Vantage 1.0.3

⬇️ Which file do I download?

File	When to pick it
Vantage-Setup.exe	⭐ Most people. Double-click to install per-user (no admin prompt). Start Menu shortcut included.
Vantage-1.0.3-win-x64-portable.zip	No-install option: unzip anywhere, run Vantage.exe. Fully self-contained.
Vantage-1.0.3-win-x64-lite.zip	Tiny download if you already have the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
checksums.txt	SHA-256 hashes of every file above.

SmartScreen note: binaries are not yet code-signed, so Windows may warn on first run — click More info → Run anyway, and verify the SHA-256 against checksums.txt if in doubt.

Requirements: Windows 10 20H2+ / Windows 11 (recommended), x64, no admin rights needed.
Full documentation: README · Changelog

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What's in this version

Changed

• Updates are now delta downloads. Updating from the previous version transfers only what
  actually changed — about 2 MB instead of the full ~75 MB package. The full package is still
  published, so a client that can't apply a delta (or is coming from an older version) simply
  falls back to it. Delta generation was never switched off; the release pipeline just never
  gave the packer a previous release to compare against, so every release so far shipped
  full-only.
• UI framework and dependencies updated — WPF-UI 3.0.5 → 4.3.0, CommunityToolkit.Mvvm
  8.3.2 → 8.4.2, H.NotifyIcon.Wpf 2.1.3 → 2.3.2, and the test stack to xunit 2.9.3 with
  Microsoft.NET.Test.Sdk 18.10.1.

Fixed

• A release can no longer publish itself half-finished. GitHub's asset upload endpoint
  intermittently answers HTTP 500 on the larger files, and on 1.0.2 that left a release
  carrying two of its six files — with an update feed pointing at packages that weren't
  there. The pipeline now builds each release as a draft, uploads one file at a time with
  retries, and refuses to make the release visible until it has verified every file is
  present.

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What's Changed

🧰 Other changes

• Release 1.0.3: delta updates, dependency bumps, release hardening by @inakizamores in #12

Full Changelog: v1.0.2...v1.0.3

Vantage 1.0.2

⬇️ Which file do I download?

File	When to pick it
Vantage-Setup.exe	⭐ Most people. Double-click to install per-user (no admin prompt). Start Menu shortcut included.
Vantage-1.0.2-win-x64-portable.zip	No-install option: unzip anywhere, run Vantage.exe. Fully self-contained.
Vantage-1.0.2-win-x64-lite.zip	Tiny download if you already have the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
checksums.txt	SHA-256 hashes of every file above.

SmartScreen note: binaries are not yet code-signed, so Windows may warn on first run — click More info → Run anyway, and verify the SHA-256 against checksums.txt if in doubt.

Requirements: Windows 10 20H2+ / Windows 11 (recommended), x64, no admin rights needed.
Full documentation: README · Changelog

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What's in this version

Fixed

• Identical monitors no longer break saving, applying or refreshing. A monitor's identity
  was its EDID vendor + product + serial, but plenty of panels ship with the same serial on
  every unit of a model — three ASUS ROG Strix XG438Q all report AUS43E1_125727. That made
  the identity a model id, so the display list was keyed on duplicate keys and any refresh
  or save failed with "An item with the same key has already been added. Key: …"
  (#9). Identity now falls
  back to the GPU connector each panel is plugged into when, and only when, a serial is
  shared — so ids are unchanged on every machine that never had a collision, and the panels
  that did have one keep distinct, reboot-stable identities instead of being numbered in
  whatever order Windows happened to enumerate them.
• Existing presets are repaired automatically. A preset saved with the old colliding ids
  is re-keyed on load from the connector path it already recorded, so it keeps matching the
  machine it was captured on with nothing to redo. Matching also gained a last-resort pass
  that pairs same-model panels by position, so a preset still applies after its cables are
  swapped between ports.
• Identical monitors are now distinguishable in the app. Displays sharing a model name
  are labelled with their Windows display number ("ASUS XG438 (Display 2)") instead of
  appearing as several identical rows.

Changed

• Indexing displays by identity can no longer throw anywhere in the codebase: a duplicate is
  logged and the first entry kept, so an unforeseen collision costs one display's worth of
  precision rather than the whole feature.
• Test suite grew from 37 to 60, over a fixture recorded from the reporting machine's three
  identical panels.

What's Changed

🧰 Other changes

• Release 1.0.2: identical monitors no longer collide on identity by @inakizamores in #11

New Contributors

• @inakizamores made their first contribution in #11

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

Vantage 1.0.1

⬇️ Which file do I download?

