Orbit v1.5.0 — Notifications you can read

Notifications you can read

• Every notice has a clear message, with the technical detail below it. Errors stay until you close them,
  with Copy to take their text along.
• A notice pauses while your mouse is over it, and a ring around its icon shows the time it has left.
• A new look: the icon in a tinted circle, buttons as pills, a bigger ✕, all lined up on one grid. Notices slide
  in and close up smoothly.

Never miss one

• The 🔔 in the status bar keeps your last 50 notifications, by day, with a count of what you missed and a
  dot on the new ones.
• Do not disturb, from the 🔔 or from Settings → Notifications, keeps only errors on screen, with no sound;
  everything still goes to the list.

Chats waiting for you

• With more Claude chats waiting, one notice lists them all, each in the color of its tab: click one to go
  there.
• A short, soft chime when a chat is waiting and Orbit is in the background.

Orbit v1.4.0 — A shelf for every repository

A shelf for every repository

• The Shelf at the bottom of the Explorer is always there now, with a ⚙ that opens its own page in
  Settings → Shelf.
• Set aside a folder or a file, or a rule: every folder or file matching a name or a pattern, like bin,
  *.Tests, .* or *.DotSettings.user. It applies to this repository or to every repository you open.
• Shelve dot-folders puts .git, .vs, .idea and the like away in one click, in every repository;
  Shelve noise folders does it for node_modules, target and dist.
• Shelved items are real tree items: git colors, the full right-click menu, and they remember what you opened.
  A rule shows what it takes (bin — 12 folders) and opens on that list.
• The eye shows shelved items back in the tree, dimmed. Categories get colors, can be renamed or deleted,
  and can stay out of search and Quick Open.
• Drag a folder from the tree onto a category, resize the shelf from its top edge, and undo any change from its
  notice. A dot tells you when something you shelved has changed.
• The Shelf now works in the Solution view too.

Split the editor your way

• Drop a tab on any edge of an editor group (left, right, top or bottom) to open a new group there, or in the
  middle to move it. Up to six groups, with draggable splitters; the layout comes back when you reopen Orbit.

Six chats side by side

• Up to six Claude chats or terminals side by side per repository, in a 3×2 grid on a wide screen.

Orbit v1.3.0 — Solutions, like in Visual Studio

Your solutions, like in Visual Studio

• In a repository with Visual Studio solutions (.sln, .slnx), the new ⇄ button in the Explorer header
  switches between the folders on disk and a solution, shown the way Visual Studio's Solution Explorer
  shows it:
  • solution folders and projects (C#, VB, F#, C++);
  • a Dependencies node with frameworks, packages and project references;
  • nested files (App.xaml.cs under App.xaml), linked files and C++ filters.
• Show All Files adds, in gray, what the projects leave out, like bin, obj and files that aren't in
  the project.
• Whatever isn't part of the solution stays one click away under Other files.
• The view follows the active file, shows your git changes and updates by itself when a project file changes.
  Orbit remembers it for each repository.
• Orbit reads the solution and project files on its own, without running MSBuild.

Build and run from the tree

• Right-click the solution or a project to Build, Rebuild or Clean it, or Run an executable
  project, in a terminal tab.
• Orbit uses Visual Studio's MSBuild when it's installed, so C++ projects build too; otherwise it uses
  dotnet.

Orbit v1.2.0 — Room for all your repos

Room for all your repos

• When the repository tabs don't fit in the top bar, the ones on the right collapse into chips with their
  initials on the repo's color. The first three stay whole while they fit, and so does the repo you're
  working in; what still doesn't fit goes into a +N menu. Drag a repo to the left to keep it readable.
• Hover a chip to see its branch, its waiting Claude chats and its changed files.
• Every repo has a color, shown on its folder icon. Right-click a tab to pick another one, or go back to
  Automatic.
• Tabs change size in one smooth motion when you switch, add or reorder repos.

Always room to move the window

• Both sides of the repository row stay free to grab the window, however many repos are open. The logo and
  the gaps between tabs drag the window too. Before, with many repos only a few pixels were left.

Move a repo to a new window

• Drag a repository tab down out of the top bar, or choose Move to new window from its menu: the repo
  opens in a new Orbit window (where you drop it, or next to this one), with its tabs and its terminals and
  Claude chats resumed.
  • If one of its chats is running, Orbit asks first: a reply in progress would stop.
  • Shells start fresh in the new window, as after a restart.

Fixed

• A New window opened from a window that reopen all had brought back no longer shares that window's
  session. Before, the two windows overwrote each other's tabs and terminals, and the new one opened right on
  top of the other.

