v0.17.0

Aether-GUI v0.17.0 — Aether 2.0.0 integration

This release upgrades the bundled engine from Aether 1.9.0 to 2.0.0 and aligns engine installation, profiles and startup diagnostics with the new release. The GUI and engine have separate version numbers.

Engine installation and repair

• Bundle the engine together with its required pt/lyrebird transport companion.
• Pin development downloads, CI builds and in-app repair to the same release manifest and SHA-256 checksums. Validate archives and stage replacements before activation.
• Prefer a compatible versioned app-data installation over stale bundled or legacy copies. Reject unsupported engines before attempting a connection, fixing the old engine's rejection of --mim.
• Show the detected engine version in About and provide an install/repair action for missing or incompatible engines.
• Restrict packaged resources so identity TOMLs, logs and download helpers are not included in installers.

Profiles and native Tor

• Correct Tor mode serialization, accepting legacy saved spellings while using canonical tor-reverse and tor-only values.
• Correct bridge arguments: automatic fallback, forced automatic bridges, repeated manual bridge lines and disabled bridges. Preserve multiline input while editing.
• Flag legacy bridge-file settings for migration instead of passing an unsupported argument. If your profile contains a bridge-file path, replace it with bridge lines before connecting.
• Validate active profiles before launch, including protocol conflicts, listener collisions, numeric settings and MiM endpoint constraints. Apply presets as complete validated profiles and normalize older imports with defaults.
• Clarify MiM's default HTTP/3 transport, show Tor-Reverse's effective HTTP/2 transport and disable irrelevant QUIC controls without discarding saved choices.
• Report native chain Tor's secondary SOCKS listener readiness separately from the primary listener, with a copyable proxy URL and mode-aware startup timeouts.

Diagnostics and maintenance

• Preserve trailing engine output at EOF, including errors without a final newline.
• Stop retrying recognized permanent startup/configuration failures and show actionable fixed messages rather than misleading scan-mode advice.
• Resolve frontend lint and Rust Clippy issues and update the English and Persian setup documentation.

Important distinctions

Native engine Tor remains separate from IP Changer, which retains its own Tor process, control socket and rotation controls. Local SOCKS listener readiness is not proof of end-to-end connectivity, leak protection or a guaranteed new exit IP.

Build and verification

• Desktop workflow targets: Windows x64, Linux x64, macOS Apple Silicon and macOS Intel. No Android build is included.
• Local checks before release preparation: 85 Rust tests passed, strict Clippy passed, frontend production build passed, and ESLint reported no errors with one existing TanStack Virtual warning. Engine packaging tests: 10 passed.
• Windows installer packaging was verified locally before the version bump. The v0.17.0 CI builds must succeed before publishing this draft. Only use the assets attached by that workflow for this release.
• Real WARP/Tor connectivity and system-proxy changes were not exercised as part of this verification.

Full changelog: v0.16.1...v0.17.0