KillerNotes v1.6.0

1.6.0 makes saves, backups, updates and recordings safer, speeds up offline transcription, and adds Lock now, Quick note, folder import, search filters and backup checks.

Fixed

• Failed saves preserve unsaved edits for retry or text/RTF export, block actions that would discard them, and save note content, links, history and sketches together.
• A failed password change keeps the original database and complete recovery copies, reports temporary copies it cannot remove, and can be retried right away.
• Reordering or canceling a note drag no longer leaves an unencrypted copy of the note in the temp folder; files for drags out of the app are cleared on the next start.
• Sketches and recordings stay editable and playable through saving, floating, printing, copying and pasting into any note or database, and when other images are added or removed. Restoring a version brings back the drawings and takes it was saved with, and recordings lost by earlier versions reappear at the end of their note.
• Install, update and uninstall keep databases and other files inside the installation folder. Self-updates no longer run a script from the temp folder: administrator updates show KillerNotes in the approval prompt and verify the update in protected staging, a failed update keeps complete copies of the program and a recovery report, install handoffs wait for the previous app to exit, and silent installs and updates return retryable code 1618 while KillerNotes is running.
• Backups: each notepad keeps its own last-backup time and retention, even when two share a name, ambiguous older backups are kept, and long database names work. Before, switching notepads made the other one look never backed up, so it backed up again at once.
• Offline transcription is several times faster again: the speech engine update had shipped a baseline-only CPU build. The engine is no longer inside the app; it downloads with the first speech model, in the build for the processor (AVX2, AVX, SSE4.2 or baseline), checked against pinned hashes. Transcription starts correctly, keeps its settings, and opens models from folders with non-English names, and models downloaded by earlier versions are moved into one shared folder instead of downloaded again.
• A failed export leaves the file already at that name untouched instead of a partial copy. HTML export and rich copy encode link addresses safely and keep only web and email links live; other links keep their text.
• Renaming or deleting a tag updates every note or none of them when a write fails.
• Replace and Replace All preserve formatting, embedded content and regex captures across paragraph breaks, support one-step undo, and reload the open note even when it leaves the search results. (#14)
• Formatting shortcuts, inserts and dictation no longer change notes in the Trash or in a database open read-only, and say why.
• Search, Find in this note, the title-bar match count, wikilinks and the CLI all match text the same way: case and how a letter was typed never matter in any language, accents always do. "café" finds "CAFÉ", and Greek or Cyrillic titles link regardless of case. Regex Find stops a runaway pattern after one second and says so, without changing the note.
• Markdown notes keep list and table text when saving, keep tables as tables when converted to rich text, and paste rich content as plain text.
• Pasting tidies only the pasted content, leaving the rest of the note's spacing and table colors alone, and HTML with a cut-off script or style tag no longer freezes the app. Highlighted text keeps its dark text on yellow after reopening or pasting, in every theme.
• Delete and Backspace remove a selected image, inline or floated, instead of the character beside it.
• Imported notes show their links, backlinks and graph edges right away, and notes imported earlier are indexed on the next open.
• Switching databases clears Back and Forward history; reopening the same database preserves it.
• CLI and MCP: a client that stops reading a large reply no longer blocks later clients, values that look like options (such as content of "--title") stay values, repeated options are rejected, and write commands wait at most 30 seconds before exiting with code 3, meaning the change may or may not have been made. A stalled connection to the single-instance channel is dropped after five seconds, so opening files from Explorer keeps reaching the running app.
• Cached native libraries are checked against the app's own copies by hash and replaced when they differ, and a database engine that fails to load is reported instead of failing later.
• Keyboard focus is visible on check boxes, radio buttons, combo boxes, theme swatches and the caption buttons in every theme, instead of Windows' black dotted box that disappeared on dark themes. Screen readers name the color picker's Red, Green, Blue and Hex fields, the find bar's close button and the file picker's Up and Recent locations buttons. Dialog buttons grow with their caption, so Cancel is no longer cut off in German, Kazakh and Ukrainian.
• Wheel input over the logo adjusts app size even when the editor or note list has focus, and Ctrl+wheel over the sidebar adjusts note density.
• The speech-model menu opens beside the microphone button while keeping its 8px side inset.
• Preview sizing respects the current monitor's work area and relaxes split-pane limits on constrained displays.
• File pickers use theme content colors and app icons; 98SE dialogs have full bevels and compact fields. Menus, search, buttons, SketchPad, Dictation and shortcut labels use embedded Killer Sans. The database name uses KillerPDF's filename font, aligns with the database icon, and uses dark text on the 98SE Yellow title bar. Sidebar fades stop at scroll limits and stay off in 98SE, shortcut and font cards show overflow with scrollbars clear of Close, and the footer copyright sits further from the corner grip.
• Website: the screenshot viewer has a Close button and keeps keyboard focus inside while open, and the install notes say /silent installs for all users only when run as administrator.

