ALEAPP v2026.4.4

ALEAPP v2026.4.4

• Python 3.11 or newer is now required to run from source, and Pillow 13.0.0 is used. Windows wheels ship with the source, so ALEAPP installs there without a compiler.
• Windows downloads are now one portable file per architecture, with no installer.
• Staged files: --hash, or the window's new checkbox, records a SHA-256 for staged files, and the times their container recorded: zip NTFS and extended timestamp fields, tar headers (including GNU and PAX access and change times and the libarchive creation time), L01 and AD1 entries, FAT and exFAT entries (as stored, with no zone applied), and the ext, APFS and HFS+ times qnxprobe 1.76 reads.
• Zip times: on four-value extended timestamp blocks the creation time comes from the fourth value, and Cellebrite CLBX zips take their times from metadata.msgpack, since in the CLBX zips tested every extended timestamp slot holds the access time. This adds msgpack as a dependency. Background: the blog post.
• Reading acquisitions with -t raw: qnxprobe goes from 1.58 to 1.76 and ewfprobe to 0.15.0. LVM2 logical volumes (including split, striped and RAID1 ones), LUKS containers opened with their passphrase, RAID member images read together, and FAT12 and FAT16 are read. Free space, a flash filesystem's deleted files and NTFS directory indexes are offered to artifacts that ask for them. Each file read through missing acquisition data is named.
• Tar links are read as the member they point to, and corrupt zip members are skipped instead of stopping the run. A WAL-mode SQLite database staged without its -wal is opened read-only with immutable=1.
• New: Yandex Disk (cloud files, uploads, accounts, trash, downloads, notes, settings, video positions, image cache and local media), KeepSafe from @charpy4n6, Google Pay from @prcharan592, offline DJI TXT flight records from @Blackwater1224, Shortcut Service from @ForensikITGmbH, Chrome Cache - Videos, Chromium downloads matched to MediaStore, Google app suggestion and key-value caches, and Discord - Servers.
• Google ODLH gains activity start and end, distance and type, and a new ODLH Path Points artifact, from @charpy4n6.
• Fixes: Chrome Sync reports the newest version of each record, userDict reads every Android user's dictionary, GroupMe opens only groupme.db, Samsung Wellbeing reads package names from newer builds, Timeline writes blanks instead of the text None, and media columns blank and log values that are not media references.
• An accuracy review of the artifact modules: descriptions, notes and headers were checked against the code and the data, values are reported as stored, unsupported labels are gone, and rows that were being dropped are kept.
• Contributor docs: a helper functions guide and an updated module guide.

New Contributors

• @ForensikITGmbH made their first contribution in #1708
• @Blackwater1224 made their first contribution in #1513
• @prcharan592 made their first contribution in #1496
• @dependabot[bot] made their first contribution in #1770

Full Changelog: v2026.4.3...v2026.4.4

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Which file to download

Platform	File
Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit Intel or AMD	-windows-x64-portable.zip
Windows 11 on ARM	-windows-arm64-portable.zip
macOS, Apple silicon	-macos-arm64.dmg
macOS, Intel	-macos-x64.dmg
Linux, 64-bit Intel or AMD	-linux-x64.AppImage
Linux on ARM	-linux-arm64.AppImage

Every download holds one program, aleapp. Started without arguments, from the
Applications folder or a double-click, it opens the window. Given arguments in a terminal,
it is the command line. On macOS the command line is inside the app:

/Applications/ALEAPP.app/Contents/MacOS/aleapp --help

For tools that run ALEAPP themselves. The options, output and exit codes of aleapp
are those of earlier releases, but there is no aleappGUI any more, since aleapp
without arguments opens the window. On Windows the zip holds the whole program as one
file, aleapp.exe, which can be put wherever the tool expects it; there is no installer.
The executable inside the macOS app needs the folder it came in; on Linux the AppImage is
the whole program.

aleapp.exe on Windows unpacks itself to a temporary folder each time it starts, so it
takes a few seconds to start, and it does not run where a policy (AppLocker, WDAC) forbids
running programs from the temporary folder. There, run ALEAPP from source; the README has
the steps.

First launch

The macOS disk images are signed with a Developer ID and notarised by Apple, so they open
without a warning.

The Windows binaries are not signed yet, so SmartScreen says "Windows protected your PC"
the first time. Choose More info, then Run anyway.

On Linux, make the AppImage executable once (chmod +x ALEAPP-*.AppImage). It needs FUSE
to start; where FUSE is not available, run it with --appimage-extract-and-run.

If you would rather not clear a warning, run from source instead; the README has the steps.

Verify what you downloaded

SHA256SUMS.txt covers every file in this release. On macOS or Linux, from the folder you
downloaded into:

grep <the file you downloaded> SHA256SUMS.txt | shasum -a 256 -c -

Use sha256sum in place of shasum -a 256 on Linux. On Windows, in PowerShell:

(Get-FileHash -Algorithm SHA256 .\<the file you downloaded>).Hash

and compare it with the line in SHA256SUMS.txt, which is lower case.

Linux

The build is made on Ubuntu 22.04, so it needs glibc 2.35 or newer and will not start on
an older distribution.

Code signing policy

The code signing policy covers
Windows signing, team roles and privacy.