get started with Lockdown settings.

1. Visit https://app.jumpdesktop.com and sign into your team's dashboard.
2. Click the Connect Settings icon.
3. Click New Configuration and give it a name and then click Save.
4. Next assign it to the machines you want the settings to be enforced on (you can change the settings or the assignment later).

You'll notice that the Configuration window lists quite a few configuration options that are not available inside the Jump Desktop Connect app - such as the ability to turn off screen sharing, adding remote access users, configuring fluid ports. Here's a screenshot of what you can configure:

Once settings are applied to machines, the Jump Desktop Connect app on the machines will display a message in the Settings window: Settings are managed by your team's administrator.