Added

• Lock now ends an unlocked session without quitting: the lock button's menu or Ctrl+Shift+U saves the open note, hides every note and closes the notepad until its password is entered again. A notepad with a password also locks when Windows locks or sleeps, and optionally after the computer has been idle for 5 to 60 minutes (About card). An unfinished sketch or recording waits behind the lock, and edits that could not be saved before an automatic lock come back after the unlock.
• Backups are checked before they count, and a footer warning stays up while a notepad's backups are failing or overdue, with the reason. Manage databases shows when each notepad was last backed up, and Test restore in Backups reads a backup back from a temporary copy, checking every note and attachment, without touching your notepads.
• Quick note: a small box for a thought, opened from the tray icon's menu, the taskbar icon's right-click menu, KillerNotes.exe --quick-note or Win+Alt+N, which the About card can change to one of four other Win+Alt shortcuts or turn off; shortcuts another app holds are greyed out. It saves a new note to Inbox or another group, or adds to today's note, without touching the open note, and keeps the draft when closed or while the notepad is locked. The About card can keep the tray icon while the window is open.
• Import a folder of notes (Alt+Shift+I, and import-folder for the CLI and MCP) brings in a KillerNotes export, an Obsidian vault or another app's Markdown export: folders become groups, front matter gives titles, tags, dates, pins and colors, links point at the imported notes, and local pictures and WAV or FLAC audio come with them. A preview shows what will happen and what is skipped before anything changes, the import lands in one step or not at all, and importing the same folder again skips what already came in.
• Search filters: tag:, group: (with subgroups), title:, after:, before:, created: and in:trash, plus "quoted phrases". The filter button beside the search box (Alt+Shift+F) inserts them and saves or recalls searches, which are kept in the notepad. The status line and the match count's tooltip say what was searched.
• KillerNotes appears under Open with for .md and .txt files without becoming their default app. Opening one, or picking it with Ctrl+O, imports it with the folder import's rules, and opening the same unchanged file again opens the note it became.
• The footer shows whether the open note is saved and, with a padlock, whether the notepad has a password; the padlock stays open until the latest changes are in the encrypted file. Lock now, the first backup, an export, an import and a quick note each explain themselves once in the status line; About turns these tips off.
• A notepad with no notes offers three ways to begin: start writing, open the sample notebook (its own notepad, Sample notes, never mixed into yours), or import a folder of notes.
• F1 opens the shortcut list on a search box marked with a magnifying glass: type to find an action by name or keys, and Enter runs it. The list includes Win+Alt+N for Quick note and the link graph's keys.
• The link graph and recordings work from the keyboard. In the graph, Tab and Shift+Tab move between notes and announce each one, Home and End jump to either end, the Apps key opens a note's menu and Enter opens it. With the caret beside a recording, Alt+Shift+P plays or pauses it and Alt+Shift+Up and Down change its volume, also on the note's context menu.
• Added Slovenian across the app, installer, help, website, and keyboard shortcuts, including startup installation and removal prompts. Corrected punctuation in app and website translations.

