Changelog

What's new in blackbear

Every release, the short version. For the longer stories, check out our news posts.

v1.75 June 18, 2026

Pictures, and a place for everything that’s happening

Images become real files you can edit and share — and the app finally tells you when something needs you.

New
  • Images are a first-class file type. Bring a picture in and work it — crop, rotate, flip, straighten, adjustment sliders, and filter presets, with undo/redo and zoom/pan. None of it is destructive: your original is always intact. Download in PNG, JPEG, or WebP.
  • Edit images together. An image can be shared and co-edited live, end-to-end encrypted — the same way your documents are. Edits travel, and a shared image lands as a real file on the other side.
  • A Notification Center. One place for what’s happening — connect requests, collaboration invites, and shared files — with an actionable inbox you can accept or decline right there. Quiet bells on Desk and Today mean nothing waits unseen.
  • See who’s asking. A connect request can carry a sealed introduction, so you know who’s reaching out before you accept — with an anonymous option for anyone who’d rather stay unnamed. Names never touch our servers in the clear.
Improved
  • Shared files behave like a drive. A dedicated Shared Files space, grouped by who you’re sharing with — and you can share a whole folder, not just a file, with new files in it shared as you go.
  • Send a file as a snapshot. Hand someone a point-in-time copy straight from the file menu; they get a clean card to receive it.
  • One file menu everywhere. Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawing, and Images now share the same file bar — consistent actions, folder and tag controls, send, and download wherever you are.
  • Pax speaks more models. OpenAI joins Anthropic and Gemini in the app — GPT-5.4 Mini by default — with each provider’s key kept in your encrypted Account Keychain. Pax can now edit Markdown notes directly, with find/replace and an outline.
Fixed
  • Chat stays pinned to the bottom when you open it, even while media is still loading.
  • Image filters replace cleanly instead of stacking, and the edit trays anchor where they should — no first-open flash.
  • Pax stays put in its dock as the sidebar settles.
v1.74 June 11, 2026

Transparency, and a den for Pax

A release about being able to see what your app is doing — and about our bear getting a home of his own.

New
  • Sidebar health beacon + Transparency panel — connection, sync, and storage status at a glance, with a diagnostics view when you want the details.
  • Pax has a den: a custom cave glyph appears in the dock whenever he’s away.
Improved
  • Calendar scrolling is noticeably smoother — month grid scrolling is now fully compositor-driven.
  • Cold offline boots recover on their own: the app reconnects and reconciles without a reload, and a watchdog keeps flaky networks from holding the boot overlay hostage.
Fixed
  • Week view header now follows the selected week’s month.
  • Sidebar collapse/expand settles cleanly — no transient jumps, and Pax never leaves his dock.
  • Messaging reconnects promptly after sign-in instead of waiting on a stale connection.
v1.73 June 10, 2026

Sharing grows teeth

Shared files now have real, enforceable membership — and Pax runs on the Rust engine everywhere.

New
  • Remove a single person from a shared file. Access is revoked with a full key rotation — not just hidden.
  • Removed members find out: a clear notice, and their local copy is cleaned up — even if the file is closed at the time.
  • Viewer roles are enforced at the input layer: read-only surfaces with a View-only indicator across Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawing.
  • Share roles are backed by verifiable, signed capability grants — what the dialog says is what the system enforces.
Improved
  • Pax now executes through the Rust engine on every platform — and picked up entity-aware tagging, smarter fuzzy matching, and awareness of the page you’re on.
Fixed
  • A rare case where Account Keychain entries could be lost when devices merged.
  • Free → paid upgrades reliably backfill all of your content, even if you sign out right after upgrading.
v1.72 June 8, 2026

Shared images, tidier accounts

Images in shared documents finally travel with the document — encrypted end-to-end.

New
  • Images in shared Docs and Slides sync across accounts, end-to-end encrypted — collaborators see the pictures, not just the prose.
  • Daily templates on Today are editable: shape the day’s scaffold to how you actually work.
Improved
  • Sign-out is a real teardown: per-account storage is cleanly separated and fully cleared.
  • Integration credentials moved into the encrypted Account Keychain.
  • Document printing: true print fidelity, including colors under highlights and clean page breaks.
Fixed
  • Sheets keep per-cell formatting when you edit a value or formula.
  • “Stop sharing” is available from Sheet, Drawing, and Slides dialogs.
v1.71 June 5, 2026

Sheets on the Rust kernel

The spreadsheet formula engine is now the same Rust engine everywhere — app, CLI, and collaborators all compute the same truth.

New
  • Formula evaluation runs on the Rust render kernel (via WASM) — replacing ~2,700 lines of TypeScript with one engine shared across the app and the bb CLI.
  • Board view grew up: honest cards, row detail and editing, a configuration modal, and editable, reorderable select options.
  • Sign in with email or phone — one field, either works.
Improved
  • Percent formatting displays the way you expect (0.27 → 27%) and survives configuration edits.
  • Column widths and floating-chart geometry persist and sync across devices.
Fixed
  • Calendar dates in sheets are timezone-stable.
  • The cell you’re editing saves when you click away.
v1.70 June 3, 2026

Slides go collaborative

Real-time, end-to-end encrypted collaborative editing comes to Slides.