Orbit v1.1.0 — Pick up where you left off

Pick up where you left off

• Your terminals and Claude chats come back when you reopen Orbit: every repo's tabs with their names,
  colors and folders, the side-by-side chats, and each Claude chat resumed with its conversation. Only
  what's on screen starts right away; the rest starts when you open it.
  • Shells come back fresh, in the same folder.
  • Run tabs don't come back.
• Files reopen where you were: cursor and scroll position, now also when you switch between tabs (the
  editor used to jump back to the top).
• The Explorer comes back with the folders you had expanded.
• After an update, windows come back with their terminals and chats too — from the next update on: 1.0
  doesn't save them, so the terminals you have open while updating from 1.0 start fresh this once.
• Resume in Activity on a chat that's already open takes you to its tab instead of opening a second one.
• Closing Orbit's window also closes its floating terminals (they used to stay open on their own).

Faster and lighter

• Big projects stay responsive while Claude works. With a file saved every second in a 5,400-file project, Orbit now uses a quarter of the CPU it used in 1.0 (23% of one core instead of 95%), the interface answers in about 2 ms instead of stalling for up to 200 ms, and memory at the peak drops from ~550 MB to ~190 MB.
• The project symbol index updates incrementally: a save re-reads only that file (85 ms instead of a full 310 ms rescan on that project), and the editor no longer receives the whole index again after every save.
• Moving the cursor through a large file is smooth again: the related bar and the code lens no longer go through every symbol of the project at each line (400 lines: 0.7 s of work instead of 23 s).
• Git status, diffs, history, search and file reads no longer run on the window's main thread, so a slow git status on a big repository can't freeze the interface.
  The same now goes for switching branch, staging, committing and deleting a large folder from the tree.
• The file tree reloads only the folders where something changed, not every expanded folder.
• Activity: the transcript of a running chat is read from where it stopped (4 ms per update on a 40 MB transcript, instead of 134 ms), and the board redraws only the work units that changed.
• Startup loads half the JavaScript (274 KB instead of 553 KB): the code editor arrives when you open a file.

Settings

• A new Settings window: larger, with categories (Appearance, Editor, Terminal, Claude, Keyboard,
  Updates & logs) and a search box that finds any option or shortcut as you type.
• Try the cursor styles right there: a small editor and a small terminal, with a Shell and a Claude chat
  tab, show the chosen cursor live.
• The keyboard shortcuts are a category of Settings now, instead of a separate window.
• Themes show as thumbnails in their own colors, and the Claude category opens the project's prompts
  and .orbit/claude.json.
• The installed version and Check now sit at the bottom of Settings, always in view (they were the last row of a long list); Update… appears there when a new version is out.
• Diagnostic logging is off on new installs and much lighter when on (it no longer records every key typed in a terminal).

Cursor styles

• The text cursor has styles, chosen separately for the editor and the terminal:
  • Smooth (the default): it glides and its blink fades;
  • Classic;
  • Comet: a trail on jumps, like Kitty's;
  • Elastic: the head lands at once and the tail follows, like Neovide;
  • Blaze: a warm trail with a glow.
• Customize sets the shape, the glide (off / on jumps only / always), the blink style, the trail and its length, and a steady or breathing glow.
• In the terminal the cursor is drawn by Orbit: it glides between positions, it's a bar in Claude chats and a block in shells, and fast output or Claude's redraws never set it moving.
• The blink stops after 15 s of rest, so an idle window doesn't keep animating.
• Smooth caret is replaced by the editor cursor style. If you had turned it off, the glide stays off.

Terminal

• Terminal text is drawn on the GPU (WebGL) by default — about 2.6× less CPU while Claude's spinner runs. Only the terminals in view use it: hidden ones (other repos, other tabs) give their GPU memory back, and with many terminals the oldest no longer fall back silently to the slower renderer. Installs that had it off (the old default) switch it on once; it stays a setting.
• New setting: Terminal scrollback — 1,000 to 10,000 lines per terminal, default 3,000 (it was a fixed 5,000; more lines use more memory).

Folders ignored by git

• The symbol index, the code-lens references, project search and Quick Open skip folders ignored by git — build output, virtual environments, scratch folders — as VS Code does. The file tree still shows them.
• Changes inside those folders (a build writing into bin/) no longer re-run git status and the symbol index.

