Mac Winlink v1.0.0 Beta 23

Mac Winlink v1.0.0 Beta 23

Download: MacWinlink_2026-07-15_f05591a.dmg (17 MB) — see Assets below.

First-time install? Read the Gatekeeper bypass instructions — since macOS Sequoia, Control-click-to-open no longer works and you'll need to go through System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.

What's in this build

Beta23 is the third safety-focused patch cut in a row. Two independent data-integrity fixes from beta-tester reports:

• Silent inbound data loss on mid-batch VARA HF failure (reported at #5 by @K8MRD on an IC-7300MK2). When a VARA HF session accepted multiple inbound proposals and a later message hit a protocol violation (e.g. Expected SOH, got D6 on a degraded RF link), MacWinlink was discarding every message that had already downloaded successfully in the same batch. Session summaries read Messages Received: 0 even when the first messages had arrived intact. Fixed by restructuring the download loop to commit each decode incrementally, so any later throw leaves earlier successes intact for the existing partialSessionResult recovery path to surface. You'll now see partial-session summaries like "Received 2 (of 4 attempted)" instead of a phantom 0. If you use VARA HF over marginal RF paths, please upgrade. Tracked as ARSFI/MacWinlink#273.

• Duplicate [Soundcard] sections in VARA.ini stealing audio device selection (reported at #4 by @kg6nlw on an iMac + FT-710). The Helper's VARAConfigManager was splitting on "\n" and trimming with .whitespaces (which does not include \r). On a CRLF-authored VARA.ini — the common case, because VARA itself writes CRLF under Wine — retained \r on each token made the section-header match fail and the upsert then appended a duplicate [Soundcard] block at end-of-file. VARA silently honours the duplicate with last-write-wins, so users saw their audio device selections "stuck" on stale values from earlier sessions (in the reported case, VARA was actually listening to the iMac's built-in mic even though the UI had a USB radio audio device selected). Fixed with CRLF-safe INI handling plus a one-shot dedupeSections repair pass that consolidates any pre-existing duplicate blocks on first launch — no manual VARA.ini editing needed. Tracked as ARSFI/MacWinlink#274.

What's unchanged

Everything else in beta22 is unchanged. No functionality removed; no protocol changes; no UI restructuring. SwiftRigControl 1.1.2 remains pinned.

Test suite: 2,096 main-app tests, 238 Helper tests, 0 failures (+11 new tests covering the two fixes).

System requirements

• macOS 15.0 (Sequoia) or later
• Apple Silicon Mac (M1 / M2 / M3 / M4)
• Intel Macs are not supported

Full changelog

The complete beta23 release notes are in ARSFI/MacWinlink CHANGELOG.md and CHANGELOG-Helper.md.

Reporting problems

File a bug report or feature request.

Verification

SHA-256 of the DMG: 94fd73551929bfeb6f6312e453a3d29a7b39866af456fdc28a671aaeccf09eb1

You can verify with shasum -a 256 MacWinlink_2026-07-15_f05591a.dmg after downloading.