Changed

• Export all notes as markdown makes a dependable copy to leave with: each export gets its own dated folder, pictures, sketches and recordings are written beside each note (floated ones included), links whose file name had to change are rewritten so they still land, each note carries its KillerNotes id, pin and title color, and killernotes-export.json lists every note and its files. export-report.md is always written, says what was lost or could not be carried and what is never exported, and reports a read-back check of every file. The export runs in the background with Cancel, a canceled export leaves nothing behind, and exporting a password notepad warns that the files are plain text.
• The link graph opens about four times faster in large notebooks, the backlinks strip refreshes about twice as fast, and title-bar search counts its matches in seconds instead of minutes.
• KillerNotes is per-monitor DPI aware, like KillerPDF: with two monitors at different scales it stays sharp on both instead of blurring on one.
• Buttons and menus follow one style per theme: only + New and a dialog's main action are filled with the accent, with text in the theme's own dark tone, and + New has a soft bevel that sinks when pressed. In 98SE, + New stays gray until pressed and menu highlights follow the chosen accent. Other buttons keep the plain face, an active sort button shows the accent on its edge and icon, hovered menu and list items show their text in the accent (adjusted only as far as needed to stay readable), and focused text fields brighten their own edge instead of turning the accent color.
• Theme colors: Light is shades of gray with nothing white. Menus, the format bar, the links strip and the preview and outline panes sit darker than the panes and the background in Dark, Decay, Ectoplasm, Malaise and Mourning. Greed and Cyanotic use their cream accent instead of white, Sepulchre's accent buttons are brown with teal-edged neighbours, Ectoplasm's menus hover in its yellow with dimmer separators, and the Dark theme's red accent is the brand red again instead of a pink tint.
• Wordmarks and headings are raised with a subtle bevel in their own color, over their soft shadow. Film grain has crisper specks; Black shows only its bright specks at half the strength and Dark's grain is slightly lighter, so menus, panes and the background stay distinct. The About, Fonts and Keyboard Shortcuts cards' edges and the Shortcuts list's top rule follow gradient themes, and the larger Lacquer + NEW label fills its button and becomes a large plus sign on narrow sidebars.
• Note text runs the full height of the pane and fades out at the top and bottom while there is more to scroll that way, like the note list, with the keyboard focus outline just outside the text. Clicking a heading in the outline scrolls the preview to it, side by side or preview only, and the outline and preview panes run square up to the title rule.
• Title-bar search highlights each word and shows body-match and matching-note totals. Its icon's menu or Alt+F3 collapses the field to one icon; clicking it or pressing F3 temporarily expands it. With Hide Searchbar selected, clearing the search and clicking away collapses it again. Search highlights stay beneath overlay cards. Find in this note stays local; confirmed cross-note Replace opens in the same solid, grained panel without moving the search box, and closes when clicking elsewhere.
• The About card's options sit in two columns, app options on the left and tray and Quick note on the right, with the two lock options underneath, and its content sits 8px from its side edges. Manage databases lists each database on two lines, with the retention help and data folder in tooltips. The lock button's menu opens in the note pane's top-right corner, and the caption buttons are 1px shorter so the red Close hover no longer touches the edge below.
• Updated SQLCipher to 4.19.0, FLAC to 1.5.0, Whisper to 1.9.5, SQLite bindings to 10.0.13, and Markdown processing to Markdig 1.4.2. Release builds refresh the CLI's dependencies to prevent SQLite version conflicts.
• Refreshed the demo notebook with public app screenshots, linked workflows, release boards, editable table examples and highlighted AMORT/WURSA code excerpts.

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KillerNotes embeds the LAME MP3 encoder (libmp3lame, LGPL-2.1) for exporting recordings. Its complete corresponding source is attached to this release as lame-3.100.tar.gz, and also lives in third_party/audio/ in the tagged source. Build instructions are in third_party/audio/README.md.