Never lose your Orbital tab again! From Google Chrome, click on the install button or download icon in your address bar. This will open a Progressive Web App which can be pinned to your dock or saved to your desktop.
Jump around the galaxy using your arrow keys ← ↑ → or ↓
In honour of NASA’s incredible journey to Mars, we’re changing our naming slightly for this release.
Change your galaxy background and create your perfect space in a flash with our all-new Design Mode.
Walk around the galaxy using Alt-[Arrow key] or go a bit slower with Alt-Ctrl-[Arrow key]. We’ve also improved keyboard navigation in a number of other subtle ways around the app. This should be a great help to people who use their browser without a mouse.
We already had YouTube videos and Apple Music embeds, but you can now embed any web page into your galaxy using the toolbar at the top of your galaxy.
Try embedding Google Docs or a company calendar to power up your galaxy.
Using your mouse wheel, trackpad, or the zoom buttons in the bottom-right of the galaxy you can zoom in and out of your galaxy. This really helps orient yourself and get an overview of the galaxy and where everyone and everything is.
We’ve got a new toolbar at the top of the galaxy that gives you really fast access to add new items. We heard that people were not finding the old menu button and that it was slow to add new sticky notes – this new toolbar is much easier to use.
You can now search for and send your favourite reaction GIFs from the reaction bar and the chat message box.
When you create pins, you can give them their own “audio zone”. This means that they have a circle around them, and if you move within the circle, you’ll be connected to everyone else in the circle at full volume. Think of it like being in a meeting room where everyone wants to hear everyone else.
We’ve done this to make it easier to have larger meetings in your galaxy without having to all stand uncomfortably close to each other.
We’ve added a host more keyboard shortcuts:
That’s it for this release. I’m going to look up some more planets that are outside of Neptune’s orbit for next week.
In the meantime, keep the feedback coming in!
Before we start, let’s just clear one thing up… here, we consider Pluto to be a planet. It’s also handy that we don’t have to think of a new naming convention for our releases until next week.
Anyway, without further ado, take a look at the things you can do in your galaxy now!
This is great for watching a video with colleagues for a “lunch and learn”. Or if you want to Rickroll people. Click here to find out more about embedding Youtube videos.
When you post a link into chat, we now give you the option of embedding that link into your galaxy. This is great for things like office radio, or showing a Google Slides presentation without having to switch tabs.
Great for jotting down tasks, brainstorming or holding Agile retrospectives.
It also allows you to send notes to co-workers, or leave a note for them if they’re out – just like you would in a real office.
You can add Youtube videos and Stickies to your galaxy via the button in the bottom-left corner:
We hope these changes make your remote working life easier. As always, we love to get feedback from our users, so please get in touch and let us know what you love, what you don’t, and what you’d like to see us add in the future.
If you’ve read this far, you might like to follow us on Twitter where you’ll get suggestions and inspiration on how to use your galaxy. And we’d love to hear what you do with these latest updates!
Share and save web links with “link dots”
You can now place links to web pages into your galaxy – and they’re available to everyone straight away. It’s like being able to share your bookmarks bar with each other!
This is great for keeping your own links handy, but it really shines when you’re sharing them with other people. Next time you’re running a meeting, and you want to make sure everyone has the agenda, or the Google Sheets spreadsheet handy, you can put all your links down before the meeting, wave everyone over, and everyone has got exactly what they need right in front of them!
Using the Control Center at the bottom of the galaxy window, you can set your status to Away. This means that you won’t be connected to the audio system even if someone comes near to you. They can see that you’re away, too.
Think of it as the equivalent of putting your headphones on in the office to signal that you’re busy.
When you post image links in chat, a preview shows up. That’s useful, but the best part is it works for GIFs.
Yay.
(And yes, we will be adding a GIF search very soon!)
It can be frustrating if you mis-click and accidentally drag a location pin into the wrong place. You can stop that now by locking your pins from the ••• menu in the sidebar next to each pin.
We hope these changes make your remote working life easier. As always, we love to get feedback from our users, so please get in touch and let us know what you love, what you don’t, and what you’d like to see us add in the future.
We’re bringing in the New Year with another big release, with lots of sweeping improvements!
Overhauled sidebar and galaxy interfaceWe have made it easier and quicker to get to the things you need:
Link previews in chatWhen you paste a website link into chat, we’ll give you a little preview of the link, making it easier to pick out from the rest of the chat. This is called ‘unfurling’, and we have some neat plans for improving unfurling in the future…
Improved display of user avatarsWe’ve made the avatars much bigger so you can see those profile pics in all their glory. If you don’t have a profile picture, we now give you a personalised avatar, rather than everyone showing up as a generic turquoise blob!
