v2.2.2

Full Changelog: v2.2.1...v2.2.2

Release v2.2.1 — Credential conflicts, quieter notifications and a choice about closing

Release Notes

A fix-first release: every share of one NAS connects, deliberate disconnects stop
pretending to be failures, and closing to the tray is now your choice rather than the
only option.

Connecting every share of one NAS

Windows allows one credential context per server for the whole logon session, and Helix
was falling over it: connect all, or a drive group, and one share of a NAS would come up
while the other twelve failed with a credential conflict.

Mounts against the same host are now serialised, so they no longer race to establish that
context, and where a conflict still happens Helix works out why. If something is already
mounted from that server, the share joins the existing session — the case that used to
fail. If nothing is, the leftover session is dropped and your drive's own credentials get
a real attempt, so a wrong password fails instead of appearing to work. Connection tests
take the same route and report the honest error.

Deliberate disconnects stay quiet

Disconnecting a drive, or pressing disconnect all, no longer fires a "drive lost its
connection" notification for every drive, files bogus audit entries, or — with
auto-connect on — has them reconnected from under you seconds later. Signing in stopped
announcing that drives had "reconnected" when they had only just been connected for the
first time. Helix now knows the difference between a drive you took down and a NAS that
fell over; only the second is worth telling you about.

Closing to the tray is now yours to choose

2.2.0 made the title bar's close button put Helix in the notification area. Two new
switches in Settings decide that for yourself:

• Close to the system tray — on, Helix keeps running in the tray when you close the
  window. Off, the close button quits, and nothing reconnects your drives until you open
  it again.
• Notify when hidden to the tray — whether the tray says where the window went, the
  first time each session. Covers the auto-minimize timer as well as the close button.

Both default to on, so nothing changes unless you change it.

Also

• Fixed: the host field in the add and edit drive dialogs was masked like a password.
  Usernames and passwords still mask.
• Updated to the latest .NET MAUI and CommunityToolkit.Maui releases.

Notes on this release

• If you are on 2.2.0, Helix can install this one itself: Settings → Check for
  updates. Otherwise unzip over your existing folder, as before.
• Database changes apply automatically on first launch.
• Both new switches need the notification area, so they are Windows-only. macOS keeps its
  existing behaviour.
• Worth knowing: while other shares of a NAS are already mounted, a drive on that server
  mounts on the existing session and its stored password is never checked. Editing a
  password and reconnecting that one drive will appear to work whatever you type — only
  with nothing else mounted from that server does the password actually get tested.
• The macOS build is unsigned. Gatekeeper will refuse it on first launch — right-click the
  app and choose Open, or clear it with
  xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /path/to/Helix.app

v2.2.0 — Drive groups, in-app updates and an idle lock

Helix picks up drive groups, installs its own updates, and can lock itself when you walk away.

Drive groups

Save a named set of drives — "Home", "Office", "Backup run" — and connect or disconnect the
whole set in one action, from the dashboard strip, the group manager or the tray
menu. A drive can belong to several groups, and deleting a drive leaves the groups it was in
intact.

Install updates from inside Helix

The update check now finds the build for your machine, downloads it, verifies it, and
installs it on your say-so — Helix closes, replaces itself and starts again, keeping your
drives and settings. It still tells you what it found before it does anything, and opening
the release page by hand is still there for when you would rather do it yourself.

Lock when idle

Settings → Lock when idle asks for your password again after a set number of minutes
without input. Off by default. Your drives stay connected and keep reconnecting while the
screen is locked — the lock covers the app, it does not stop it working.

Closing to the tray

The title bar's close button now puts Helix in the notification area instead of quitting it,
so a stray click no longer stops your drives being watched. Exit Helix in the tray menu
is the way out. Before you have signed in, the close button still closes.

Reconnecting away from your NAS

Helix now checks whether the server is reachable before trying to mount from it. Away from
your NAS's network — on a laptop, most of the day — that means no more waiting out SMB
timeouts, and no more log full of failures that only ever meant "not on that network". When
you come back, drives reconnect within seconds instead of at whatever the backoff had
climbed to.

Low-space warnings

Helix warns you when a NAS is running out of room, at a threshold you set in Settings
(10% free by default). It counts each volume once, so a server mapped as thirteen shares
warns you once rather than thirteen times.

Also

• The sign-in and registration pages now show the version you are running.
• Fixed: group names containing _ or % were wrongly rejected as duplicates.
• Fixed: drive rows not updating their status after a group was connected or disconnected.
• Fixed: group chips showing a drive count that included deleted drives.

Notes on this release

• Existing installs pick up the low-space warning at 10% free. Set it to 0 in Settings if
  you would rather not be told.
• This one has to be installed by hand, as usual: unzip over your existing folder. From
  2.2.0 onward Helix can update itself.
• The macOS build is unsigned. Gatekeeper will refuse it on first launch — right-click the
  app and choose Open, or clear it with xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /path/to/Helix.app.
• Windows: closing to the tray, tray group entries and low-space notifications need the
  notification area, so they are Windows-only. Groups, the idle lock and self-updating work
  on both.
• Database changes apply automatically on first launch.

v2.1.0 — macOS Support and the System Tray

Helix now runs on macOS, lives in the system tray, and can tell you what it did
while you weren't looking.

