Beam 1.1.0 — Stronger privacy and a better native experience

Beam 1.1.0 strengthens credential privacy, improves QR detection, and refines the native macOS result panel.

Privacy and security

• Copied passwords and authentication secrets stay on this Mac, request exclusion from clipboard managers, and clear after 90 seconds or when Beam quits.
• Selected-text copies receive the same secret protection.
• Authenticator export codes are redacted before being saved to history.
• Secret payloads no longer offer Share.
• Web links that disguise their destination behind an @ require confirmation.

Improvements

• Sharper Retina captures improve recognition of small and dense QR codes.
• Selections containing multiple QR codes return the largest code and indicate how many others were found.
• Wi-Fi, contact, and 2FA fields preserve multiline values and significant whitespace.
• The result panel opens at its intended size, with native controls and Reduce Motion support.
• ⌘C copies selected text, or the full payload when nothing is selected. ⌘W closes the panel.
• Improved email detection, contact actions, contact names, and duplicate-contact prevention.

Installation and updating

Download Beam-1.1.0.zip, extract it, and move Beam.app into Applications.

After updating, you may need to toggle Beam’s Screen Recording permission off and on in System Settings → Privacy & Security, then relaunch Beam.

Requires macOS 13 or later. Includes Apple Silicon and Intel support.

Security updates now target 1.1.x. Users on 1.0.x should upgrade.

Full Changelog: v1.0.2...v1.1.0

v1.0.2

What's Changed

• Fixed screen capture coordinates for multi-display setups.
• Preserved source compatibility for HistoryManager.add(...) with a deprecated overload.
• Refactored result actions into app services and reused derived display data.
• Fixed the strict formatting lint failure.

Full Changelog: v1.0.1...v1.0.2

v1.0.1

Beam v1.0.1 is a patch release focusing on macOS 13 back-compatibility, startup queue responsiveness, and App Sandbox permission handling.

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🚀 Highlights & What's Changed

⚡ AppKit Startup & Main Queue Responsiveness

• Migrated the application entry point to a synchronous @main struct BeamApp in BeamApp.swift.
• Eliminates DispatchQueue.main queue starvation caused by top-level async runloop initialization, ensuring immediate responsiveness for global hotkey triggers (⌘ + ⇧ + 2), delayed captures, and asynchronous contextual actions.

🛠️ Swift 5.9 & macOS 13 Compatibility

• Replaced MainActor.assumeIsolated (which the Swift 5.9 toolchain restricted to macOS 14+) with a synchronous @main architecture, ensuring clean builds targeting macOS 13.0+.
• Added #if compiler(>=5.10) guards around nonisolated(unsafe) properties in HotKeyManager to maintain zero-warning compilation across both Swift 5.9 (Xcode 15.2) and modern Swift 6+.

📇 App Sandbox Contacts Entitlement

• Added the com.apple.security.personal-information.addressbook entitlement to Config/Beam.entitlements.
• Enables macOS TCC (Transparency, Consent, and Control) authorization prompts to appear properly when saving scanned contact cards (vCard / MECARD) directly to Contacts, preventing silent sandbox denials.

🛡️ Resilient Secret Redaction

• Enhanced OTP query parameter decoding to canonicalize multi-pass percent-encoded keys.
• Safely handles multibyte UTF-8 and emoji labels without string index corruption or credential leakage in history.

🧪 Dual-Matrix CI

• Added automated GitHub Actions matrix testing validating builds across both Swift 5.9 (Xcode 15.2) and Modern Swift (Default Xcode) alongside automated whitespace linting.

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📦 Installation

1. Download Beam-1.0.1.zip from the assets below.
2. Double-click to unzip the archive.
3. Drag Beam.app into your /Applications folder.
4. Launch Beam from Applications or Spotlight.

Note on macOS Gatekeeper:
Because Beam is distributed as an independent open-source project without an annual Apple Developer subscription, macOS Gatekeeper may display an unverified developer prompt on first launch.

To open: Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
Or run this command once in Terminal:
xattr -cr /Applications/Beam.app

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🔒 Checksum Verification

To verify the integrity of your download:

shasum -a 256 -c Beam-1.0.1.zip.sha256

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💻 System Requirements

• macOS 13.0 (Ventura) or later
• Universal Binary (Apple Silicon arm64 & Intel x86_64)
• Zero third-party dependencies — 100% offline & local processing

Full Changelog: v1.0.0...v1.0.1

v1.0.0

Beam 1.0.0 — Initial Release ⚡

A lightweight, native, privacy-first screen QR code reader for the macOS menu bar with zero external dependencies.

Features

• ⚡ Universal Native Binary: Native execution on both Apple Silicon (arm64) and Intel (x86_64) Macs on macOS 13+.
• 🎯 Instant Capture: Press ⌘ + ⇧ + 2 anywhere. Supports multi-monitor setups and space-drag repositioning.
• 🔒 100% Offline & Private: Local on-device detection using Apple's Vision framework. Zero telemetry, zero tracking, zero background network calls.
• 🛡️ Privacy-First History: History is opt-in and disabled by default. Wi-Fi passwords and 2FA secret seeds are masked before saving.
• 🚀 Smart Action Handlers:
  • URLs: One-click opening in your default browser with security warnings for untrusted schemes.
  • Wi-Fi: Copy password and direct shortcut to macOS Wi-Fi Settings.
  • Contacts: Native vCard / MECARD import into macOS Contacts.
  • Two-Factor Auth (OTP): One-click handoff to Authenticator apps.
  • JSON & Text: Syntax formatting and native macOS share sheet.

Installation

1. Download Beam-1.0.0.zip below.
2. Unzip and move Beam.app to your /Applications folder.
3. Launch Beam and press ⌘ + ⇧ + 2 to scan any QR code on screen!