Mouseflare v0.8.3

Stable release v0.8.3 (commit 44b9375).

What's new

macOS releases are now notarized

• macOS builds are signed with a Developer ID Application certificate (hardened runtime, secure timestamp), notarized by Apple, and ship with a stapled ticket — unzip and open, no xattr quarantine workaround needed (#3, #5)
• Start with macOS (login item via SMAppService) is now reliable, thanks to the stable signed code identity
• One-time note for existing users: the new code identity means macOS asks you to re-grant Accessibility once after this update
• No app-code changes; auto-updating from v0.8.2 works as usual and stays minisign-verified

Verify your download

69166757ef00238cdca6019f1a59a2d42cc474d08a4bb6a282a72dc8df5b8bea  Mouseflare-macOS.zip
f8170f07ecf6549a5d496dabc1c2ed9f9aa44a5668856c975ee7b5bab93a6b35  Mouseflare-Windows.zip

Artifacts are minisign-signed (public key):

minisign -Vm Mouseflare-macOS.zip -P RWQV1L6pDRSw69B18smY6ny2RZpAecKvPvS48ImhiukQjEmN8lAqP3Mw

• macOS (universal, macOS 13+): Signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple — unzip and open, no Gatekeeper workaround needed.
• Windows: requires the free .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.

Latest development build

Automated build of main @ aa78775.

Verify your download

0dee41e625f6382ff4c2e129d68400392c662ff0c22b06be834f2b57970032da  Mouseflare-macOS.zip
a5550cacdbd2ffb23ab1c535529aeff7a2b433d2ed85b2df4ff5139a41c2877a  Mouseflare-Windows.zip

• macOS: shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS.txt (with the zip in the same folder). Signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple — unzip and open, no Gatekeeper workaround needed.
• Windows: certutil -hashfile Mouseflare-Windows.zip SHA256 and compare against the value above. Requires the free .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.

Mouseflare v0.8.2

Stable release v0.8.2 (commit 935b301).

What's new

Mouseflare 0.8.2 — Effects no longer speed up on high-refresh displays, and heavy presets got much faster

🐛 Fixed

• Effects ran at the wrong speed depending on your display's refresh rate. Particle aging advanced one step per rendered frame, so on a 120 Hz display every effect played roughly twice as fast and burned through its lifetime in half the time it should. Aging now advances by elapsed time, so an effect lasts the same duration at 60, 120 or 144 Hz. Your saved presets are untouched — their numbers are still calibrated to 60 Hz, which is now the reference rather than an assumption.
• Particle emission was tied to mouse poll rate. Particles were emitted per mouse event instead of per unit of time, so a high-polling mouse or a fast drag produced several times the intended number of particles. This was the main cause of the severe slowdown on Dragon Ash & Smoke. Emission now runs on a time budget with a carried remainder, so the density you designed is the density you get.
• Waking from idle fired generic sparks instead of your own effect on Windows and in the web demo when a custom FX Designer effect was selected. macOS already behaved correctly; all three now agree.

All three fixes apply to macOS, Windows and the web demo.

⚡ Performance

Measured on macOS, 2× Retina, under sustained full-screen dragging — a deliberate stress case, not typical use:

Preset	0.8.1	0.8.2
Dragon Ash & Smoke	23.1 ms/frame	14.9 ms/frame
Bioluminescent Abyss	19.2 ms/frame	11.3 ms/frame
Solar Plasma Flare	12.0 ms/frame	6.4 ms/frame
Chromatic Rainbow Rush	6.4 ms/frame	2.7 ms/frame

🎨 Changed

• Glow blur is now capped at 20 points. Blur scales with particle size, so a preset whose particles grow large asked for a proportionally huge blur — Dragon Ash & Smoke reached 40 points, several times any other preset's and the single largest cost in its frame. Capping it took another 22% off that preset with no visible difference. The practical effect: past 20 points of blur, the top of the Glow Radius slider no longer widens the falloff for very large particles.
• FX Studio's Intensity, Density and Animation Speed sliders now note that they apply to the built-in presets; FX Designer effects carry their own parameters. Behavior is unchanged — the note documents what already happened.

🔧 Internal

• CI now smoke-tests the packaged macOS app by opening Settings, and blocks Bundle.module from the macOS target. A local swift build cannot catch the packaging bug behind the 0.8.1 crash, because the build tree contains a resource bundle the shipped .app does not.

Verify your download

42a7817fb6d8ee8ea5ca083d5863a246fc80c9a23927a250db305b0fea859c1f  Mouseflare-macOS.zip
d9e1d5e42727ef4f1f85591ba046841d1795ecea7aaadf8c9da66140e0fa94be  Mouseflare-Windows.zip

Artifacts are minisign-signed (public key):

minisign -Vm Mouseflare-macOS.zip -P RWQV1L6pDRSw69B18smY6ny2RZpAecKvPvS48ImhiukQjEmN8lAqP3Mw

• macOS (universal, macOS 13+): not notarized yet, so Gatekeeper blocks the first launch. Unzip, then: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine Mouseflare.app && open Mouseflare.app (or use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway). Needed once per download; the app's own auto-updates are not quarantined.
• Windows: requires the free .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.