File	When to pick it
Vantage-Setup.exe	⭐ Most people. Double-click to install per-user (no admin prompt). Start Menu shortcut included.
Vantage-1.0.1-win-x64-portable.zip	No-install option: unzip anywhere, run Vantage.exe. Fully self-contained.
Vantage-1.0.1-win-x64-lite.zip	Tiny download if you already have the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
checksums.txt	SHA-256 hashes of every file above.

SmartScreen note: binaries are not yet code-signed, so Windows may warn on first run — click More info → Run anyway, and verify the SHA-256 against checksums.txt if in doubt.

Requirements: Windows 10 20H2+ / Windows 11 (recommended), x64, no admin rights needed.
Full documentation: README · Changelog

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What's in this version

Fixed

• Preset shortcuts now survive version updates. Installing a new version by running its
  Setup.exe over an existing copy uninstalls the old version first — whose uninstall hook
  deleted every preset shortcut, leaving Start pins dead until each one was recreated by
  hand. The install and update hooks now restore every recorded shortcut instead: a missing
  .lnk is recreated at the exact path it lived at (which revives any Start pin made
  against it), a surviving one is re-pointed in place. Repairs now also fix a shortcut
  whose icon file went missing, not just its target.

Added

• Settings → Repair preset shortcuts. The same restore, on a button — for shortcuts a
  past update already broke, or any other time a .lnk stops working.

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

Vantage 1.0.0

⬇️ Which file do I download?

File	When to pick it
Vantage-Setup.exe	⭐ Most people. Double-click to install per-user (no admin prompt). Start Menu shortcut included.
Vantage-1.0.0-win-x64-portable.zip	No-install option: unzip anywhere, run Vantage.exe. Fully self-contained.
Vantage-1.0.0-win-x64-lite.zip	Tiny download if you already have the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
checksums.txt	SHA-256 hashes of every file above.

SmartScreen note: binaries are not yet code-signed, so Windows may warn on first run — click More info → Run anyway, and verify the SHA-256 against checksums.txt if in doubt.

Requirements: Windows 10 20H2+ / Windows 11 (recommended), x64, no admin rights needed.
Full documentation: README · Changelog

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What's in this version

The first stable release. Everything the betas built — the verified apply engine with
automatic rollback, presets, hotkeys, the layout editor, Start menu shortcuts, per-profile
GPU color depth, in-app updates — plus the hardening pass that makes it trustworthy enough
to drop the -beta: nothing fails silently anymore, nothing crashes without a trace, and a
damaged profile file can no longer take the app down with it.

Added

• A diagnostic log. vantage.log in Documents\Vantage Display Manager (rolled at
  512 KB, bounded at ~1 MB), fed by unhandled-exception handlers on every path — the WPF
  dispatcher, background threads, headless launches. A failed apply writes the engine's full
  step log there; "Apply failed — see log" now points at a log that exists.
• Failures reach you in the tray. The app's error surface used to be an InfoBar inside a
  window that is hidden for most of this app's life. Warnings and errors now fall back to a
  tray notification when the window isn't visible — a failed hotkey apply, tray-menu apply,
  or out-of-date shortcut no longer vanishes without a word.
• First-run guidance. A brand-new install shows what to do (arrange → name → save)
  instead of an unexplained gap between the save row and Settings.
• Real settings. Close-to-tray vs. exit is now a choice; the startup update check has an
  off switch; and an "Open folder" button jumps to your data. Stored in settings.json
  beside the profiles, atomically, versioned.
• Live theme and accent tracking. Switching Windows between light and dark, or changing
  the accent color, restyles Vantage on the spot — window, title bar, and the profile
  thumbnails that paint the primary display in your accent. Previously picked up only at
  launch, which a tray-resident app might not see again for weeks.
• Hotkey conflicts are caught when you set them. Assigning a combo another profile
  already owns, or one another app holds system-wide, is refused on the spot with the actual
  holder named. Conflicts found later name the profile, not just the gesture, and warn once
  instead of after every refresh.
• Vantage.exe --help (also -h, /?) prints the launch switches instead of silently
  opening the GUI.
• vantagectl usage now lists snapshot, and every hint it prints uses its real name —
  it used to suggest vantage … commands that don't exist.