Smaller things

• Switching repository moves the panels once, even when its files take a while to load: the editor
  could collapse for a moment and open again when the tabs arrived.
• Attention dots (a terminal waiting for you) pulse four times and then stay on, instead of animating for hours — about 90% less CPU while a chat waits.
• Project search skips binary files.
• Git Bash is offered wherever Git is installed: per-user installs and other drives too, not only
  C:\Program Files\Git.
• Activity follows CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR when Claude Code's configuration folder has been moved.
• The last few messages still in Italian are in English: Command Prompt in the shell menu and some
  error notices.
• For contributors: developer documentation in docs/,
  one page per area of the code.

Orbit v1.0.0 — CodeLens and updates from GitHub

Updates from GitHub

• Orbit now checks for new releases shortly after starting and every 6 hours (Settings → Check for updates automatically, or Check now). A new version shows a notice and an Update button in the top bar with its release notes; Update and restart downloads the installer, verifies its signature, saves your work (or asks), closes the other Orbit windows and installs in place — every window reopens where it was, with its tabs.
• This is the first version with updates: install it by hand with Orbit_1.0.0_x64-setup.exe. The next ones arrive by themselves.

Code lens

• A small line above classes, interfaces, types, methods and functions shows N references and, on types, N implementations (Visual Studio style). Click it for the list in the project-symbols palette — file and line, Enter jumps there, Alt+← comes back.
• No language server: references are counted by name in the same pass that builds the symbol index — the project lines that use the name, skipping comments and strings, with ≈ when the name is declared more than once. Toggle in Settings (Code lens).

"Open with" without taking over your defaults

• The setup puts Orbit in the Open with menu of text, code, image and PDF files and no longer makes itself their default app. Where an earlier version had become the default, installing 1.0 hands it back to what was there before; choices you made yourself in Windows are left alone.
• Use the setup (.exe): the MSI package doesn't register "Open with".

No lost edits on close

• Closing a window (✕, Alt+F4, the taskbar) or Close all lets autosave do its part, then asks about anything still unsaved — Save all / Don't save / Cancel. Edits made after the last autosave could be lost before.

Editor, tabs and panels

• Right-click a tab for Close, Close others, Close to the right, Close saved and Close all (with a split editor also Close all in this group); Close all is in the "all tabs" menu too. Unsaved files are asked about once, all together.
• Images zoom like the code: Ctrl+scroll around the pointer, double-click for fit / 100%, drag to pan, sharp pixels from 300%; each image keeps its zoom.
• A file opened on its own ("Open with", double-click) opens in a light window: just the file, side panels collapsed, nothing written into its folder. Open … as project turns it into a regular project.
• The sidebar and the terminal panel collapse into a thin strip on the window edge (IntelliJ / Visual Studio style); the strips keep the views and your chats, click one to bring the panel back.

Activity

• Units are titled with their commit message (also when it came through a heredoc); work that continued without a new prompt shows ↳ with the request it came from, instead of an untitled card.
• Commits made with git commit -q count as commits; the view no longer freezes the window while it reads large transcripts.

Fixes

• Ctrl+P and the other palettes take the focus even when the editor has it — keystrokes used to end up in the file.
• The same file opened through different paths is one document, not two.
• Git decorations work when the open folder is a subfolder of the repository.
• The C# and TypeScript symbol scanners no longer index calls or local values as declarations.
• The active tab stays visible in a crowded tab bar; context menus stay on screen near the bottom edge.
• The last Italian strings in the interface are now English (relative times, the prompt-wrapper composer, shelf rules).

Orbit v0.9.1 — Smooth layout motion & reorderable repo tabs

Smooth layout

• Switching repos, collapsing the editor, maximizing the terminal panel, showing or hiding a panel and rearranging chats now animate as one short motion (220 ms) instead of jumping. Panels glide to the new repo's sizes together; terminals refit once at the end instead of redrawing at every step. Dragging a splitter stays immediate.
• A repo switch is a single movement: the editor's collapsed state comes from the saved session up front (previously it expanded and then collapsed again 400 ms later), the destination session is read in parallel with saving the current one, and the new repo's terminals appear as soon as the folder is open.
• No more flashes while switching: the sidebar keeps its views and the "Open folder…" state never shows during a switch.
• New setting Smooth panel transitions (on by default). It controls the animations directly and does not follow the OS "reduce motion" preference, which is permanently on when Windows' animation effects are turned off.

Repository tabs

• Drag to reorder the repo tabs in the top bar; the order is remembered with the window's session. A plain click still switches repo.
• The repo row is now centered in the top bar; when the tabs don't fit it fills the space and scrolls as before.