New
  • Edit a deck together, live — with collaborator presence and claim-a-text-box so you’re never typing over each other. End-to-end encrypted, like everything else.
  • Workflows learned event-shaped schedule steps — automations can key off your calendar.
  • New decks start with a title slide, and the new deck model brings free undo/redo.
Improved
  • Slides render through the Rust kernel — the same renderer the CLI uses.
  • Shared files now appear reliably on freshly added devices.
  • Page intros and notices flow through the notification system with sensible icons.
Fixed
  • Docs show collaborator display names instead of key fingerprints.
  • Sync no longer stalls on data it can’t decrypt — it sets problem rows aside and keeps moving.
v1.69 May 29, 2026

Sturdier live collaboration

A faster, more resilient transport under every shared editing session.

New
  • WebSocket-first transport for live collaboration, with graceful fallback.
  • Structured merge conflicts — when two edits truly collide, the merge is smarter and nothing is silently dropped.
Improved
  • Clear reconnection states and adaptive backoff under rate limits.
Fixed
  • A divergence bug in encrypted collaborative editing.
  • Sign-in credential linking (OAuth and phone) on desktop.
v1.68 May 27, 2026

Contacts with faces

Avatars arrive in messaging — exchanged privately, like everything else.

New
  • Contact avatars: profile pictures are exchanged through encrypted profile sharing and show up across messaging.
  • A credentials section in Account settings — see and manage how you sign in.
Improved
  • Contacts and profiles update reactively everywhere — change once, see it everywhere instantly.
  • Plan upgrades take effect immediately, no sign-out required.
  • Phone sign-in accepts the formats people actually type.
v1.67 May 23, 2026

Touch ID for the vault

Faster unlocks on the Mac, and a cleaner desktop foundation.

New
  • Biometric unlock: open your vault with Touch ID on macOS, with an inline toggle on the unlock screen.
Improved
  • Desktop app hardening around content security policies — local AI (Ollama), sandboxed previews, and plugin IPC all coexist cleanly.
Fixed
  • Release builds no longer open devtools.
  • Encrypted keychain entries reveal and copy correctly.
v1.66 May 22, 2026

Pages, pickers, and portraits

The page builder matures and your profile gets a face.

New
  • Profile avatar upload with a proper crop dialog — perfect circles, zoom that respects image bounds.
  • Page templates: drag-to-reorder blocks, an icon-and-image picker, and a smoother create-new-page flow.
Fixed
  • A batch of mobile and desktop build issues.
v1.65 May 17, 2026

The hardening sprint

A release almost entirely about strengthening the foundations — encryption boundaries, the keychain, and the engine under Pax.

New
  • Account Keychain entries are individually encrypted.
  • Runtime validation at every crypto boundary — the app verifies the shape of everything crossing into the encryption layer.
Improved
  • Pax’s engine completed its migration to Rust (with a new suite of contract tests to keep it honest).
  • Collaborative editing batches outbound updates for smoother sessions.
  • CI now runs a standing security audit on every build.
roll-up May 1–13, 2026

Early May — the week the CLI arrived

The first half of May brought blackbear’s biggest single drop: a Rust CLI built for agents, the Graph view, Store files for structured data, cryptographic authorship, the Discovery catalog, a redesigned landing page — and the end of the trial timer. The local app became free for everyone, with anonymous mode for those who want no account at all.

New
  • bb — a Rust CLI giving agents (and terminal humans) first-class access to notes, tasks, files, and sync.
  • Graph view: see your notes, tags, and documents as the web they actually are.
  • Store files: structured, schema’d data as a first-class file type.
  • Cryptographic authorship — every change attributable to the profile that made it.
  • Google OAuth sign-in alongside magic links.
Read the full Week 8 post
roll-up April 2026 · 110 releases

April — depth and dependability

April was a month of deep passes: Drawing, Documents, Reader, and Audio each got sustained attention measured in dozens of releases. Onboarding was rebuilt end to end, messaging internals were refactored for reliability, and the first Windows desktop work landed. Less flash, more floor.

Improved
  • Drawing: stability and precision across the infinite canvas.
  • Documents: WYSIWYG editing depth — tables, pagination, and print groundwork.
  • Reader: steadier EPUB/PDF handling and annotation polish.
  • Audio: recording and playback reliability.
  • Onboarding: rebuilt from the first screen up.
roll-up March 2026 · 107 releases

March — v1.0 and the first 107 releases

blackbear 1.0 shipped on March 3. Then we shipped 106 more times before the month ended. The core took shape in public: Sheets, Discover feeds, Pax, Drawing, Calendar, tables, and the sync engine that carries all of it. If you kicked the tires that month — thank you. You shaped what this became.

blackbear ships continuously — 305 releases and counting since March 2026. This page condenses the journey; the app updates itself.

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