v2.6.0

WinTUI v2.6.0 Release Notes

WinTUI v2.6.0 reframes the Health tab as a fast-loading WinTUI / winget
readiness panel, ships a verdict-first headless wintui doctor subcommand,
introduces opt-in Windows toast notifications, and absorbs the
auto-self-update flow originally planned as a standalone v2.5.1 release.

Slim Health tab

The Health tab is now a flat seven-row readiness panel that loads
instantly — no fresh winget calls, no disk scans, no async machinery.

Default rows (all cheap, all readiness-focused):

Row	Source
WinTUI	version, running path (installed vs. dev build), config-dir writeable
winget	winget --version (FAIL if the shim refuses to start)
Sources	configured source + last cached scan age
Updates	visible / auto / held counts from the upgradeable cache + cache age
Privileges	Administrator vs. Standard User · Auto Elevate context
Storage	system drive free space (system drive only)
Settings	neutral one-line summary (Auto Elevate · Self Update · Action Mode · Source)

Dropped from the tab (still available via wintui doctor --full and
--dev-tools): RAM, uptime, Windows Defender, all extra fixed drives,
generic ping 8.8.8.8, PowerShell 7 row, the f-toggle full-diagnostics
panel, and the d-toggle developer-tools panel.

The connectivity signal that matters for package management is "did the
last winget call succeed?" — that lives in the cache layer and is now
surfaced directly. No more http.Head or ping.

wintui doctor — verdict-first headless health

A new subcommand that prints a one-line verdict and exits with a status
code matching the worst row:

$ wintui doctor
OK

$ wintui doctor          # WARN run
WARN: 2 issues

$ wintui doctor          # FAIL run
FAIL: 1 issue

Exit code	Verdict
0	All rows PASS / INFO — OK
1	At least one row WARN, none FAIL — WARN: N issues
2	At least one row FAIL — FAIL: N issues

Flags:

• --verbose — append the per-row table beneath the verdict
• --full — re-add the verbose system-diagnostics rows (RAM, Defender,
  internet ping, extra drives, OS / uptime, PATH, Windows PowerShell)
• --dev-tools — append a developer-tools detection group (Git, VS Code,
  Docker, Node.js, Python, Go, Rust, Java, dotnet, npm, OpenSSH, curl,
  PowerShell 7+); each missing tool is a WARN
• --json — emit { verdict, summary, exit_code, counts, checks } for
  scripts and CI gates

The TUI Health tab and wintui doctor share a single check engine
(runDoctorReport), so adding a new check lights it up for both.
See docs/cli.md for full reference and recipes.

Auto-self-update (default on)

Originally planned as a standalone v2.5.1; folded into v2.6.0 to ship
together. When WinTUI Auto Update is enabled (default on for new
installs and existing configs that didn't explicitly disable it):

• Pre-TUI startup runs winget list --upgrade-available --id kts982.WinTUI --exact --source winget with an 8-second timeout. A
  Checking for WinTUI updates… banner prints to stdout while it runs.
• On a hit, WinTUI fires the existing PowerShell handoff and exits
  cleanly so winget can replace the released binary.
• The admin-gated Ctrl+A self-upgrade relaunch path is removed; manual
  self-upgrade now uses Enter-to-close + the same detached winget handoff.

Cross-PC reliability has been the main driver here — the stripped-down
flow avoids the Defender / PowerShell-variant edge cases the older
relaunch path hit on family machines.

Opt-in toast notifications

A new toast_notifications setting (default off). When enabled,
WinTUI sends a single Windows toast on:

• TUI batch finish — WinTUI · 2 of 3 upgraded · 1 failed. Pending
  self-upgrade items are surfaced as · N awaiting restart so a mixed
  batch doesn't claim success while one item still needs the Enter
  handoff.
• wintui upgrade --auto/--all/--id finish — same body shape. Covers
  the scheduled-task case where the run is otherwise invisible.
• wintui check finding updates — WinTUI · 5 updates available.
  Silent when nothing's available, so a daily scheduled check
  produces zero noise on up-to-date machines.

No batch-start toast — the modal is right in front of you.

Implementation: PowerShell + raw WinRT
(Windows.UI.Notifications.ToastNotificationManager). On first toast
attempt, WinTUI drops a minimal Start Menu shortcut at
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\WinTUI.lnk and sets
PKEY_AppUserModel_ID = kts982.WinTUI on it via
SHGetPropertyStoreFromParsingName. Without this step, Windows
attributes raw toasts as "PowerShell" or suppresses them on Win11. A
sibling WinTUI.aumid marker file gates the early-return on subsequent
runs and triggers self-repair if a previous run crashed between
Save() and SetAppId.

Suppression rules: skipped when CI env var is set or when
WINTUI_DISABLE_TOAST is set. Elevation is not suppressed —
UAC-elevated processes share the user's session and notification
stream, and the scheduled wintui check use case (the headline reason
for these toasts) often runs elevated.

Bug fixes

• Broken winget shims now fail loudly. Previously checkWingetTool
  swallowed cmd.Run() errors via _ = cmd.Run(), so a WindowsApps
  app-execution alias that's on PATH but refuses to start showed up as
  PASS in Health and doctor. Now the run error is captured and
  surfaced as a FAIL row with the trimmed error message and a
  recommendation pointing at App Installer reinstallation.
• Toast first-run delivery. A subtle path-quoting bug in the
  inline-C# AUMID setter (%q produced Go-style \\ escapes that
  PowerShell read literally) caused
  SHGetPropertyStoreFromParsingName to reject the path with
  E_INVALIDARG, leaving the .lnk on disk without an AUMID and
  silently breaking toasts forever. Fixed via PowerShell single-quoted
  literal interpolation; the marker-file approach above also detects
  and self-heals shortcuts left poisoned by older builds.
• Indexer race on first toast. Action Center indexes Start Menu
  shortcuts asynchronously, so the very first toast after opt-in could
  fire before the AUMID was routable. WinTUI now waits 1.5 s after a
  fresh shortcut creation; subsequent toasts skip the wait via the
  marker-file early return.

Notes

• No breaking changes to existing settings or keybindings.
• New settings:
  • auto_self_update — default true (existing configs inherit true
    unless explicitly turned off).
  • toast_notifications — default false (opt-in).
• The Health tab dropped its f (full diagnostics) and d (dev tools)
  keybindings. The same content is now reachable via
  wintui doctor --full and wintui doctor --dev-tools.
• settings.json is fully backward compatible.
• Headless upgrade commands (--all, --auto, --id) still skip the
  running WinTUI binary with a hint pointing at the startup
  self-update handoff. Self-upgrade goes through the TUI / launch path
  for the same reason as in v2.5.0.