Fixed

• A damaged profiles.json no longer prevents Vantage from starting. It is quarantined
  under a timestamped name, the automatic .bak is restored if readable, and the app tells
  you what happened. Previously: an unhandled parse error before the window existed.
• Concurrent profile writes can no longer lose a profile. The store file is guarded by a
  cross-process lock — the window, the background shortcut reconciler, and headless
  --apply processes all serialize their read-modify-writes.
• The update dialog survives a mid-download failure without risking the process, cancels the
  download when closed from the title bar, and shows failures in the system critical color
  instead of subtitle grey.
• Portable and unmanaged copies get a working "Releases page" button instead of a check
  button that can only report why it can't work.
• The IPC listener thread can no longer take the whole app (tray icon, hotkeys and all) down
  with it on an unexpected fault.
• Deleting a profile now says its Start menu and desktop shortcuts go with it.
• Main window title now reads "Vantage Display Manager", matching everything else.

Changed

• Installed 1.0 copies follow the stable channel. Beta prereleases are no longer offered
  to a stable install; the 0.x betas still see stable releases and update onto 1.0.0.
• Release engineering hardened for 1.0: the release workflow now runs the test suite before
  packing, refuses a tag whose version disagrees with the repo or whose changelog section is
  missing, pins the Velopack packer to the version the shipped updater understands, and
  stamps the tag's version into the binaries' file metadata (previously frozen at the last
  props value — Explorer would have called 1.0.0 "0.6.3").
• Test suite grew from 20 to 37: profile-store corruption recovery, concurrent-writer
  safety, legacy data migration, and the launch-switch grammar every shortcut depends on.

Full Changelog: v0.6.3-beta...v1.0.0

Vantage 0.6.3-beta

⬇️ Which file do I download?

File	When to pick it
Vantage-Setup.exe	⭐ Most people. Double-click to install per-user (no admin prompt). Start Menu shortcut included.
Vantage-0.6.3-beta-win-x64-portable.zip	No-install option: unzip anywhere, run Vantage.exe. Fully self-contained.
Vantage-0.6.3-beta-win-x64-lite.zip	Tiny download if you already have the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
checksums.txt	SHA-256 hashes of every file above.

SmartScreen note: binaries are not yet code-signed, so Windows may warn on first run — click More info → Run anyway, and verify the SHA-256 against checksums.txt if in doubt.

Requirements: Windows 10 20H2+ / Windows 11 (recommended), x64, no admin rights needed.
Full documentation: README · Changelog

---

---

What's in this version

Fixed

• The version card in Settings sat empty under its title until you pressed Check for updates —
  the line below the version was bound to a status that is deliberately blank when the silent
  startup check finds nothing. It now carries a description of what the app does on its own,
  the same way the Start with Windows card above it explains itself.

Full Changelog: v0.6.2-beta...v0.6.3-beta

Vantage 0.6.2-beta

⬇️ Which file do I download?

File	When to pick it
Vantage-Setup.exe	⭐ Most people. Double-click to install per-user (no admin prompt). Start Menu shortcut included.
Vantage-0.6.2-beta-win-x64-portable.zip	No-install option: unzip anywhere, run Vantage.exe. Fully self-contained.
Vantage-0.6.2-beta-win-x64-lite.zip	Tiny download if you already have the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
checksums.txt	SHA-256 hashes of every file above.

SmartScreen note: binaries are not yet code-signed, so Windows may warn on first run — click More info → Run anyway, and verify the SHA-256 against checksums.txt if in doubt.

Requirements: Windows 10 20H2+ / Windows 11 (recommended), x64, no admin rights needed.
Full documentation: README · Changelog

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---

What's in this version

Fixed

• --update reported an installed copy as "not installed by the setup program" and refused to
  update it. VelopackApp.Run() is what tells Velopack where the app lives, and the new switch
  returned before reaching it — so the locator found nothing and IsInstalled came back false.
  The hooks now run on that path too. The in-app Update button was never affected; it goes
  through the normal startup path, which always ran them.

Added

• Vantage.exe's own switches (--apply, --tray, --update) are documented in the README
  alongside the vantagectl commands, with their exit codes.

Full Changelog: v0.6.1-beta...v0.6.2-beta

Vantage 0.6.1-beta

⬇️ Which file do I download?

File	When to pick it
Vantage-Setup.exe	⭐ Most people. Double-click to install per-user (no admin prompt). Start Menu shortcut included.
Vantage-0.6.1-beta-win-x64-portable.zip	No-install option: unzip anywhere, run Vantage.exe. Fully self-contained.
Vantage-0.6.1-beta-win-x64-lite.zip	Tiny download if you already have the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
checksums.txt	SHA-256 hashes of every file above.

SmartScreen note: binaries are not yet code-signed, so Windows may warn on first run — click More info → Run anyway, and verify the SHA-256 against checksums.txt if in doubt.

