Glimmer 2026.10.3

Glimmer offers its Wi-Fi stutter protection the first time it opens on every
Mac, whatever the network, and asks again each launch until it's on or you
decline it for good. A MacBook first opened on Ethernet used to never see it.

The Stream menu now offers the same action as the launcher and the menu bar:
Back to Stream, Wake and Connect, Stop Waiting or Pair Again…, instead of a
greyed-out Stream. While a stream is hidden, its app button reads "Back to
Stream". Resolutions read the way players say them (4K, 1440p, 1080p) or as
their size, never as a Mac model name, and the empty "Glimmer Help" item is
gone.

A PC that answered the launch but then went quiet could leave Glimmer on
"Connecting…" until you cancelled. Each step of the connection now gives up
after ten seconds and tells you the PC couldn't be reached.

When a PC falls asleep mid-stream and Glimmer can't get it back, the banner now
says it couldn't reach the PC and offers Wake and Connect, instead of "ended
unexpectedly" and Try Again. Every way a stream can fail to start or end on its
own now says the one thing to do next, including Sunshine stopping the stream
for protected content.

A weak remote link lowers the quality to keep the picture moving; that lowering
is no longer for the rest of the session. Moving to another network restores the
full quality on the next reconnect, and after five clean minutes at the lower
quality Glimmer steps it back up under a short "Connection improved" hold.

Frames reach the screen sooner. On a 240 Hz stream, the share of frames that
waited more than one refresh fell from about half to under a fifth, and a short
burst of frames no longer leaves every later frame waiting an extra refresh.

A damaged audio packet is smoothed over instead of leaving a gap, one stray
packet can no longer switch off audio repair for the rest of a stream, and the
extra audio delay a stutter adds on Wi-Fi settles back down sooner. An idle
stream no longer wakes the Mac a thousand times a second to check for input.

The session log and telemetry files no longer contain your PC's address or the
PC's and Mac's names, which appear as short codes instead, and Copy in the
Diagnostics log copies lines the same way. They're safe to attach to an issue.

Source: this repo at tag 2026.10.3 (GPLv3).

Glimmer 2026.10.2

Some H.264 and HEVC streams connected but never showed a picture, then ended
after ten seconds, because their key frames began with information Glimmer
didn't expect. Glimmer now recognises them, and the picture appears.

On some Macs, 5.1 and 7.1 sound didn't start, because macOS refused Sunshine's
surround layout. Glimmer now decodes each of Sunshine's audio streams on its own
and puts the channels back in order, which every supported Mac can do.

Both fixes came from mehmetcansahin.

Source: this repo at tag 2026.10.2 (GPLv3).

Glimmer 2026.10.1

Glimmer is now signed with Apple's current Developer ID certificate, ahead of
the older one's retirement in February. Updates, paired PCs and the permissions
you've granted all carry over; there's nothing to do.

Source: this repo at tag 2026.10.1 (GPLv3).

Glimmer 2026.10.0

While your stream is hidden behind other windows, the launcher no longer turns
every app grey and adds a Back to Stream button. The app you're streaming stays
violet with a TV glyph; click it or press Return to go back to the stream.

Glimmer now uses macOS's own encryption to pair with and talk to your PC, and
macOS's own Opus decoder for the sound, instead of copies of OpenSSL and Opus
bundled inside the app. The app is smaller, its security fixes arrive with macOS
updates, and the keychain never comes into it, so waking the Mac can't leave a
stream stuck on a keychain prompt.

Source: this repo at tag 2026.10.0 (GPLv3).

Glimmer 2026.9.13

Open at login keeps working after a Homebrew upgrade. The upgrade removed
Glimmer's login helper from the system while macOS still showed it as on, so
Glimmer didn't start at the next login. Glimmer now notices when it opens and
sets the login helper up again.

Source: this repo at tag 2026.9.13 (GPLv3).

Glimmer 2026.9.12

With Open at login on, Glimmer starts the way you set it after a restart,
including in the menu bar only. macOS's Reopen windows when logging back in used
to relaunch Glimmer as an ordinary app, window and all, before Glimmer's own
login item could start it.

Source: this repo at tag 2026.9.12 (GPLv3).

Glimmer 2026.9.11

Reconnecting no longer brings back a Stream button under your apps. The app
that's streaming shows a spinner while Glimmer reconnects, and clicking it or
pressing Escape ends the stream.

Source: this repo at tag 2026.9.11 (GPLv3).

Glimmer 2026.9.10

A stream started from the menu bar hides the pointer again. Closing the menu bar
panel as the picture came up left the cursor showing over the stream; Back to
Stream in the panel had the same problem.

Source: this repo at tag 2026.9.10 (GPLv3).

Glimmer 2026.9.9

Smooth out Wi-Fi stutter while streaming works again after updating Glimmer with
Homebrew. The update could leave the setting on while the part that parks
AirDrop's radio wasn't running, so Wi-Fi streams stuttered as they started.

