It's been almost three months since the last update. Oops.

We're still shipping features whenever they're ready, but changelog posts are moving to a monthly round-up. That should be more useful than announcing every switch the moment we flip it.

an important age change

Packbase will become 18+ on 10 December 2025, largely because of regulatory changes. We didn't make that decision lightly.

We've since been told that we may not have to enforce age assurance, but the 18+ change is staying. What you can and can't upload is not changing. Packbase isn't an adult-content platform, and NSFW uploads remain off-limits until we have the right controls in place.

a bit of a facelift

The final interface is still taking shape, but quite a lot is ready. We've rebuilt the feed, Howl composer, icons and sidebars. Both sidebars are resizable and remember their widths in your browser, notifications now live on the right, and our border radii have finally agreed on a number.

Feeds use pages instead of infinite scroll now. We might bring infinite scroll back as an option wayyyy later, but we don't want that sort of thing on by default :P

Packbase feed after the September 2025 interface refresh, with the Howl composer and two sidebars Packbase notification panel open in the refreshed right sidebar Compact Packbase user sidebar with profile and notification controls

You can also use any emote as a reaction now.

Custom emotes displayed in Packbase's reaction picker

dms!!! and invites

After a long wait, DMs are here. Open someone's profile and hit DM to start one. You also get a private chat with yourself called Your Basecamp, which is handy for keeping anything you'd rather not lose.

We don't actively moderate private chats unless somebody reports one, but they aren't encrypted yet either. Please don't share personal information in them.

Invites are back with no cap for now. You'll need the other person's email address, and you can't send another invite if that address has already received one.

Best bit: every friend who joins earns you Trinkets to spend on 15 permanent badges~

Packbase invite screen showing invitations and permanent Trinket badges

The notification inbox is properly useful now. We'll let you know when somebody replies, reacts or accepts your invite.

We also fixed:

  • random 401: Needs authentication errors that only a reload would cure;
  • a rare feed crash after a local network failure;
  • the page reload after creating a Howl;
  • a memory leak caused by leaving a feed idle in a background tab;
  • several custom HTML and CSS saving problems;
  • isolation for Pack and profile pages, so custom CSS gets proper control;
  • text that was simply too small; and
  • a crash when hovering over somebody without a display name.

Packbase is still a bit of a resource hog. Sorry lol, we're looking into it.

That's all for now! I know it doesn't look huge after three months—sorry! I got sidetracked a bunch and spent quite a bit of time on the moderator dashboard too.