Cyanogenmod M9 coming soon.

Rejoice, CyanogenMod fans!  Not only was today’s nightly the last until Tuesday, but that means that some other version had to come out, to stay in line with Cyanogen’s usual routine.  What version is that, you ask?  It’s a Snapshot/Milestone release, M9!  But what does this one offer, and what improvements does it actually incorporate, since Nightly builds are sometimes slightly ahead as far incorporated changes to the code of the ROM.

According Cyanogen’s official blog post from Sunday evening, this is a special M-build for three devices, the Sony Xperia Z2 (codenamed Sirius), the Sony Xperia Z2 tablets (codenamed castor and castor_windy), as well as the HTC One M8 (clever how the M8’s first M is M9, isn’t it).  The changes found in this month’s M release cover changes from June 31 up through July 27, last weekend.  The full changelog can be found on the blog post as well, but these are some highlights.  First, there is the addition of a feature to allow you to double-tap the lockscreen, if you’re using a keyguard, to sleep the device.  Next, there’s the addition of Chinese and Korean to smart-dialer support in the dialer app.  Lastly from the list as a highlight is notification filtering, specifically for spam notifications.  When a game sends you a notification telling you some item in the game or some other app by the developer or company is available, on sale, or otherwise worthy of shoving a notification out for, CyanogenMod now lets you ignore those types of notifications with a long-press on the pesky thing.  That’s managed inside the Privacy Settings part of the menu, for reference.

The Snapshot is currently getting released for all of CyanogenMod’s supported devices, so if your device (like my OnePlus One, which has been enjoying the Nightlies as of late) isn’t up at the time of your reading, then be patient, and you should have a nice new shiny M9 build to flash on your way to the office, to the kitchen for breakfast, or on your way to the bathroom, in lieu of the daily paper.  Regardless of when the respective build goes up for download, it’ll be there soon, so sit tight and get ready.  For the whole list of changes, as well as some fun commenting in the CyanogenMod forum community, head over to the official blog post by Cyanogen.