Retrova 1.1.3

• Fixed (Mac): the first launch could sit for minutes with no window. At start-up the app looked up this computer's network name, and on macOS that lookup can stall the first time an app runs. Retrova only talks to itself on this computer, so it no longer looks the name up and the window opens straight away.
• The built-in demo data now uses generic drive names instead of real brand names.

Nothing else changes: recovery, file types and features are the same as 1.1.2. Mac users should update; on Windows 1.1.2 works the same.

Installers are built by GitHub Actions from this repository, and each file carries a signed build attestation: gh attestation verify <file> --repo jishnumahanta/retrova. Checksums are in SHA256SUMS. Retrova is free and open source (AGPL-3.0). Full history: CHANGELOG.md.

Retrova 1.1.2

No changes to what Retrova does. This release changes how it is built.

• Installers are now built by GitHub Actions from the public source on a clean machine, and each file carries a signed build attestation. You can check that a download came from this repository with gh attestation verify <file> --repo jishnumahanta/retrova. Checksums are still in SHA256SUMS.

If you're on 1.1.1 you don't need to update: the app is the same. Checksums are in SHA256SUMS. Retrova is free and open source (AGPL-3.0). Full history: CHANGELOG.md.

Retrova 1.1.1

First public release of the 1.1 line: everything listed under 1.1.0 below is included, plus these security and honesty fixes.

• Security: the administrator helper no longer gets your session token on its command line. It used to be visible to other programs on the computer while the helper ran. It now goes through a private one-time file that is deleted the moment the helper starts.
• Fixed: removing files from a drive that has no Recycle Bin (USB stick, memory card, network share) on Windows. Windows deletes from those permanently. Retrova now refuses and tells you why, in Duplicates and Cleanup, instead of failing silently.
• Windows messages now say "Recycle Bin" instead of "Trash".
• Corrected the descriptions of what Retrova does: it does not browse APFS snapshots, and PDFs are searched by their text layer (scanned PDF pages are not OCR'd; Windows needs the free pdftotext tool for PDF text). APFS compressed files (zlib, LZVN, LZFSE) are read.

Also in this release (from 1.1.0)

A big free update: deleted files come back with their names, encrypted and older Mac drives open, failing drives are imaged more carefully, and deep scan knows 72 file types.

• New: careful imaging of failing drives. Creating a disk image now works the way GNU ddrescue does. A first pass saves all the healthy data and skips ahead when the drive reports errors (so a weak drive isn't pushed into the bad spots first), then Retrova trims the edges of the damaged areas, reads what's left sector by sector and tries the unreadable sectors again (one extra try by default; you can change it). The window shows which step it is on, how much is saved, how much is unreadable and the speed. Stop keeps everything, including after closing the app.
• New: the image comes with a .map file in GNU ddrescue's format, so you can carry on with ddrescue if you want to keep trying. .unreadable.txt is still written. A complete image with nothing unreadable also gets a .sha256 fingerprint file.
• New: Retrova can read Mac OS Extended (HFS+ and HFSX) drives. That covers older Macs, many Time Machine drives and older external drives. Folders, files, symlinks, hard links, resource forks and compressed files are read, names with accents and emoji come out right, and Time Machine backup folders can be browsed like any other folder. Apple Partition Map disks (old PowerPC Macs) are recognised too. Not covered: the drive's journal isn't replayed, so changes made just before a drive was pulled out without ejecting may be missing (Retrova says so when it sees that).
• New: recover deleted files with their original names and folders (NTFS, FAT12/16/32, exFAT). In Browse files, turn on "Show deleted files": deleted files appear in the folders they were in, and a "Deleted files" folder at the top of the drive holds them all (files whose folder can't be traced are under "Lost folders"). Each shows how likely its data is intact: Good, Possibly overwritten (another file now uses some of its space) or May be incomplete (FAT cannot say whether a file was split into pieces; Retrova reads it as one unbroken stretch). You can preview, copy and Verify them like any other file. On FAT, the first letter of a name that has no long name is lost and shows as "_". Nothing is ever written to the drive. Deep scan is still there for files whose records are gone.
• New: open encrypted drives with your key. BitLocker (password or recovery key), LUKS 1/2 (passphrase) and FileVault / encrypted APFS volumes (password or recovery key). Locked drives are marked "Locked"; Retrova asks for the key, shows a plain error if it's wrong so you can retry, then browses the files inside as usual. Copy, Verify, Create image and Deep scan work on the unlocked contents. Keys stay in memory only (never written, logged or sent back to the screen) and are forgotten when you leave the drive. Drives locked to a Mac's own security chip can't be unlocked elsewhere, and Retrova says so.
  Limits: Deep scan and Create image on an unlocked APFS (FileVault) volume still read the drive's encrypted bytes (only BitLocker and LUKS are decrypted for those); decryption runs at roughly 100 MB/s, so a 1 TB drive takes a few hours; BitLocker startup-key (.bek) files and TPM-only drives aren't supported.
• Deep scan recognises 72 file types (was 45). New: camera RAW from Nikon Coolpix (NRW), Olympus (ORF), Fujifilm (RAF) and Pentax (PEF); JPEG XL, ICO, SVG and Photoshop large documents (PSB); 3G2 and Windows Media video (WMV); AAC, AIFF, Windows Media audio (WMA) and MIDI; Outlook PST/OST mail files, RTF, multipart EML emails and Apple Pages, Numbers and Keynote files; TrueType, OpenType and WOFF/WOFF2 fonts, Google Earth KMZ and SQLite write-ahead logs. Each one is found by walking its real structure to the exact end of the file, and rejected if it is cut short or damaged.
• Fixed: AVIF photos were saved as .heic when they also listed the generic HEIF brand, which most AVIF encoders do.
• Fixed (Windows): recovered links to folders are now created as folder links, so they open in File Explorer.
• Known limits: EML is only recovered for multipart messages (the closing boundary is the only reliable end marker), RTF files that contain raw 8-bit bytes instead of escapes are skipped, and Panasonic RW2, MBOX and Affinity files are not recovered because their end cannot be found reliably.

