Releases & milestones

Store-ready polish for browser protection, updates that reach the browser immediately, and an update window that stays visible.

• Copy buttons restore your real values again. The reply copy buttons on ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini use a newer clipboard method the extension didn't cover — copying a reply looked fine but quietly kept the redaction tokens. All three sites now restore your real values whether you copy with the button or by selecting text. (extension 0.8.0)
• App updates reach the browser immediately. The browser keeps a long-running connection to the app's detection engine, so after an app update the extension could keep scrubbing with the previous engine until the browser reconnected on its own. The extension now detects the update and switches to the new engine right away — without dropping, delaying, or unscrubbing anything you send in the meantime.
• The extension looks the part. A proper toolbar icon, a redesigned popup with live connection status and the sites being protected, and clearer in-page notices. Sending unscrubbed when the app is unreachable stays an explicit, visually distinct choice — never the default.
• The update window can't hide anymore. If your monitor setup shrank between updates (say, an unplugged external display), the update prompt could reopen outside every visible screen — clicking "Check now" then appeared to do nothing. It now opens centered on a screen you can see.
• Extension privacy policy published. Ahead of the Chrome Web Store listing, the extension's privacy policy is live: what the extension reads, that everything stays on your Mac, and what it can't cover — https://redactor.zerodotfive.io/extension-privacy.html.

The groundwork for browser protection, a true macOS 13 floor, sharper detection, and releases you can verify.

• Browser protection (rolling out). This release ships everything Redactor's browser extension needs: a new *Browser extension* section in Settings with one-click setup that connects Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Arc, and other Chromium browsers to the app — plus a live status row showing when a browser is connected, in English and German. The extension scrubs secrets and PII out of your prompt *before* it leaves the browser on ChatGPT and Claude, with Gemini support built in — it even scrubs the background requests ChatGPT sends while you're still typing (a best-effort safety net that never blocks your request) — fully on-device, with the same 265-rule engine. The extension isn't on the Chrome Web Store yet; the app-side setup ships now, and a Chrome Web Store listing is planned.
• Pressing send never fails silently. If the extension can't reach the app, it blocks the send and says so — sending unscrubbed takes an explicit "Send anyway" click. Copying an AI reply that contains redaction tokens automatically puts the real values back on your clipboard, and a toolbar badge counts what's detected in your draft as you type. The map between tokens and real values lives in memory only, per tab, and is never written to disk. This covers the text you type — file and image attachments aren't scanned.
• Browser redactions count. Redactions the extension performs are folded into the menu-bar "secrets stopped" tally — live while the app is running, and caught up at the next launch if it wasn't. The tally is fed nothing but two numbers per event — never the text, never the values.
• Runs on macOS 13, for real. Earlier builds were internally marked as requiring a much newer macOS, so a Mac on macOS 13 could refuse to launch the app despite the advertised minimum. From this release on, builds carry the correct macOS 13 floor, and the app behaves the same there.
• Emails after "=" or "/" are now caught. An email address directly after an equals sign or a slash — SMTP_USER=admin@company.com in a .env file, an address in a URL — was never detected. It is now, in the app, the CLI, and the MCP server, with no new false positives.
• Real secrets with filler words are no longer skipped. A real key that merely contains "dummy" or "your_" was mistaken for a placeholder and left in place. The filter now skips only values that actually are placeholders.
• Restore is dependable in edge cases. Restored text can no longer be re-expanded into the wrong value, pasted text that looks like a redaction token can't collide with newly generated tokens, and in realistic-fakes mode more than 100 distinct phone numbers no longer share the same fake — every number restores to the right original.
• Restore stays restored. The app's own clipboard writes — Restore, Undo, Copy result — no longer wake the clipboard watcher. With auto-redact on, restoring your real values previously got them re-scrubbed on the spot.
• Screenshot blur that actually hides. The blur redaction style now scales its strength with the size of what it covers, so large or high-resolution text can't stay legible under the blur. Black-box redaction is unchanged.
• A menu-bar icon you can see on first launch. Fresh installs no longer default to a white icon that vanishes against a light menu bar — the default now adapts to the menu-bar appearance. Anyone who already picked a color is unaffected.
• A stricter command-line gate. redactor scan no longer reports clean on a file it couldn't read — it prints an error and exits nonzero, so a pre-commit or CI gate can't pass on a file that was never scanned. Binary and other non-UTF-8 files are now scanned instead of treated as empty, and staged files with spaces or non-ASCII names no longer slip past scan --staged.
• Round-trip maps are protected. redactor redact --map now writes the map file readable only by you (it holds the original values), writes it before emitting any output, and stops with an error if it can't be saved — the only copy of your originals can no longer be lost silently.
• Installs cleanly offline. The app inside the DMG now carries its own notarization ticket, so first launch passes Gatekeeper even on a Mac with no network access.
• Provenance and a bill of materials (new). Starting with this release, every release publishes a build-provenance attestation — cryptographic proof the download was built by the release pipeline, recorded in the public Sigstore transparency log — and a software bill of materials, alongside the existing SHA-256 checksum. Both are free to download from the download page — no account or repo access needed — with step-by-step checks on the "Verify your download" page.
• A more private website. The Redactor site gained a privacy policy, self-hosts its fonts (pages no longer contact Google), and loads the scheduling widget only after an explicit click and consent — nothing is fetched from Calendly until then. The features-page FAQ now also shows working steps for wiring the bundled CLI into a git pre-commit hook.

