first of all, apologies for the confusion about branch 2.1.8: any branch named 2.1.8 or 2.1.7 is development branch, we should have deleted them, you should only check out from the master branch, or download the Release file. We only have release tags 218, 217 etc., the branches 2.1.8, 2.1.7 etc should have been deleted.
Second, I just checked out a from master, compiled and run it on my RPi, it works fine, I don’t see UI hanging issue. My about page shows:
App Version 1.8.0
Firmware 2.1.8(1)
I would suggest that you try to use a private browsing window or clear browser cache, to avoid any browser cache issue. If that still isn’t working, delete your firmware folder and re-install firmware to see if that works.