Shep 1.3.2

Fixed

• Stuck in full screen. Full screen hides the window's buttons, so on Windows and Linux Esc now leaves it too, as well as F11. When a page puts itself in full screen, as a video does, it now covers the whole window, rail and title bar included, and F11 takes it out again instead of leaving the page in full screen inside a window that no longer is.
• Shep's icon on Windows is the puppy alone, without its box, as large as the icons beside it on the taskbar.

Update

1.3.0 on Linux and Windows finds this release on its next start, downloads it and offers Restart Now. To look for it without restarting, use Preferences › Advanced › Check for Updates. On a Mac, download the disk image for your chip and drag Shep to Applications again. Your services and sign-ins stay where they are.

Shep 1.3.0

What is new

• A link clicked with Ctrl, or the middle button, opens in your browser. ⌘ on a Mac. It works also when the page's own script opens the link a moment after the click, as Google Meet does with the links in its chat. Open Link in Browser stays on the right click.
• Each workspace shows its icon beside its name, in the workspace switcher and in the Move to Workspace menu, with the grid beside All Services.

Fixed

• A blurry icon in the rail. When every favicon a site lists is too small to look sharp, Shep now also looks at the icons in its web app manifest and its touch icons, and takes the sharpest. WebP favicons are measured too, where before they counted as having no size.

Update

1.2.0 on Linux and Windows finds this release on its next start, downloads it and offers Restart Now. To look for it without restarting, use Preferences › Advanced › Check for Updates. On a Mac, download the disk image for your chip and drag Shep to Applications again. Your services and sign-ins stay where they are.

Shep 1.2.0

Shep runs on macOS.

What is new

• macOS, on Apple silicon and on Intel. The same app from the same source: every service signed in on its own, the favicon in the rail, the count from the page title. A disk image and a zip for each chip.
• The window keeps the Mac's own buttons. The traffic lights sit in Shep's title bar, beside the page controls, and the menu bar carries Shep, Edit and Window, so ⌘C, ⌘V and ⌘A reach every page.
• Command takes the place of Control, and Option of Alt. Where the Mac has keys of its own, Shep uses them: ⌘[ and ⌘] go back and forward, ⌘⇧[ and ⌘⇧] switch services beside ⌃Tab, and ⌃⌘F is full screen.
• The menu bar takes the flat mark, drawn as the Mac draws its own, with a dot while a service has something unread. Closing the window keeps Shep running, and the Dock brings it back.
• Screen sharing goes through the system's own picker on macOS 15 and later.
• A link to another service's site opens in that service. When a page links to the site of another service you added, that service comes forward, with its workspace, instead of a window opening. A link to a site two services share, such as two accounts on the same app, still opens a window.

Installing on a Mac

Download Shep-1.2.0-mac-arm64.dmg for a Mac with Apple silicon, or Shep-1.2.0-mac-x64.dmg for one with Intel, open it and drag Shep to Applications. The zips are the same app.

It is not signed with a Developer ID or notarised by Apple. The first time it opens, macOS refuses it: open System Settings › Privacy & Security and choose Open Anyway beside Shep. For the same reason a Mac does not update it by itself; Preferences › Advanced › Check for Updates opens the latest release.

Update

1.1.0 on Linux and Windows finds this release on its next start, downloads it and offers Restart Now. To look for it without restarting, use Preferences › Advanced › Check for Updates. Your services and sign-ins stay where they are.

Shep 1.1.0

Shep runs on Windows.

What is new

• Windows 10 and 11, x86-64. The same app from the same source: every service signed in on its own, the favicon in the rail, the count from the page title. The installer writes to your own account, %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Shep, and never asks for an administrator; the zip is the same build with nothing to install.
• The window keeps Windows' own buttons. The title bar is Shep's, carrying the page controls and find, and the system paints minimise, maximise and close at the end of it. It follows the light or dark style there as it does on GNOME.
• The notification area takes the coloured mark, rather than the flat white one a GNOME panel asks for, and it grows a red dot while a service has something unread.
• Start when you log in writes Windows' own Run key, where the Linux build writes an autostart entry.
• Shep updates itself on Windows too, from this repository's releases, as it does on Linux.

Nothing changes for Linux. The packages are built by a newer electron-builder, whose NSIS is what the Windows installer needed, and are otherwise the same.

Installing on Windows

Download Shep-1.1.0-windows-x64-setup.exe and run it, or Shep-1.1.0-windows-x64.zip and extract it where you like.

Neither is signed. The first run of either one meets SmartScreen: More info, then Run anyway. For the zip, ticking Unblock in the downloaded file's properties before extracting settles it for every file inside at once. The warning is about the missing signature rather than about what is installed, and no installer can talk Windows out of it.