A fix so the update window opens when you click Install.

• Installing updates works again. When an update is available, clicking Install now reliably brings the update window to the front — before, it could open hidden behind other windows, so nothing appeared to happen.
• German localization for the new "Open at login" settings. The launch-at-login text is now fully translated.

Start at login, and a clearer update check.

• Open at login (new). Start Redactor automatically when you log in. It asks once on first launch, and there's an "Open at login" switch in Settings → Automation. If macOS is holding the login item for approval, Redactor takes you straight to the right System Settings pane.
• Clearer "Check Now." Checking for updates now shows a clear result — "You're on the latest version" or "Update available" — that stays up long enough to read, and in the right language.

German localization, a cleaner native Settings layout, and downloads you can verify.

• Deutsch. Full German localization with an in-app language picker — choose System, English, or Deutsch in Settings.
• Cleaner Settings. A native, grouped layout with better keyboard and VoiceOver accessibility, a menu-bar icon that adapts to light and dark menu bars, and the right-click *Redact selection* service surfaced where you'll find it.
• Verify your download. Every release now publishes a SHA-256 checksum, with step-by-step checks on the download page.
• Fewer false positives. Unusual Unicode digits are no longer mistaken for a German tax ID.
• Hardened auto-update. Update downloads are now integrity-checked before they install.

A gentler "update ready" cue — and the fix so updates actually install.

• Installing updates works again. Clicking *Install* or *Check Now* now reliably presents and installs an available update.
• Gentle update animation. When an update is waiting, the menu-bar icon shows a slow lava-like ripple instead of a number and a dot.
• Tidier Settings. Options are grouped into clearer sections — *Redaction output*, *Privacy & stats*, and *Menu bar*.

Auto-redaction, a counter that counts what it catches, and clearer updates.

• Auto-redact the clipboard (new, opt-in). Turn on *Watch clipboard → Auto-redact* and Redactor scrubs a copied secret in place automatically — no click, no alert.
• The counter now counts what's caught. Secrets the clipboard watcher detects count toward your local "secrets stopped" tally, not only the ones you redact by hand.
• Update checks confirm the result. *Check Now* now shows a clear "you're on the latest" or "update available" message, and the automatic-update switch reliably stays where you set it.
• Fixed an auto-redaction loop. With realistic fakes on, auto-redact could keep re-processing its own output; it now redacts once and stops.
• Sturdier built-in MCP server. It caps oversized input and handles the protocol more strictly, so an agent feeding it huge output can't stall it.

Small fixes and a clearer detector count.

• Screenshot redactions now count. Secrets you scrub out of screenshots are included in your local "secrets stopped" tally, just like text redactions.
• Update checks tell you the result. Checking for updates now shows the outcome — whether a new version is available or you're already on the latest — right in Settings.
• 265 checksum-validated detectors (245 secrets + 20 PII), 100% on-device.

A small fix so Settings always opens.

• Fixed the blank Settings window. Opening Settings (⌘,) could show an empty window — it now opens straight to Redactor's settings.

Calmer updates that tell you what changed.

• No surprise dialog on launch. When an update is waiting, Redactor now shows it quietly — a small badge on the menu-bar icon and an Update available banner in the window — instead of popping a window in your face. Install it whenever suits you.
• Update prompts show what's new. When you choose to update, you now see the release notes for the new version, with a link to the full history.

Signed & notarized — installs cleanly on any Mac.

• Notarized by Apple (Developer ID) — no Gatekeeper warning on first launch.
• Auto-updates on by default — checks in the background (toggle off in Settings → Updates) and shows an "Update available" indicator. Every update is cryptographically verified before it installs.

First public release.

• Round-trip redaction + realistic fakes for safe AI use.
• MCP server — scrub text before it reaches Claude or Cursor.
• Screenshot / OCR redaction, fully on-device.
• Checksum-validated detectors for secrets & PII.
• Clipboard watch, Services-menu redaction, and a global ⌥⌘R hotkey.

• The on-device, offline detection engine — checksum- and entropy-validated rules.
• Menu-bar app with the global hotkey, clipboard watcher, and preferences.
• Optional local Ollama pass and the redactor CLI.