Changelog #0014 — 🗄 Spaces, API key auth, UI improvements, and more

🗄 Spaces

Spaces have arrived in HTTPie! Spaces (short for workspaces) are containers for your projects. Each space is its own universe with a library, collections, saved requests, drafts, open tabs, and—soon—variables.

Your journey starts with a single space bearing your name. But it’s only the beginning of your space odyssey. You can create as many spaces as you need. The organizing opportunities have leveled up!

🔑 API key auth

When you need to authenticate requests using a custom API key header, there's now a new option for that. This way you can specify your auth at the collection level even if it’s not one of the standard types HTTPie currently supports.

🗑 Contextual delete dialogs

When we’re in the flow we do things somewhat automatically. That’s great, we want our users to be fast and productive. There are some sensitive actions, though, that need special attention and care. Deleting something is one of them. That’s why the deletion confirmation modals got more informative, to make you fully aware of what you are deleting and make sure that’s what you want to do.

➕ Unified “Create new” button

One button to rule them all. The new versatile ➕ button allows you to conveniently create any kind of content from one place.

✍🏻 Font improvements

Thanks to our beta users’ feedback, we’ve identified a few issues in the monospace variant of our font, now fixed:

• Brackets [] and braces {} are now more distinct thanks to the more pronounced tip of the latter.
• The backtick ` character is no longer missing.
• The command key looped square character ⌘ is now also included in the set. (Btw, there’s an interesting backstory on how Apple adopted this lovely symbol to avoid the overuse of its logo in the Macintosh UI).

We’re also planning on making zeros and big O’s more distinguishable in an upcoming release. Big shoutout to Gradient.

✨ Other improvements

• Contextual menus are now clearer than ever, with icons and easier-to-understand labels.
• The Web & Desktop apps are now interlinked in the profile menu. You will also find a handy link to the Terminal app there. One small step towards integrating the HTTPie universe.
• The internal storage and state management have been completely rewritten, offering more stability and robust persistency.
• We’ve also concluded our cloud backend for the HTTPie API platform. Our next focus here will be on integration and synchronization across devices while keeping the apps fully offline-first.

🪲 Bug fixes

• You can use ⌘–Enter (macOS) or Control–Enter (elsewhere) to send a request. But previously it could erroneously send all open requests and not just the one you're working on. Now it doesn’t.
• When you send a request and then change your mind, you can still cancel the in-progress transaction. In the desktop app this mechanism was broken, but not anymore.
• Oops, a - in a custom header name would lead the app to crash. It is fixed.

Upcoming 3.2.0 release

We are getting close to and excited about the upcoming v3.2.0. Here's a sneak peek of the new features:

🤩 Refined UI — compact help output, improved progress bars, more meaningful colors.

📖 Man pages — HTTPie is finally getting complete manuals available through man httpie, man http, and man https.

📦 Single binary executables — download HTTPie as a single binary file and run it without installation.

🗞 Debian releases — most recent releases will now be offered also through our custom Apt repo with new releases instantly available for Debian, Ubuntu, etc.

⬆️ Update available notice — get notified about new versions as soon as they become available for your system straight in the terminal.

⚖️ Improved sessions — multiple headers with the same name are persisted in the sessions.

If you missed it, check out also what’s new in 3.0.0 and 3.1.0.

GitHub stars — lost and found

Last week we shared our experience on how we lost 54k GitHub stars from the HTTPie for Terminal’s repo.

Since then, the post has been shared thousands of times on Twitter and other channels. It also occupied the front page of Hacker News for two days (displacing Elon Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter from the #1 spot).

It has triggered a lot of interesting discussions on the importance of good UX and database design, human fallibility, taking responsibility, and GitHub’s reaction to the situation.

But most importantly, the incredible reaction of the community has completely blown us away. We’ve received countless supportive and compassionate messages and public calls for starring our repo. Big thanks to everyone!

As a result, the repo is now approaching 20k stars.

We feel like this minor-tragedy-turned-heart-warming-experience will deserve an article on its own once the situation has stabilized.