Mouseflare v0.8.1

Stable release v0.8.1 (commit 91991a3).

What's new

Mouseflare 0.8.1 — Fixes the macOS Settings crash in 0.8.0

🐛 Fixed

• macOS: opening Settings no longer quits the app. In 0.8.0 the new sidebar icons loaded through SwiftPM's Bundle.module, whose accessor aborts the process when the resource bundle isn't found — and it only looks in the app bundle and the absolute build directory baked in at compile time, so the shipped build crashed on every machine except the one that built it. The icon artwork is now embedded in the source, so no bundle lookup happens at all. All 0.8.0 macOS users should update.
• Windows: a hotkey recorded while holding only the Windows key was saved without any modifier, registering a bare key that swallowed normal typing. Only Ctrl / Shift / Alt now satisfy the modifier requirement (F1–F12 remain exempt), matching macOS.

🎨 Changed

• Windows tray menu adopts the macOS wording — "⚙ Settings & FX Studio…" and "Enable Effects" — and its Find Mouse entry now shows your configured hotkey instead of always reading Ctrl+Shift+F.
• Windows hotkey recording gains the macOS guards: Escape cancels, and a bare key is refused with an explanatory message rather than silently registering.

Verify your download

1dc4fba644f78b0b50e055649c018d11a92b29055a3a8582cba7ff2ef3655caf  Mouseflare-macOS.zip
f17a6b0ba1aff2144f19a72cfe1384ddf74815b737de929c317759f4bde05389  Mouseflare-Windows.zip

Artifacts are minisign-signed (public key):

minisign -Vm Mouseflare-macOS.zip -P RWQV1L6pDRSw69B18smY6ny2RZpAecKvPvS48ImhiukQjEmN8lAqP3Mw

• macOS (universal, macOS 13+): not notarized yet, so Gatekeeper blocks the first launch. Unzip, then: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine Mouseflare.app && open Mouseflare.app (or use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway). Needed once per download; the app's own auto-updates are not quarantined.
• Windows: requires the free .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.

Mouseflare v0.8.0

Stable release v0.8.0 (commit 8f884dd).

What's new

Mouseflare 0.8.0 — Parity polish, NeonSwitch on Windows, and the hosted demo

✨ Added

• Fluid dye controls on native: the "Luminescent Glowing Bloom" and "Chromatic Rainbow Dye Cycle" toggles now exist in FX Studio's fluid card on macOS and Windows, hooked into both engines (additive bloom on macOS, soft glow halo on Windows).
• Security & Package Verification card in Check for Updates on macOS and Windows — a SHA256SUMS download link plus a copyable minisign verify command.
• Grouped FX Designer preset dropdowns on both native apps ("Built-in Presets" / "My Custom Presets" section headers, matching the demo).
• Windows NeonSwitch: every boolean setting is now a sliding pill switch, matching macOS.
• Windows update prompt now offers a release-notes path (Yes installs · No opens the notes · Cancel for later).

🐛 Fixed

• Windows: "Launch on startup" actually works now — it persists and registers a per-user Run entry that tracks the app's location. In earlier releases the checkbox did nothing.
• Windows FX Studio: the selected-preset highlight no longer doubles up when your saved preset isn't the default.

🎨 Changed

• Cross-platform parity pass across all settings surfaces: unified window title and status model, section labels, subtexts, preset ordering (fluid effects grouped first) and short descriptions, "Min Movement Threshold", the "Checking…" update label, macOS-style save/reset confirmations, and the tray tooltip "Mouseflare — {hotkey} to Find Mouse".
• Native sidebars render the same lucide SVG icons as the web, in matching accent colors; the Windows window is now 940×680 like macOS.
• FX Designer: delete is a trash-icon button, and clipboard import distinguishes an unreadable clipboard from invalid JSON.
• Tray/menu-bar FX preset quick-switching was removed on all platforms — preset selection lives in FX Studio.
• The web app is now a small hosted showcase demo at https://offby1-tech.github.io/Mouse-Flare/ (FX playground + designer with a much faster glow renderer); the canonical preset library moved to data/default-fx-presets.json, shared by all three platforms and drift-checked in CI.

Verify your download

6b92072d220a03cdc792a78ca4b5ad719a767bb45cae1a86ce1a5c8f3ef6c58e  Mouseflare-macOS.zip
e28ceb400185c14770788225bc1a811d05e9d339e7c16080ef05751f84dd4645  Mouseflare-Windows.zip

Artifacts are minisign-signed (public key):

minisign -Vm Mouseflare-macOS.zip -P RWQV1L6pDRSw69B18smY6ny2RZpAecKvPvS48ImhiukQjEmN8lAqP3Mw

• macOS (universal, macOS 13+): not notarized yet, so Gatekeeper blocks the first launch. Unzip, then: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine Mouseflare.app && open Mouseflare.app (or use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway). Needed once per download; the app's own auto-updates are not quarantined.
• Windows: requires the free .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.

