We’re excited to roll out Fluid 2.0 Beta 2, a major update that takes remote desktop to the next level with 4:4:4 chroma subsampling and 10-bit color support. This release is all about delivering incredible color accuracy and detail, giving you a truly crisp, studio-quality experience right on your remote desktop.

What 4:4:4 Color Means for You

Traditionally, remote desktop apps have relied on 4:2:0 chroma sub-sampling to cut down on bandwidth. While that’s efficient, it also means sacrificing some detail, particularly in areas with sharp edges or fine text. 

With 4:4:4 color support in Fluid 2.0 Beta 2, that’s no longer an issue. Every pixel now carries full color information.Artistic applications display with stunning precision, and even text and UI elements look sharper and more defined. Whether you’re working on detailed design projects or just want your desktop to look as good as it would in person, this is a big upgrade. This improvement isn’t just for creatives—productivity apps like word processors and spreadsheets also benefit, with text appearing noticeably crisper and easier to read.

4:4:4 on the left, 4:2:0 on the right (click the image to see the difference)

Moving from Millions to over a Billion Colors

Most displays use 8-bit color, which gives you 16.7 million colors to work with. That sounds like a lot until you need subtle color transitions or want to eliminate banding in gradients.

With Fluid 2.0 Beta 2, we’re stepping up to 10-bit color, which expands the color palette to over a billion colors. This leap ensures that even the most nuanced shades are rendered with incredible precision. Whether you’re in video production, graphic design, or any field that demands top-notch visual quality, this is the level of color depth you need to get your work done right.

Top image is original, the bottom image is the image with color banding.

Why 4:4:4 and 10-Bit Color Together Are a Game-Changer

Pairing full-color resolution (4:4:4) with a billion-color palette (10-bit per channel) in Fluid 2.0 Beta 2 gives you the ultimate high-fidelity remote desktop experience. This combination ensures that every pixel is vibrant and accurate, capturing even the smallest details and subtlest color variations. For anyone working with high-end visuals, whether it’s video editing, graphic design, or just enjoying a more polished remote desktop, this update is a must-have.

Flexibility at Your Fingertips

One of the coolest features of Fluid 2.0 Beta 2 is the ability to switch between all color modes on the fly while connected. Whether you need the high efficiency of 4:2:0 for certain tasks or want to take full advantage of 4:4:4 with 10-bit color, you can do it all without disconnecting: To switch colors while connected to a machine click Remote -> Color.

Important Notes:

1. High color quality (4:4:4 at 8bit) is available for everyone!
2. Studio Video (4:2:0 10bit) and Studio Art (4:4:4 10bit) modes are currently available for Jump Desktop for Teams Enterprise customers.
3. At the moment, 10-bit color support is limited to connections TO Mac hosts. For Windows hosts, we’re shipping 4:4:4 in the beta today but we're working hard to enable 10bit color - stay tuned!

How to Get Started:

Install Jump Desktop Connect on the host machine:

• Jump Desktop Connect Windows (version 7.0.66 or later)
• Jump Desktop Connect for Mac (version 7.0.66 or later)

Download the Jump Desktop Beta on your local computer:

• Jump Desktop for Mac 9.0 (9.0.30 or later)
• Jump Desktop for Windows (9.0.5 or later)

That's not all!

If you haven't already, don't forget to check out new features in Fluid 2.0 Beta 1 here.

Introducing Fluid 2.0!

We are excited to announce the release of Fluid 2.0 Beta 1. 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. Support for 4:4:4 and 10bit color: Delivers incredible color accuracy and detail, giving you a truly crisp, studio-quality experience right on your remote desktop.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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).

Read more about 4:4:4 and 10bit color support here.

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.

Group billing streamlines finances by enabling different teams in an organization to use one billing account. It consolidates all expenses into a single invoice, removes duplicate charges for users in multiple teams, and eliminates the need for separate team billing, making the process simpler and more cost-effective.

Learn more here

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.

Enhancements

• New List View Columns: 
  • Last Seen: Indicates the most recent time a machine was online. Ideal for managing multiple machines and identifying ones that may need to be removed.
  • Last Connected: Displays the last time you established a connection with a machine.
    
• Enhanced Listview Mode: New icons indicate the online and offline status of your machines for a more intuitive experience.
  
• Observe Mode Toggle: Switch to observe mode easily with a new keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Cmd+Shift+O).
• Prevent Local Display Sleep: Ensure your local display stays awake during active connections. Perfect when watching remote content or monitoring connections. Navigate to Jump Desktop -> Settings -> General to access.

Fixes

• macOS Sonoma Compatibility:
  • Resolved an issue with RDP printer redirection.
  • Implemented a fix for a reported crash issue.
• Stability Improvements: General bug fixes for a smoother experience.
• Audio Output: Fixed issues where audio output didn’t switch automatically.
• iCloud Syncing: Resolved a glitch that led to the display of duplicate computers.

In this update, notable improvements have been made in handling connection windows in 'Displays in Separate Windows' mode. The strategy now opts to reuse existing windows instead of closing and re-opening them. This change is particularly beneficial when using virtual monitors.

Stylus remoting has undergone a significant upgrade, delivering precision and accuracy like never before. An option to disable stylus remoting on the client side has been added as well. To disable stylus remoting, connect to the machine and click Remote => Uncheck Stylus.

Compatibility with Adobe Photoshop has been enhanced, specifically in the handling of mouse cursors.

Various stability and performance enhancements have been implemented.

Your feedback is invaluable. Please don't hesitate to reach out to support@jumpdesktop.com if you have any questions.

This is a bug fix release which fixes an issue with 'Fullscreen on All Windows' and 'Lock Mouse Cursor' not working correctly. This release also improves startup performance improvements for 1000s of machines.

8.6.6: Fixes a crash on Windows 7

We're delighted to announce the official release of Jump Desktop for Windows 8.6.5. This version introduces a host of new features and improvements:

• Virtual Display Support: This feature helps extend your screen beyond the physical monitor, offering more space to work on.
• Privacy Mode: Keeping user privacy paramount, privacy mode blanks out the host machine's physical displays.
• Stylus Support when connecting to Mac or Windows: Using a stylus with Jump Desktop for Windows is now supported when connecting to both Mac and Windows devices.
• Higher-Quality Audio Streaming for Teams Enterprise Users: Enterprise users can now enjoy higher-quality audio streaming, ensuring clearer streaming audio.
• Resolution Matching Fixes: We have improved resolution matching.
• Stability: We've worked on our backend to make the software more stable and reliable.

To update to the new version, open Jump Desktop for Windows and click Help -> Check for Updates.

Relevant Support Article: How to use Stylus Pen Pressure Support For Windows

This is a bug fix release:

• Fixes an issue when creating outgoing screen sharing sessions
• Fixes Keyboard IME issues
• Stability