v2.4.0 — High-refresh smoothness + Lively-only labelling + What's-new modal

Smoother ambient effects on high-refresh monitors, clearer host-compatibility hints, and a brand-new in-Configurator release-notes modal.

⚡ Smoother ambient effects on high-refresh monitors

The glow grid (Pixel Grid layout) now lands on its own GPU compositing layer, so the per-frame blur recompute doesn't block the ambient / pixelfx rAF chains anymore — even on 144 Hz / 240 Hz monitors. Same isolation applied to the ambient and pixelfx canvases (will-change + isolation: isolate).

Background: a 240 Hz user reported ambient effects stuttering whenever the glow layer was active. The browser was re-compositing the whole layer stack on every monitor refresh because the blurred glow output wasn't isolated. Now each effect canvas + the glow grid get their own composite layer; updates to one don't invalidate the others.

🎨 Grid renderer dropdown defaults to Canvas, labelled "recommended"

The Configurator's Grid renderer dropdown now lists Canvas (empfohlen / recommended) first, with DOM (alt / legacy) as the fallback. A hint line below explains the trade-off:

• Canvas: one putImageData per frame, frees the main thread, smoothest ambient/pixelfx on high-refresh setups
• DOM: up to 1024 style.background writes per frame on a 32×32 grid — cheap on GPU but can saturate the main thread

🪧 "Nur Lively" / "Lively only" badges

Three effects now carry a yellow-amber "Nur Lively" pill in the picker because Wallpaper Engine's bundled CEF doesn't render the underlying SVG filters / canvas gradients correctly:

• Pixelfx → Hover-Glow (createRadialGradient outer stop renders opaque in WE)
• Pixelfx → Water-Ripple (feDisplacementMap color-space mismatch — entire BG shifts in WE)
• Mousefx → Liquid Distortion (same feDisplacementMap issue as water mode)

An explainer hint under the Pixelfx grid clarifies what the badge means. The effects still work fine under Lively / WebView2.

✨ "What's new" modal in the Configurator

Bridge now ships per-version release notes inline with every settings broadcast. After every update, the Configurator pops a one-time modal with the current version's highlights. Header gains a ✨ Neu / ✨ What's new button next to Tour so you can re-open the notes any time. "Open full changelog" jumps to this CHANGELOG on GitHub.

Notes are EN + DE, follow the active Configurator language.

Upgrade

Wallpaper bundle re-import required. Tray → Re-import wallpaper bundles.

This is a MINOR cut — winget submission incoming.

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Full per-commit detail: CHANGELOG.md