Checksums are in SHA256SUMS. Retrova is free and open source (AGPL-3.0).

Retrova 1.0.2

Retrova 1.0.2: Windows fixes and Check for updates

Windows fixes. If you're on Windows, please update.

• Fixed: on Windows, Retrova opened in a browser window and buttons like "Choose folder" didn't work. A missing WebView2 helper made the real app window fail to start, so Retrova fell back to an Edge window without native dialogs. It now opens in its own window with the normal Windows folder picker.
• Fixed: on Windows, Space, Duplicates, Space saver and Cleanup only looked at the top level of a folder and skipped everything in subfolders. They now scan the whole folder.
• Fixed: the drive list can no longer hang silently on Windows, and helper timeouts are now written to the log.
• New: Check for updates. A button in the sidebar and in the Support panel asks GitHub for the latest version and, if there's a newer one, offers the right download for your computer. Retrova only goes online when you click it; nothing about you is sent.

Downloads

• Mac with Apple silicon (M1 and later): Retrova-1.0.2-mac-arm64.dmg
• Mac with Intel: Retrova-1.0.2-mac-x64.dmg
• Windows 10 and 11: Retrova-1.0.2-win-x64-Setup.exe (installer) or Retrova-1.0.2-win-x64-portable.zip (no install)

Check your download against SHA256SUMS. Website: https://retrova.jishnumahanta.in

Retrova 1.0.1 — now open source

Retrova 1.0.1: now open source 💚

Retrova is now free and open source under the GNU AGPL-3.0. The full source, build scripts and tests are in this repository, so anyone can read exactly what it does to a drive: it reads, and it never writes.

What's new

• Support Retrova: a sidebar entry with ways to chip in: UPI (India), Wise (anywhere) and GitHub Sponsors. Paying unlocks nothing; every feature stays free. Links open in your own browser, and the app still makes no network connections.
• Fixed: the home screen no longer says "All drives look healthy" when some drives (such as disk images) can't report their health.
• The licence and third-party notices now ship inside the app, and the installer and executable carry the copyright notice.

Downloads

File	For
Retrova-1.0.1-mac-arm64.dmg	Macs with Apple silicon (M1 and later), macOS 11+
Retrova-1.0.1-mac-x64.dmg	Intel Macs, macOS 11+
Retrova-1.0.1-win-x64-Setup.exe	Windows 10/11, installer (no admin needed to install)
Retrova-1.0.1-win-x64-portable.zip	Windows 10/11, no install

First launch: on a Mac, open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway (the app isn't notarised yet). On Windows, click More info → Run anyway if SmartScreen warns you. Full steps are in INSTALL.md.

🔐 Checksums (SHA-256)

4deb8ba912ba5e8627443fcafde45cf951c76b9b700b2a0d1bc713431b03830a  Retrova-1.0.1-mac-arm64.dmg
a396350ea8d531470720ecde7f345e93efa9277d8a3a6cf334e87b5eba899bc1  Retrova-1.0.1-mac-x64.dmg
b437cbaaadd0c7d1575608e59786998579ce7acb8e8eec30e2a53530e26b9213  Retrova-1.0.1-win-x64-Setup.exe
aa826c0d81829f31ed0f4f71872749d186511fb3fba825a906419cc6023eeea1  Retrova-1.0.1-win-x64-portable.zip

🌐 Website: https://retrova.jishnumahanta.in · 💚 Support: https://retrova.jishnumahanta.in/#support

Retrova 1.0.0

Retrova 1.0.0 — Recover. Verify. Reclaim.

Initial public release of Retrova, a local-only desktop app for macOS and Windows.

🛟 Rescue

• Browse unmountable or damaged drives and disk images read-only.
• Comprehensive filesystem support: APFS (with snapshots, compressed forks, and corrupted catalog tree tolerance), NTFS, FAT12/16/32, exFAT, ext2/3/4, XFS, Btrfs, and GPT/MBR partition tables.
• Signature-based deep carver supporting 47 file formats with header-and-structure validation.
• Resumable sector-by-sector disk imaging with sparse zero-block detection.

🔍 Verify & Repair

• Byte-for-byte read comparison against original source drives (Quick, Sample, and Full modes).
• Generates SHA-256 manifests, CSV problem logs, and provides one-click copy repair.

🧹 Reclaim

• Sparse file reclaim: shrinks bloated virtual machine and Docker/Colima disks by punching holes for all-zero blocks.
• Byte-exact duplicate finder with macOS APFS Clonefile support (instant space reclaim without deleting either file).
• Regenerable developer cache cleaner (node_modules, .pnpm-store, .venv, .next, DerivedData).
• Local OCR document and screenshot text indexing powered by Apple Vision and Windows OCR.
• System RAM pressure monitor and macOS memory purge.

🔐 Checksums (SHA-256)

00c6aae56ab8f694e833839d9c9527ecb1c3f9fb9bea4c52b673d35c3f1c6644  Retrova-1.0.0-mac-arm64.dmg
3567fc022ce4c1bc811b27985d7025c397885098cb8360a578609f2394d5674c  Retrova-1.0.0-mac-x64.dmg
5b0ed6727ffbaaa8692d78dc75ea47e38f63f642dd73e98dab807a63378e55cb  Retrova-1.0.0-win-x64-Setup.exe
31b3266d66acb76e078d521b9285e1054c0da9bd270f4d017a0e682d34b974d3  Retrova-1.0.0-win-x64-portable.zip