Highlights

macOS support. Helix now builds and runs as a Mac Catalyst app alongside the
Windows version. Shares mount through NetFS — the same path Finder's "Connect to
Server" uses — under ~/Helix Drives.

System tray. Helix keeps a tray icon showing how many drives are up. Connect or
disconnect any drive from its menu, and get a notification when one drops or comes
back. Auto-minimize now puts the window there instead of onto the taskbar.

Reach your NAS by name. The address field accepts hostnames and IPv6 as well as
IPv4 — nas.local, MYNAS or fd00::5. A name keeps working when your server's
DHCP lease moves.

Test before you save. Check a host, share and password against the server from
the add and edit dialogs. Nothing is mounted and no drive letter is claimed.

Free drive letters only. The letter picker asks Windows as well as Helix, so a
letter already taken by a USB stick is never offered and then rejected on connect.

Per-drive auto-connect and remembered mappings. Auto-connect can be turned off
for individual drives, and a drive can be marked to be restored at Windows sign-in
so Explorer brings it back without Helix running.

A dashboard that adds up. Each drive row shows when it was last reachable. The
storage total now counts each NAS volume once however many of its shares you have
mapped — a 43 TB server mapped thirteen times previously read as 562 TB.

Diagnostic logs. Helix keeps a rolling log of what it does unattended, and
Settings has an Export button that saves it as a zip for a bug report.

Check for updates. Settings can compare your build against the latest release
here and offer to open it. It only reads and reports — nothing is downloaded.

A readable audit log. Entries now record what happened rather than a fixed
English sentence, so the page reads in your own language. You can set how many days
of history to keep.

Fixed

• The sidebar no longer leaves Dashboard unhighlighted after signing in.
• Settings no longer stops saving after a rejected value.
• A background refresh failure could terminate the app; these are now contained.

Upgrading

Your database migrates automatically on first launch. Existing accounts keep their
full audit history — the new retention setting defaults to "keep everything" for
them, and can be changed in Settings.

Windows: download Helix-v2.0.1-win-x64.zip (or -win-arm64), and empty the
target folder before extracting over a previous install — a stale resources.pri
left behind makes every image render blank.

macOS: download Helix-v2.0.1-macos.zip. The app is not signed or notarized, so
Gatekeeper will block it on first launch: right-click the app and choose Open,
then confirm. Mounting network volumes requires the App Sandbox to be off, so this
build is direct-distribution only.

Two notes on what I wrote. The Fixed section deliberately lists only bugs that shipped in v2.0.0 — the tray, storage-total and modal issues were introduced and fixed inside this unreleased window, so users never saw them and listing them would be noise. And I've described macOS factually rather than enthusiastically: I didn't write that code, and the Catalyst head can't be compiled or run from this Windows machine, so it's the one part of this release nobody has verified end to end.

v2.0.0 — Watchdog and UI Overhaul

Highlights

🐕 Drive Watchdog

Polls every 20 s and reacts when a share drops. With auto-connect enabled it
retries with backoff (5 s → 15 s → 45 s, capped at 5 min) on its own loop, so a
drive that is still down at the next poll keeps getting attempts instead of
being forgotten.

🎨 Redesigned interface

• New palette sampled from the logo, and OpenSans with a real type scale
  replaces mono everywhere — mono is now reserved for data: drive letters,
  counters, timestamps.
• Add drive is the dashboard's primary button and an empty-state CTA
  instead of being reachable only from the menu bar.
• Drive status is a labelled pill (Connected / Disconnected) that is the
  toggle, with a busy lock so double-clicks can't stack mounts.
• Modal transitions went 800 ms → ~190 ms, and sheets dismiss on scrim click
  and Escape.
• Show credentials toggle: the NAS address and share username were
  permanently masked, so you couldn't check a typo.
• Empty states for drives and audit logs, settings toggles that explain what
  they do (16 new strings, translated across de/fr/id/ja/nl), consistent hover
  animation and a real hand cursor.
• Sidebar is now a labelled rail with an active indicator and the signed-in user.

⚙️ .NET 10

Upgraded from .NET 9, with MAUI and CommunityToolkit packages brought up to
date. Build warnings went 186 → 0: every [ObservableProperty] field became a
partial property across 20 files, which is the AOT/WinRT-correct form.

v1.0.0

What's Changed

• chore(ci): bump the actions group with 5 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #1
• chore(deps): Bump the maui group with 3 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #2

New Contributors

• @dependabot[bot] made their first contribution in #1

Full Changelog: https://github.com/HilthonTT/Helix/commits/v1.0.0