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.