Notes

• No Rust changes: binary and installer sizes are unchanged.

Orbit v0.9.0 — Visual Studio 2026 look & refined side-by-side chats

New look: Visual Studio 2026 Dark (default)

• New theme sampled pixel-by-pixel from Visual Studio 2026 Dark: #1c1c1c frame, #1e1e1e editor, #282828 tool windows, violet accent #9184ee. Squarer corners, denser tabs and headers, Segoe UI Variable, thinner "fluent" chrome icons, outline file glyphs.
• Themes now control shape, not just color: radius scale, tab/header heights, font and icon stroke are theme tokens. Orbit Dark, Eclipse, Slate and Orbit Light are unchanged and still available.
• The terminal follows the theme (background, text, cursor, selection) instead of a fixed dark background.
• New Amber accent. The accent stays customizable; Auto follows the theme.
• Existing installs switch to the new theme once on first launch of 0.9; any theme you pick afterwards is kept.

Side-by-side chats, fixed and finished

• Dropping a tab on the right or left edge of a pane now creates a column, top/bottom a row, center swaps. The layout stays automatic (adapts to the panel size) until you drag with a direction, resize a pane, or pick Side by side / Stacked; Automatic makes it adaptive again.
• Resizable panes: drag the splitters between columns and rows.
• Pane headers are draggable too.

Names and colors for terminals and chats

• Short default names: Claude 1, pwsh 2, cmd 1… instead of long shell titles. Double-click a tab or a pane title to rename (Esc / empty restores the automatic name).
• Claude's own conversation title shows as a subtitle in the pane header and in the tab tooltip.
• Right-click a tab for Rename, Open to the side, Floating window, a color from the Activity palette (shown on the tab icon and pane header, kept in floating windows) and Close.
• New ✨ New Claude chat button next to the + in the terminal panel.

Notes

• Settings: theme defaults to vs2026; a one-time uiV09 marker records the migration.
• No Rust changes: binary and installer sizes are unchanged (orbit.exe 5.74 MB, MSI 3.50 MB, NSIS 2.84 MB).

Orbit v0.8.11 — Chats side by side

Chats side by side (M54)

• Run up to four Claude chats or terminals side by side in the terminal panel, per repository — each repo keeps its own layout.
• Open them from the new Split button in the panel (new Claude, new terminal, or one of your open tabs to the side), from the Claude menu (Open Claude to the side), or from the Activity Chats lens (To the side, next to Resume this chat).
• Drag a tab onto a pane: drop it in the center to show it there, near an edge to add it on that side.
• The layout adapts to the space — side by side, 2×2 grid or stacked, picking the one that leaves every chat enough rows and columns — or force Side by side / Stacked from the Split menu.
• Each pane has a small header: zoom it (the others keep running), pop it out to a floating window, or remove it from the split (the terminal stays open as a tab).
• One click gives the terminal panel the whole window; another click brings the editor back exactly as you left it.
• Nothing restarts when a chat moves between panes: Claude keeps running and keeps its history.
• A chat that is waiting for you and already visible just pulses its pane header instead of popping a notification.

No new dependencies.

Orbit v0.8.10 — New logo, more room for Claude & no more Usage panel

New logo, more room for Claude & no more Usage panel (M53)

New logo

• Orbit has a new mark — a gradient planet with a tilted orbit and a satellite — picked from the new UI mockups.
• App icons are now generated from a single vector source (app-icon.svg), and the in-app logo is vector too: crisp at any size, and readable on the light theme.

More room for Claude

• When no file is open, the editor area shrinks to its minimum width by itself and the terminal panel — your Claude chats — takes the space. Open a file and the previous layout comes back.

Terminal

• Fixed the dark strip that could appear below the last line of the terminal (and, at other window heights, a clipped last line). Rows are now computed on the real available space, and the leftover area uses the theme background.

Scratchpad

• The scratchpad is now plain text (.orbit/scratch.txt). An existing scratch.md is renamed automatically on first use, content untouched.

File associations (Windows)

• Orbit no longer registers itself for scripts (.bat, .cmd, .ps1, .sh, .bash): double-clicking them runs them again. The installer also removes the script associations left by previous versions.

Removed

• The Usage panel (the embedded claude.ai page) and its account helpers. Claude Code's own /usage command shows your plan limits; a configurable Claude status line with the real 5-hour and weekly limits is planned.

No new dependencies — two fewer direct ones (webview2-com, windows-core) and Tauri's unstable feature dropped. Binary and installers are slightly smaller.