Requirements: Windows 10 20H2+ / Windows 11 (recommended), x64, no admin rights needed.
Full documentation: README · Changelog

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What's in this version

Added

• Vantage.exe --update — the whole update flow without the window: checks GitHub, reports
  the version and release-note size it found, downloads with progress, installs and relaunches.
  Scriptable, and the reason the update path can be verified end to end rather than clicked
  through by hand. Exit codes: 0 updated, 1 already current, 2 not an installed copy, 3 failed.
  It runs before the single-instance check, since updating is Velopack's business whether or not
  a copy is already running.

Full Changelog: v0.6.0-beta...v0.6.1-beta

Vantage 0.6.0-beta

⬇️ Which file do I download?

File	When to pick it
Vantage-Setup.exe	⭐ Most people. Double-click to install per-user (no admin prompt). Start Menu shortcut included.
Vantage-0.6.0-beta-win-x64-portable.zip	No-install option: unzip anywhere, run Vantage.exe. Fully self-contained.
Vantage-0.6.0-beta-win-x64-lite.zip	Tiny download if you already have the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
checksums.txt	SHA-256 hashes of every file above.

SmartScreen note: binaries are not yet code-signed, so Windows may warn on first run — click More info → Run anyway, and verify the SHA-256 against checksums.txt if in doubt.

Requirements: Windows 10 20H2+ / Windows 11 (recommended), x64, no admin rights needed.
Full documentation: README · Changelog

---

---

What's in this version

Added

• In-app updates. Vantage now checks its own GitHub releases, shows what changed, and
  installs the new version itself. The check runs quietly in the background at launch — nothing
  pops up; the Settings card simply starts offering an Update button instead of a Check one.
  Choosing it opens the release notes for that version, then downloads with a progress bar and
  restarts. Profiles, settings and shortcut icons live in Documents\Vantage Display Manager,
  outside the install folder, so an update never touches them, and preset shortcuts are
  re-pointed by the after-update hook below. An update is refused outright while a display
  change is in flight rather than swapping the app out mid-switch.
• Release notes are embedded in the update package itself by the release workflow, extracted
  from this changelog, so the app can show what a version contains before installing it without
  a round-trip to the GitHub API — and the release page and the app can never disagree.
• Presets as Start menu shortcuts. The pin button on any profile card turns that preset into
  a Windows shortcut, in the Start menu, on the desktop, or both. Type the preset's name into
  Start, press Enter, displays switch — no window opens. Shortcuts land in the All apps root
  alongside your other apps; grouping them under a "Vantage Presets" folder is a checkbox, off
  by default, because a folder is a collapsed heading you have to expand every single time.
  Everything is per-user, so none of it needs administrator rights.
• Per-preset icons. Each shortcut gets its own multi-resolution .ico rendered from the
  preset's monitor-layout thumbnail — the same picture the profile card shows — written at
  16/20/24/32/48/64/128/256 px so the Start menu, taskbar and Explorer each get a crisp size.
  The HDR badge is dropped below 128 px, where it would only ever be a smudge. Any image,
  .ico or program can be used instead. Icons live in
  Documents\Vantage Display Manager\Shortcut Icons so they survive updates and reinstalls,
  and are written under a fresh name each time because Explorer caches icons by path.
• --apply <profile id or name> on Vantage.exe, the switch shortcuts carry. If Vantage is
  already in the tray the launched process forwards the request over a named pipe and exits,
  and the warm instance — which already has the display service and profile store loaded — does
  the switch. If nothing is running, the profile is applied with no theme, no tray icon, no
  view model and no window built at all. Failures on the cold path surface as a message box,
  since there is no window to put an info bar in.
• The app now owns its entry point (Program.Main, replacing the one WPF generates) so both
  of those paths are decided before any WPF type is loaded. Constructing the WPF Application
  and merging App.xaml's theme dictionaries measures ~90 ms, which a process that will never
  draw anything should not pay. A shortcut handover is ~36 ms of total process lifetime (the
  pipe round trip inside that is ~3 ms), and a cold start reaches profile resolution in ~166 ms.
  VelopackApp.Run() moved to the top of the real startup path, which is where Velopack has
  been asking for it.
• Preset shortcuts survive updates, moves and reinstalls. A .lnk stores an absolute
  path, so anything that relocates the executable would leave every preset shortcut pointing at
  a file that no longer exists. Velopack solves this for its own Start menu entry by rewriting
  it on each update; preset shortcuts now get the same treatment, from three places:
  Velopack's after-install and after-update hooks (fixed at the moment the thing that would
  break them happens), and every normal launch as a safety net for moves Velopack knows nothing
  about — a portable copy unzipped somewhere new, for instance. The launch check is off the
  startup path and costs one string compare per shortcut when nothing has moved.
• Uninstalling removes preset shortcuts via Velopack's before-uninstall hook, instead of
  leaving dead entries behind in the Start menu.
• Deleting a profile removes its shortcuts and generated icon too.
• Tests for the engine's wait loop: returns as soon as the hardware agrees, honours the full
  budget when it doesn't, survives a transient CcdException while an output re-trains, and
  cancels cleanly. Vantage.Core now exposes internals to the test assembly.

