Magistrala v0.19.0

We are happy to announce the release of Magistrala v0.19.0!

Magistrala is an open-source IoT platform designed for building secure, scalable, and distributed IoT solutions. It provides identity management, device connectivity, and messaging infrastructure that integrates with protocols such as MQTT, HTTP, WebSockets, and CoAP.

Over the past month we’ve focused on improving security, filtering capabilities, and developer experience, while also continuing to refine the architecture that powers Magistrala and the wider messaging ecosystem around it.

This release brings several important improvements - particularly around authentication security and API filtering, both of which were necessary steps for upcoming platform features and improvements in the Magistrala UI.

Highlights

Secure MQTT Connectivity with TLS & mTLS

The MQTT adapter (mGate) now supports TLS and mutual TLS (mTLS) termination, making it easier to securely connect devices and services to Magistrala.

Security is essential in IoT deployments, especially when devices communicate over public or semi-trusted networks. With TLS support in the adapter itself, operators can now:

enable encrypted MQTT communication
authenticate devices with client certificates
configure TLS behavior entirely via environment variables

This simplifies deployments while significantly improving the security posture of IoT infrastructure.

Refresh Token Revocation

This release introduces refresh-token revocation, an important security feature for any modern distributed system.

Previously, refresh tokens remained valid until expiration. With token revocation, Magistrala can now explicitly invalidate refresh tokens when necessary.

This enables several important capabilities:

Log out from other devices
Revoking compromised sessions
Security response after password changes
Administrative session management

In practice, this means that authentication state can now be actively controlled, not just passively expired. This feature lays the groundwork for upcoming improvements such as session management in the Magistrala UI.

More Powerful Entity Filtering

Another major improvement in this release is advanced filtering for entity listing APIs.

As IoT systems grow, users need better ways to browse and manage devices, users, domains, and groups. These improvements were primarily driven by the needs of the Magistrala UI, which requires flexible querying of entities.

Filtering by Creation Time

Entities can now be filtered by creation timestamp using: - created_from - created_to

Example:

    GET /clients?created_from=2026-01-01

This is particularly useful for:

UI pagination
operational debugging
activity auditing
filtering recently created resources

Advanced Tag Filtering (AND / OR)

Tag filtering has been extended with logical semantics:

, represents OR
+ represents AND

Examples:

    tag=sensor,device
    tag=sensor+temperature

This allows building expressive queries while keeping the API simple.

The feature is supported across multiple entities including:

clients
channels
users
groups
domains

These improvements make the Magistrala API significantly more UI-friendly and operationally powerful.

Personal Access Token (PAT) Architecture Improvements

We also performed an internal refactor of Personal Access Tokens (PATs) to align them with Magistrala’s evolving authentication architecture.

Changes include:

clearer separation between PAT logic and policy enforcement
simplified authorization flow
removal of redundant auth checks

This reduces internal overhead and results in fewer authorization calls, improving performance and maintainability.

Fixes and Operational Improvements

Authorization & Invitations

We fixed several issues in the invitation flow, improving reliability when onboarding new users to domains and groups.

Additionally, an unnecessary domain validation check was removed in the authorization path, simplifying the authorization logic.

Also, a lot of internal updates in Magistrala access control handling have been added, such as simplifications of access control for Alarms and Rules Engine.

UI Metadata Support Improvement

Database migrations were updated to properly support UI metadata storage across PostgreSQL initialization paths. This enables the UI to attach richer and cleaner metadata to entities without affecting the core data model.

Developer Experience Improvements

Improved Build System

The Makefile was refactored to improve:

architecture-aware builds
support for Apple Silicon environments
developer workflow consistency

Updated Docker Images

Docker images now use the latest stable Go version (1.26.0) instead of a release candidate, improving build stability and security.

Tooling Refresh

We updated internal tooling and regenerated generated assets, including:

updated Protoc dependencies
regenerated generated files

Dependency Updates

Routine dependency updates were included for:

Go libraries
OpenTelemetry
gRPC

These updates bring bug fixes, security patches, and long-term stability improvements.

Magistrala, SuperMQ, and FluxMQ

Magistrala continues to evolve alongside other projects in the Abstract Machines ecosystem.

Magistrala focuses on device management, identity, and access control
SuperMQ provides a high-performance messaging backbone
FluxMQ focuses on large-scale distributed messaging and stream processing

Together, these projects aim to provide a modular and scalable foundation for modern IoT platforms and distributed messaging systems.

This release continues to move the ecosystem forward by improving security, observability, and usability.

Contributors

Thanks to everyone who contributed to Magistrala v0.19.0:

Felix — https://github.com/felixgateru
Arvindh — https://github.com/arvindh123
Steve — https://github.com/nyagamunene
Ian — https://github.com/ianmuchyri
Felister — https://github.com/wambui-pixel
Nataly — https://github.com/Musilah
Dusan — https://github.com/dborovcanin

As well as @sansmoraxz, @bbokun, and many others.

Your work makes Magistrala better with every release. ❤️

Leave Your Feedback

We would love to hear your feedback and ideas.

🌐 Website: https://magistrala.absmach.eu
⚙️ GitHub: https://github.com/absmach/magistrala
📘 Documentation: https://magistrala.absmach.eu/docs

Magistrala v0.19.0 is Here!