If someone is sharing their screen, we’ve also made the button to access it bigger and brighter.
More help and support optionsUse the help button in the top of the sidebar, and you have the option to report bugs, suggest features and get help with using Orbital. These requests go directly to the developers, so we can respond as quickly as humanly possible to your requests and feedback.
We love getting feedback, too, so please keep it coming!
From the help menu, you can also access our guide to onboarding your team to Orbital. We’re looking to expand this a lot in the coming weeks as we look to help everyone navigate the world of remote work.
Bug fixes
Decorate your pinsTicking off one of our most requested features again, you can now attach a background image to the pins you create in your galaxy. We have given you a bunch of presets to choose from, or you can upload your own. We’ve got some really great plans for pins in the future, so we hope you enjoy where we take this.
Press Shift+Enter to get a new line, rather than sending the chat message. You can paste multi-line messages into the box and send those, too. Handy stuff.
Have a look around and see if you can find the switch to turn on Christmas mode!
We are proud to announce a completely new way to do screen sharing! You can view the screens of multiple people at the same time, and drag, drop and resize the sharing windows to exactly the layout that you want. We think this is pretty gosh darn exciting, and we’d love your feedback on this.
If your galaxy is busy, and your background is noisy, you can now choose to join your galaxy with your mic already muted. You can do this from the Lobby screen before you enter a galaxy.
You could always see other people’s speaking volumes around their avatars, but not your own. Now you can see your own, but also the way the volume is displayed is much more accurate and responsive.
We’ve made lots of enhancements to the performance of your galaxy. You should notice it’s a bit snappier than before, especially in galaxies with lots of users.
We’ve made it easier to choose your set of reaction emojis, with a lot less clicks required, and a lot smoother experience.
Almost all of the changes in the Jupiter release are as a direct result of user requests. A little nudge from you goes a long way to helping us choose what to tackle next, so please just drop a note in the help or feedback system in the galaxy.
Save yourself a lot of clicking to mute and unmute when you’re in group conversations. You can now just hold the SPACE bar and your mic is temporarily unmuted; release the SPACE bar and you’re back on mute.
The title of your tab also reflects whether or not people can hear you. If it’s got a 🟣 then you are unmuted and people are within range of you. If you see a ⚪️ then nobody can hear you.
If you need to get hold of someone for a quick chat, you can wave them over to your location from the sidebar. The other person will receive a notification and can jump straight to your location.
You can now share a link directly to a pin! Use the menu next to the pin in the sidebar, and you can copy a link to that pin. Share that with someone, and when they enter your galaxy they’ll go straight to that pin. This is great for team meetings such as stand-ups or retrospectives.
Give your galaxy a splash of colour by setting the colour of a pin when you create it 🔴 🟠 🟡 🟢 🔵 🟣
We’ve added the ability to drag pins around the galaxy with the mouse
You can also edit the name and colour of your pins after you have created them from the sidebar menu
No more double-clicking to move your marker, as you can now use the mouse to move yourself around. You can still double-click, which is still useful for travelling large distances quickly!
Make sure that money that you’ve spent on your fancy mic goes to good use! Before you enter a galaxy you can choose which microphone to use, and on Chrome, you can choose which audio output to use (this is a limitation of other browsers, sorry!).
Emoji reactions have always been one of our users’ favourite features, but you’ve always been stuck with the nine emoji we chose…until now!
Use the menu at the bottom of the emoji reaction panel (it looks like this: •••) and you can choose whichever emoji you want. So if you have a few favourite emojis, you can set these for easy access! 👍
When you have nothing else selected (e.g. you’re not in the chat box) you can press M to toggle your mic between muted to unmuted. This is great for conversations between many people and you want to switch between muted and unmuted quickly, especially if you have a noisy background.
We’ve changed the microphone button to glow purple when the mic is enabled, and grey when you are muted. This is because we found that people preferred to know when their mic is on, rather than when it is off!
You can now add your own avatar image which will show on your marker in the galaxy. Do this from the Account page, and next time you enter a galaxy, everyone will see your avatar on your marker.
You can also change your name from the Account page, which will also show up when you enter a galaxy.
The Chat and Who’s here panels are now in a sidebar. This means you have much easier access to them.
If you have a profile image attached to your account, it will show up in your galaxy on your marker.
It’s our first Beta release! In this release:
Sign up and create your trial galaxy, inviting up to 20 people to collaborate with.
Move your marker around your galaxy to chat with your colleagues
Send chat messages and emoji reactions.
Add pins to make distinct areas in your galaxy
Customise your virtual office, feel connected like you were in the same room, bring back hallway chats, and experience more natural remote communication.