Mouseflare v0.7.0

Stable release v0.7.0 (commit de67f1b).

What's new

Mouseflare 0.7.0 — FX Designer preset library

✨ Added

• FX Designer preset library, now on all three platforms: Save stores your current design as a reusable preset (shown with a ★ in the Preset dropdown) and a Delete button removes it — the native macOS and Windows designers previously had no way to save at all. The library persists instantly and survives closing the window without Apply & Save.

🎨 Changed

• Native FX Designers restyled to match the web designer: the colors/glow row and the slider grid sit in card containers, and all designer text is 2pt larger.
• "Archetype" is now "Preset" throughout the FX Designer on every platform.
• General tab reworded and regrouped on all platforms: "Launch on startup" (was "Start with OS"), "Play Sound on Flare" (was "Acoustic Beacon Chime", now directly under the master switch), and "Flare hotkey" (was "Find Mouse Global Hotkey").
• Web settings brought in line with the native apps: FX Studio header/subtext now match, the duplicate title-bar Apply & Save is gone (the footer button remains), "Done / Close" is now "Close", and web-only cards were removed (Software Updates in General; Multi-Monitor Display Arena and Reduced Motion in Behavior).
• Web FX Designer finished its styling pass (#2): spacing, labels, and sliders match the other settings tabs, and its status messages surface in the settings title-bar pill like everything else.

🐛 Fixed

• FX Designer: reopening the settings window no longer shows a blank Preset dropdown — the preset you applied is re-selected.
• FX Designer: Save can no longer silently overwrite an existing saved preset via re-imported JSON — imported configs always get a fresh identity, and overwriting only happens on the preset actually loaded from the library.

Verify your download

88dbffdd7dd4631b859ecdd2dac9e49cde57d748d06c5db2f908fba236be8ca8  Mouseflare-macOS.zip
02fb9be257d08f3d597779f19a01cc787cbc4b36e148684bb6f3b804280e90ca  Mouseflare-Windows.zip

Artifacts are minisign-signed (public key):

minisign -Vm Mouseflare-macOS.zip -P RWQV1L6pDRSw69B18smY6ny2RZpAecKvPvS48ImhiukQjEmN8lAqP3Mw

• macOS (universal, macOS 13+): not notarized yet, so Gatekeeper blocks the first launch. Unzip, then: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine Mouseflare.app && open Mouseflare.app (or use System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway). Needed once per download; the app's own auto-updates are not quarantined.
• Windows: requires the free .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.

Mouseflare v0.6.5

Mouseflare 0.6.5 — True ClearType on Windows

🐛 Fixed

• Windows: text sharpness, definitively. The settings and color-picker windows moved from transparent layered windows (where Windows disables ClearType entirely) to opaque native-chrome windows, and dropdown lists open as opaque popups — so all text now renders with real subpixel ClearType instead of grayscale smoothing.

🎨 Changed

• The soft violet glow around the window and dropdown edges is replaced by the standard system drop shadow; the gradient borders and all interior styling are unchanged. Windows 11 rounds the corners natively; Windows 10 shows square corners.

Mouseflare v0.6.4

Mouseflare 0.6.4 — Crisp Text on Windows

🐛 Fixed

• Windows: remaining soft/thin text — most visible in dropdown lists and the small version line. The transparent window style had ClearType disabled entirely; subpixel text rendering is now explicitly re-enabled over the app's opaque surfaces, in both windows and inside dropdown popups, with pixel-snapped popup layout.

Mouseflare v0.6.3

Mouseflare 0.6.3 — Windows FX Hang Fix

🐛 Fixed

• Windows: multi-second hangs (and the fallback to flat rendering) with color-cycling custom effects like Chromatic Rainbow Rush. The FX sprite cache was keyed on particle color, so a cycling hue rebuilt GPU bitmaps hundreds of times per second until Windows refused. Sprites are now cached color-free and tinted per particle — a rainbow design uses one cached sprite instead of one per hue — with hard caps on sprite size and per-frame bitmap creation so no design can stall the app.

✨ Improved

• Rainbow and gradient custom effects on Windows render with exact per-particle color (no more quantization banding).

Mouseflare v0.6.2

Mouseflare 0.6.2 — Windows Stability

🐛 Fixed

• Windows: repeated crashes with custom FX active. The 0.6.0 pixel compositor ran inside the frame-render callback, where a single failure (such as a graphics-environment hiccup during sprite creation) took the whole app down — and again every frame after relaunch while the same design was active. The compositor is now fully fail-safed: any fault falls back to plain rendering for the session instead of crashing, and its inputs are hardened against runaway or malformed custom-FX configs.

🩺 Added

• Windows crash log: unhandled errors are now recorded to %AppData%\Mouseflare\crash.log (with a per-launch marker), so if anything still goes wrong, the log tells us exactly what.