Helix 2.3.1

Helix 2.3.1 adds helix:// links, so every command works from a Stream Deck button, a bookmark or a macOS Shortcut. It also keeps a storage history that warns you before a volume fills up, and shows a drive's connection history in its diagnosis. Drive exports now carry your groups and schedules. Most of the rest of the release is fixes from two audits, including a macOS build that did not compile.

Update from inside the app (Settings → Check for updates), or download below.

Added

helix:// links. Every command-line command is now also a link: helix://connect/Z, helix://connect-group/Office, helix://disconnect-all, helix://wake/Z, helix://status and the rest.

• Use them from a Stream Deck button, a browser bookmark or a macOS Shortcut. On the Mac this is the first way to run Helix's commands at all, since there is no command line there.
• A link answers in your language, in the tray notification or a banner.
• A link opened while Helix is closed starts Helix and drops the request.
• Any web page can ask your browser to open a link. So a link that disconnects or quits brings the window forward and asks first. Connecting, waking and the status run without asking.
• The command-line flags work as before and never ask.

Storage history and forecasts. Helix records how full each volume is, once a day, and keeps 400 days of it.

• From a month of readings it works out when a volume that is filling up will be full.
• The dashboard's storage tile shows the volume that will fill up soonest, if that is within a year. The tooltip names the drives on that volume and how fast it is filling.
• Helix needs at least a week of readings before it forecasts anything.

Connection history in the diagnosis. The connection check (the stethoscope on a drive's row) now shows the drive's last 30 days:

• how often it dropped
• how long it usually took to come back
• a warning when it dropped three or more times in a week

Groups and schedules in exports. An exported vault now carries your drive groups and schedules as well as your drives, and importing it restores them.

• A group is matched to its drives by letter. A schedule is matched to its group by name.
• A group whose name you already have is skipped, not merged.
• Older vaults still import. Older versions of Helix cannot read a vault exported from 2.3.1.

Open files before unmounting. When you disconnect, the confirmation now names the drives that still have files or folders open, so you know what you are about to pull out from under a program. A single drive only asks when something is open on it. Windows only; macOS asks as before.

Fixed

macOS

• The macOS build did not compile. Mac users can update again.
• A full-tunnel VPN no longer makes Helix take a café network for your home network. Helix now reads the network from the physical adapter, as it already did on Windows.

Drives that look connected but are not

• A USB stick that landed on a drive's letter was shown as that drive connected. "Connect all" then skipped the drive, and "disconnect all" tried to unmount the stick. Helix now checks that the letter is actually mounted from the drive's share.
• A persistent drive whose server had gone away kept its letter. Helix read it as still up, so the drop was never noticed and the drive was never reconnected. It is now reported and brought back.
• The watchdog stopped retrying a drive when anything else held its letter. The tray's labels and toggles had the same mistake.

Home network and Wake-on-LAN

• A single missed reading of your router's hardware address, common just after waking from sleep, could put every pinned drive into "Away" on its own home network and skip waking the NAS. Helix now remembers the address for the session.
• A local firewall rule that refused Helix's reachability check made a NAS that was there read as unreachable.

Schedules

• A schedule time that the clocks skip when they go forward (02:45 in March) ran at 03:15 instead of 03:00. If you saved it just after the change, it could run straight away.
• A schedule saved during the hour that repeats when the clocks go back could run straight away.
• Schedule day names now follow the app's language, not Windows'.

Updates

• Running Helix from a shared folder, such as Downloads or a tools folder, meant an update could delete the other files in that folder. Updates now leave everything that is not part of Helix where it was.
• If a file could not be put back, the next update no longer deletes the backup that still holds it.
• An update could fail, or Helix not restart after it, when the install folder's name contained a curly apostrophe or brackets.

Idle lock

• A dialog left open when the idle lock went up could be answered from behind it. That included the export passphrase, a disconnect confirmation and the update install. Its answer is now ignored if the lock is up.
• The tray menu worked behind the idle lock. Now it only brings the window forward, as the shortcuts and the command line already did.
• A helix://quit link is refused while Helix is locked.

Sign-in

• Fixed a crash when signing in.
• The language picked on the register page is now saved with the account.
• Signing in with an unknown username now takes as long as a wrong password, so the time taken no longer reveals which accounts exist.

Hangs and crashes

• On a dead NAS, every "connect all" left a thread blocked per drive while measuring storage. That could make the whole app slow until it was restarted.
• Importing crashed when you had two groups whose names differ only in accented capitals, such as "Büro" and "BÜRO".
• Opening a sheet while another was closing could turn off every keyboard shortcut on the drive rows until restart.
• Signing out half-finished, or crashed on the Mac, if something failed along the way.

Smaller fixes

• The window opened in the wrong place on a second monitor, or with the taskbar at the top or left.
• Changing a mounted drive's "reconnect at sign-in" switch now applies straight away when nothing is open on it.
• Pressing Escape on the change-password sheet left the typed passwords in it.
• A number field now keeps a typed value when you press − or +, and limits a number that is too large instead of discarding it.
• A banner that was fading out no longer swallowed an identical new one.
• Logs now record only the last two characters of a NAS's hardware address.

Changed

• Dependency updates: Entity Framework Core 10.0.13, Microsoft.Extensions.Logging 10.0.13, and GitHub Actions bumps for the build.

Upgrading

This release changes the database: it adds a table for storage history. Helix applies the change by itself the first time it starts. Before it does, it saves a copy of your database beside it as helix.db.bak.

The storage forecast needs about a week of readings before it shows anything.

Checksums (SHA-256)

52f12642e9baf77e8caf143831e0b13064e86e6a14d6405af7b3a7bdb0b5b392  Helix-v2.3.1-win-x64.zip
7e895ee217fa8dfa345bcb62beb481fc4fb52a2e3a1d0d648d1b6eedcd7f0835  Helix-v2.3.1-win-arm64.zip
2e4440884822047068488a53665d3a91ade0493d73fbbd8704910c4b2b81b07b  Helix-v2.3.1-macos.zip

The builds are not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen and macOS Gatekeeper will warn on first launch. Check the download against the checksum above (Get-FileHash on Windows, shasum -a 256 on macOS).