Hi everyone,
v1.9.0 has been released:

Webcam Presence and Reactions
Improved webcam tracking and character head movement, fixing remaining cases where CielChan would look toward you and immediately return to her previous direction. CielChan now follows your position more gently and naturally.

Improved gesture detection and reactions. Waving or holding an open palm can now trigger a greeting animation, with cooldowns to prevent repeated reactions while your hand remains raised. CielChan can also now detect the thumbs up gesture.

When Observations and Presence Webcam Vision are enabled together, CielChan can use webcam images to make more contextual comments about you and your surroundings.

Observation Continuity
Improved how observations continue an ongoing conversation or guided activity, including sleep guidance and storytelling. CielChan should now more consistently build on her previous contribution instead of restarting the topic, responding to her own questions, or assuming you have replied.

Further improved preservation of the selected companion experience, observation topic, and progression during text and vision observations.

Live and Messaging Connections
Fixed an issue where Telegram replies could answer a previous message instead of the current one.

Improved conversation handling across messaging connections to follow the normal chat flow more consistently, with more natural direct replies.

Added an optional Persist on Startup setting to restore Live / Messaging and selected connections when reopening the app. This is off by default.

Telegram now remembers when it has been deselected instead of automatically selecting itself again.

Added separate input fields for YouTube, Twitch, and Discord connection details, removing the need to type a separator between values. Existing saved details are preserved.

YouTube option is now available in the Steam version’s Connections settings.

Connection Setup
Added clearer connection descriptions and setup guidance across all 14 app languages.

Clarified in the descriptions how to receive companion replies through Telegram and that Game Bridge provides optional additional game events. It is not required for watching or listening to gameplay.

Presence is now labelled Presence (Webcam). Enabling it takes you to its related options in Screen & Awareness.

Mini-Game Improvements
Improved game generation response times.

Added clearer, localized progress feedback while CielChan considers a move or prepares a response.

Improved feedback during longer waits and fixed premature recovery while a generation request is still active.

Personality Generation
Added progress updates for each of the 10 personality-generation sections, making it easier to see what CielChan is currently creating.

Watch Together and Audio
Fixed an issue in certain instances where system audio temporarily enabled by Watch Together could unexpectedly turn back on after restarting the app.

Various small improvements to the Watch Together / Watch Together Game features to improve the quality of the overall experience.

Improved saving of the off state when audio is disabled during startup or shutdown transitions.

UI Improvements
Settings now remembers your last page and position during the same session.

Refined chat loading and status messages to feel more natural across all 14 languages.

Fixed animated loading dots causing longer companion status messages to jump between lines.

Fixed overlapping description text under Hide Toolbar Tips.

Update will be live on Compact Branches and other Web Platforms shortly.

Thanks, everyone!