Civitai Artist Discovery v2.2.1 — A Little Polish, a Big Thank You, and What You Might Have Missed

Civitai Artist Discovery v2.2.1 is now available! 🎉

This is technically a minor maintenance release, but sometimes the smaller updates make the biggest difference in how an application feels to use.

Before getting into what's changed, I want to give a special thank-you to @carefull_time and @bno84.

Their feedback, testing, and bug reports played a major role in this release. Several of the improvements in v2.2.1 came directly from issues they identified while using the application.

That's exactly the kind of community involvement I hoped for when I made this project available. Thank you both! ❤️

A Quick Catch-Up

My previous update didn't get quite the visibility I'd hoped for. There were some issues with Civitai article posting and notifications around that time, and I suspect quite a few people missed it.

Since then, I've also gained quite a few new followers. Welcome, and thank you for the support!

Rather than simply posting another changelog, I thought this would be a good opportunity to highlight some of the improvements since 2.0, especially for anyone who missed the previous announcement.

What You Might Have Missed

🎬 Videos Are Now Part of Discovery

One of the biggest additions in v2.2.0 was full video support.

Videos now appear alongside images in the Daily Gallery and Time Machine, grouped with the rest of each artist's work.

They can play automatically while you're viewing them, and playback stops when you scroll away to avoid wasting bandwidth.

You can also open a video in the detail viewer for a closer look.

🕰️ A More Useful Time Machine

Time Machine has continued to evolve.

You can now search for a specific artist among the creators already collected and explore their saved artwork without scrolling through everyone else.

Your browsing progress is shared between the normal Time Machine view and the artist-specific view, so you don't lose your place when switching between them.

Previously collected artwork remains available even when it's too old to retrieve again through Civitai's public API.

🔎 More Control Over What You See

Gallery filtering has also improved.

You can choose to browse images only, videos only, or both, and narrow artwork by generation model.

Content-rating controls let you choose which browsing levels to display, while the gallery updates its artwork and artist results accordingly.

These changes make it easier to concentrate on the kinds of artwork you're interested in without losing the artist-first browsing experience.

What's New in v2.2.1?

This release focuses primarily on reliability, smoother browsing, and fixing the little things that interrupt the experience.

Better Video Playback

Video thumbnails have been improved, and playback now handles interruptions and stalls more gracefully.

If a video encounters a temporary problem, Discovery can attempt recovery rather than immediately giving up.

No More Broken Artwork Cards

Civitai has millions of images, and sometimes older artwork becomes unavailable.

Previously, that could leave an empty or broken artwork card in the gallery.

Now, when Discovery confirms that an image is no longer available, it automatically skips it and moves on to usable artwork.

This works across the Daily Gallery and Time Machine without deleting historical archive records.

Because nobody opens an art discovery application hoping to discover broken image icons. 😆

Smoother Gallery Navigation

You can now use the left and right arrow keys to navigate an artist's artwork carousel while hovering over it.

The Content and Filters controls have also received usability improvements, along with fixes to media and generation-model filtering.

Behind-the-Scenes Improvements

There are also several less visible but important fixes involving settings, network requests, application updates, and security.

The Windows package includes updated Python, OpenSSL, and Pillow versions, and the release passed 104 automated tests, including browser and updater checks.

Not particularly exciting to look at, perhaps, but important for keeping everything dependable.

How to Get v2.2.1

If you're already using a packaged version of Civitai Artist Discovery, you can update directly through the application.

The built-in updater checks GitHub for new releases, shows the release information, and lets you approve the update. Your existing archives and settings are preserved.

For source code, documentation, and installation instructions or download the latest version directly:

https://github.com/theevildarkmage-hue/Civitai-Artist-Discovery

Windows 10 and 11 are the currently tested platforms. The downloadable Windows package is unsigned.

Looking Ahead to Discovery 3.0

While v2.2.1 is mostly about bug fixes and polish, it's also an important stepping stone toward Discovery 3.0.

There's more I want to explore when it comes to discovering artists and connecting people with the creators whose work they enjoy.

But before adding more features, I wanted to make sure the existing application was as dependable and enjoyable to use as possible.

That's what this release is really about.

If you've tried Discovery, I'd love to hear what you think. What works well? What's frustrating? What would make it easier to discover artists worth following?

The feedback really does help shape where this project goes next.

Thanks for following along, and happy discovering! ❤️