After your Mac wakes or a stream ends, the PC no longer shows as Asleep for a
moment, and Glimmer stops checking on it while your displays are asleep. Video
comes back faster after a network dropout of a few seconds. Turning off Smooth
out Wi-Fi stutter during a stream brings AirDrop and Continuity back right away.

The launcher is redesigned as one sheet of frosted glass. Your PC's name is its
title, with the specs underneath, and each app is a large violet button that
streams it, so there is no separate Stream button to find. Return streams the
app you start with. While a slow connection is under way, the app you clicked
shows a spinner; click it again or press Escape to cancel. A button appears
under the apps only when the PC needs something else first: Wake and Connect,
Back to Stream, or Pair Again. With more than one PC paired, click the name to
switch.

Settings reads more like System Settings. The pane you read is opaque, each
control explains itself in one line underneath, and the Quality presets are
named for what you get: Sharpest and Balanced. "Fill the notch" is now "Keep
picture below the camera", off by default as before. Fixed shortcuts show their
keys as plain text, PCs get a device glyph instead of initials, and the menu bar
panel shows Open Glimmer instead of hiding it in a menu.

Every in-stream shortcut now defaults to two keys: ⌃Q stops streaming, ⌃I shows
or hides stats, ⌃P captures or releases the pointer, ⌃M opens the mini player,
and ⌃V pastes as text, in place of ⌃⌥Q, ⌃⌥S, ⌃⌥R and ⌃⌥⇧V. Shortcuts you had
already changed stay as you set them.

A new Stream menu holds Stream, Mini Player and Stop Streaming, and lists your
PCs with ⌘1 to ⌘9 to switch between them. The launcher's toolbar holds just the
Settings button. The Stream button in the menu bar panel matches the launcher's
violet, and the panel's cards are titled the way macOS's own panels are. A
stream started from the menu bar panel closes the panel as the picture comes up,
instead of leaving it over the stream. Smooth out Wi-Fi stutter sits next to
Bandwidth in Settings › Quality, and Open in the menu bar only appears once Open
at login is on.

Pairing errors now say to choose Pair Again… without pointing at a menu the
screen doesn't have. With Reduce Motion on, banners and notices fade in instead
of sliding, and nothing bounces. VoiceOver reads each app button by its name,
announces a newly recorded shortcut, and keeps its own keys while you record
one. The log level picker in Diagnostics shows every level again.

Source: this repo at tag 2026.9.9 (GPLv3).

Glimmer 2026.9.8

Steadier reconnects, a Cancel that also quits the game it started, lighter video
decoding, and an installer for the command line tool.

A stream that reconnects on its own after a network drop or sleep no longer ends
a moment later with a no-video or firewall error, and the Reconnecting banner
stays up until the connection resumes. Frames rebuilt after packet loss reach
the screen sooner, a stalled display recovers without flashing an old frame, and
audio comes back on its own if your speakers or headphones weren't ready when
the stream started.

Cancelling while Glimmer connects now quits the game it started on the PC, so
the next stream no longer asks you to take over your own session. Cancelling
just as a stream connects no longer leaves a connection running in the
background, and each stream frees its memory when it ends. Glimmer no longer
quits unexpectedly when the connection to the PC drops at the wrong moment.

H.264 and HEVC streams use less CPU per frame, most noticeably at 4K and high
frame rates. A click made during fast mouse movement is no longer sent after
movement that came later.

Gyro aiming no longer stops responding after about five minutes of play. The
light bar and player lights catch up when you return to a stream that changed
them while you were away. Generic controllers no longer keep Glimmer busy when
no stream is running, and Glimmer stops listening to them while its window and
menu are closed. Opening the controller test in Settings no longer lets a stream
in the background receive controller input, and recording a shortcut no longer
swallows typing in other Glimmer windows.

If the PC's firewall blocks port 48010, Glimmer says so in about 10 seconds
instead of failing with a generic error after 30. Pairing keeps a PC's saved
identity when it's interrupted, and PCs found on the network no longer drop out
of the pairing list while it's open. Wake and Connect starts the stream sooner
once the PC is ready, and Connect in a wake notification works after Glimmer has
quit.

A stream hidden behind other windows no longer keeps your Mac's display awake,
and AirDrop and Continuity come back promptly after a stream ends. Updates no
longer download while you're streaming; Glimmer checks again when the stream
ends. Turning off Open at login also removes a login item still waiting for
approval, and a failed registration no longer switches the setting off.

With diagnostics on, the session log records how each stream ended, the session
summary finds the worst second more accurately and keeps drop and byte totals
across reconnects, and a PC name with quotation marks no longer breaks it.
glimmer stream --wait reports its own stream's result even when another starts
right away.

Glimmer › Install Command Line Tool… puts the glimmer command on your PATH for
copies installed from the disk image. It asks for an administrator password
once, and says so if Homebrew already installed the command.

glimmer list --csv now prints the paired PCs as CSV, with a Name, Address and
Status header. Before, the flag only changed the list of a PC's apps.

The About pane now describes Sunshine as the game-streaming server on your PC
and Moonlight as the client that inspired Glimmer.

Source: this repo at tag 2026.9.8 (GPLv3).