Changed

• The apply engine no longer sleeps out its worst case. Three steps ended in a fixed
  Task.Delay before checking whether the change had landed — DPI 150 ms, HDR 300 ms, colour
  depth 600 ms per attempt — and the settle wait polled only every 250 ms. So an HDR preset that
  also pins colour depth paid ~900 ms of unconditional waiting plus up to 250 ms of settle
  overshoot, no matter how fast the hardware actually was. All four now poll every 40 ms against
  the same budgets, and the DPI step (whose setter is synchronous) checks before waiting at all.
  Slow hardware still gets every millisecond it had; fast hardware stops paying for it. This was
  the last of the "sleep engineering" the research faulted the incumbents for (BLUEPRINT P2/P7).
• Measured for context: DisplayService.Capture() is 2.7 ms median on a two-display setup, and
  an apply calls it four times — so the engine's own bookkeeping is ~18 ms. Loading the profile
  store is 0.2 ms and matching is under 0.1 ms. Essentially all remaining latency is the display
  pipeline itself.
• vantagectl apply now stamps every step with elapsed milliseconds and reports a total, so
  where the time goes is visible rather than inferred.

Fixed

• Editing a shortcut deleted and recreated the .lnk even when the path was unchanged, which
  drops any Start pin made against it. Shortcuts whose path survives an edit are now overwritten
  in place; only genuinely stale paths (renamed, or moved between the Start menu and the
  desktop) are deleted. Repairs preserve the icon and arguments too.
• A shortcut deleted from Explorer is now forgotten rather than kept in the profile record — and
  is never silently recreated, since deleting it was a deliberate act.
• A second launch of Vantage tried to release a mutex it never owned, throwing on exit. Never
  noticeable before because second launches did nothing; now every shortcut click is one.
  Replaces the TODO(M1) placeholder with the real named-pipe channel: a plain second launch
  brings the running window to the front instead of vanishing silently.

Notes

• Windows does not let an application pin itself to Start. The "Pin to Start" verb is listed on
  a shortcut but invoking it programmatically is a no-op — verified against the pinned-items
  database, which does not change. Pinning a preset stays a one-time right-click.

Full Changelog: v0.4.5-beta...v0.6.0-beta

Vantage 0.4.5-beta

⬇️ Which file do I download?

File	When to pick it
Vantage-Setup.exe	⭐ Most people. Double-click to install per-user (no admin prompt). Start Menu shortcut included.
Vantage-0.4.5-beta-win-x64-portable.zip	No-install option: unzip anywhere, run Vantage.exe. Fully self-contained.
Vantage-0.4.5-beta-win-x64-lite.zip	Tiny download if you already have the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
checksums.txt	SHA-256 hashes of every file above.

SmartScreen note: binaries are not yet code-signed, so Windows may warn on first run — click More info → Run anyway, and verify the SHA-256 against checksums.txt if in doubt.

Requirements: Windows 10 20H2+ / Windows 11 (recommended), x64, no admin rights needed.
Full documentation: README · Changelog

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Full Changelog: v0.4.0-beta...v0.4.5-beta

Vantage 0.4.0-beta

⬇️ Which file do I download?

File	When to pick it
Vantage-Setup.exe	⭐ Most people. Double-click to install per-user (no admin prompt). Start Menu shortcut included.
Vantage-0.4.0-beta-win-x64-portable.zip	No-install option: unzip anywhere, run Vantage.exe. Fully self-contained.
Vantage-0.4.0-beta-win-x64-lite.zip	Tiny download if you already have the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
checksums.txt	SHA-256 hashes of every file above.

SmartScreen note: binaries are not yet code-signed, so Windows may warn on first run — click More info → Run anyway, and verify the SHA-256 against checksums.txt if in doubt.

Requirements: Windows 10 20H2+ / Windows 11 (recommended), x64, no admin rights needed.
Full documentation: README · Changelog

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Full Changelog: v0.3.1-beta...v0.4.0-beta