Changelog
What's new in OpenAlly — and what changed under the hood. OpenAlly 2.0 is now live on Google Play: we rebuilt the engine from the ground up. If you're coming from an older build, we have to be straight with you about what that means for your data.
Coming from an older build? This update resets your data
OpenAlly 2.0 is a clean break from the old architecture. If you ran a pre-2.0 build, updating wipes every conversation, setting, saved key, automation, and downloaded model on your phone, and we can't carry it over. We're genuinely sorry — this isn't something we can work around, and it's the one step that lets us leave the old architecture, and its larger attack surface, behind for good. Please save anything you need before you update. Installing fresh from Google Play starts clean — there's nothing for you to lose.
What's changing
We replaced the entire engine that runs on your phone.
One native runtime
The old Node.js gateway — a JavaScript engine with an OpenClaw lineage — is gone. In its place is a single embedded Rust engine, the cortex-kernel: 90+ crates in one binary, talking to the app directly over JSI. No second process, no JavaScript bridge, no bundle hand-off.
A smaller attack surface
The old design ran a second OS process — a Node.js runtime — and the app talked to it through a JavaScript bridge over a local socket. That bridge and that extra process are gone: the app now talks to the Rust engine in-process over JSI, and your keys and tokens stay sealed in the phone's hardware keystore.
On-device by default
The agent runtime, your channels, sessions, skills, and the on-device models — Whisper speech-to-text, the SMS classifier, knowledge-base embeddings, and a Python runtime — all run natively on the phone.
Faster and steadier
Native Rust means no garbage-collector stutter; work runs off the UI thread, so the screen never freezes; and replies stream in smoothly.
Safer add-ons
Skills run in a WebAssembly sandbox, and skill bundles are integrity-checked — built-ins by content hash, published skills by signature — before they load.
What gets erased
When you update, OpenAlly resets to a clean state. That includes:
- Your conversations and chat sessions
- Your settings and AI personality
- Saved API keys, provider sign-ins, and channel credentials
- Connected channels (reconnect WhatsApp, Telegram, and the rest)
- Automations and recordings
- Knowledge bases and imported files
- Any on-device models you'd downloaded
We can't migrate this. The old data lived in the formats and stores of the architecture we're retiring, and moving it into the new engine safely isn't possible — carrying it over would mean dragging the old architecture along with it, the very thing this release exists to retire. So it's a one-time clean slate.
Troubleshooting
After updating, you'll set things up once more. Here's the quick path, plus fixes for the usual snags.
- The fix that always works
- If anything seems off after the update, Clear All Data (Android Settings → Apps → OpenAlly → Storage → Clear data) and open OpenAlly again. A clean start wipes any leftover state from the old version and reliably gets you running.
- Set up again
- Sign in, re-enter your API keys or reconnect your provider subscriptions, reconnect your channels, re-download any on-device models, and re-record your automations.
- App won't open or seems stuck
- Force-stop OpenAlly and reopen it. If it persists, use the clean-start step above.
- A channel won't reconnect
- Open it in the app and reconnect — WhatsApp may ask you to re-link your phone.
- An old Google Drive backup won't restore
- Backups made before 2.0.0 belong to the old engine and can't be restored into the new one. You can remove the old backup from Google Drive → Manage apps → OpenAlly → Delete hidden app data.
- Still stuck?
- Email [email protected] and we'll help.
Why this had to happen
We don't take wiping your data lightly, and we know a reset is a real cost — especially the setup you'll redo. We looked hard for a way to bring everything across, and there wasn't one we'd trust.
We weren't comfortable building the future on the old bridged, multi-process design. Rebuilding on a single, native, in-process Rust engine — with your keys hardware-sealed and a much smaller attack surface — is the right base for everything OpenAlly does next. Thank you for sticking with us through the one update that makes the rest possible.