Update

1.0.1 on Linux finds this release on its next start, downloads it and offers Restart Now. To look for it without restarting, use Preferences › Advanced › Check for Updates. To install it by hand, take Shep-1.1.0-linux-x86_64.AppImage, or the .deb or .tar.gz, from the files below. Your services and sign-ins stay where they are.

On Windows this is the first release, so there is nothing to update from.

Known limits

• x86-64 only, on both systems. There is no ARM build.
• The Windows builds are unsigned, and SmartScreen counts reputation per file, so every new version starts from zero.
• Tested on Fedora with GNOME on Wayland, and on Windows 11.
• On Windows, screen sharing goes through Shep's own picker; the desktop's own picker is Wayland's.

Shep 1.0.1

A fix for signing in to Google.

Fixed

• Signing in to a Google account works again. A service signing in to a Google account for the first time, whether Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Meet, Drive or any other, met "Couldn't sign you in: This browser or app may not be secure". Google's sign-in turns away a browser that states its Chrome version, so Shep now leaves the version out of the requests that go to accounts.google.com. Nothing else changes: the page itself, and every other site, still see Shep's usual user agent. Accounts that were already signed in were never affected.

Update

1.0.0 finds this release on its next start, downloads it and offers Restart Now. To look for it without restarting, use Preferences › Advanced › Check for Updates. To install it by hand, download Shep-1.0.1-linux-x86_64.AppImage, or the .deb or .tar.gz, from the files below.

Shep 1.0.0

Shep 1.0 is a rewrite. It keeps the name, the app id and the repository, and none of 0.10's code: the Ext JS interface, the old main process and the per-service recipes are gone. Every service now works the same way, from its address alone.

Coming from 0.10: your services do not come along

1.0 starts from a clean profile. It reads nothing 0.10 left, so after the update Shep opens with no services and no sign-ins. Add each service again with the + and sign in again.

0.10's data is not deleted. It stays in ~/.config/Shep/config.json and ~/.config/Shep/Partitions, and 1.0 keeps its own settings beside them in shep.json. Going back to the 0.10.0 AppImage brings your old setup back.

0.10 downloads updates on its own and installs them when it quits, and it has no setting to stop that. If you want to stay on 0.10 for now, keep a copy of the 0.10.0 AppImage somewhere else, because the update replaces the AppImage in place.

What is new

• Every service works the same way. There are no per-service scripts to go stale when a site changes. The icon is the page's favicon, the unread count is the (3) in the page title, and a title that says there is something new without a number draws a dot.
• A list to start from. The + offers 53 current services by name, with each site's own favicon, or takes any address you type. Picking one only fills in the name and the address.
• Links stay in the app. A link to another site opens in a Shep window that shares the service's session, so you are already signed in. When a sign-in finishes back on the service, the window closes by itself.
• Pages see a plain browser. The user agent is Chromium's own, with nothing of Shep or Electron in it, which is what sign-ins and captchas check. Todoist's Cloudflare check now passes.
• A title bar for the page in view: back, forward, reload, home to the address the service was added with, find in page, and the zoom when it is not 100%. The rail's right click has what acts on the service itself.
• Workspaces with icons, switched from the top of the rail, with a dot on the switcher when a hidden service has something new.
• Calls. Camera and microphone ask once per service, and a service marked for calls is never asked. Screen sharing goes through the desktop's own picker on Wayland.
• Preferences in five sections that apply at once, a lock screen with a password, Don't Disturb, a tray icon, closing to the background, start on login, spell checking in the languages you pick, and ten interface languages.
• An unread report in Preferences › Advanced, which shows what each service's title said, for when a count looks wrong.
• Electron 44 and a Svelte interface, with every service in its own sandboxed, isolated view.

Install

Download Shep-1.0.0-linux-x86_64.AppImage, make it executable and run it. There are also a .deb and a .tar.gz.

The AppImage needs FUSE 2, which several distributions no longer install by default. On Fedora that is fuse-libs; on Debian and Ubuntu, libfuse2. Without it, run the AppImage with --appimage-extract-and-run.

Known limits

Linux only. It is tested on Fedora with GNOME on Wayland. The interface translations were not reviewed by native speakers, and corrections are welcome.

Shep 0.10.0

The first published release of Shep, a fork of Rambox Community Edition picked up after its authors archived it in 2022. It was briefly called Redil; the 0.9.0 tag marks that name and was never released.

Coming from Redil

Quit Redil before the first launch of Shep. Shep moves ~/.config/Redil to ~/.config/Shep on that launch, with your services, sign-ins and preferences, and replaces Redil's autostart entry with its own. It only moves the folder while ~/.config/Shep is empty.

What is in this release

• Electron 13 to 44, with the renderer off remote, the new-window event and the renderer's desktopCapturer.
• Isolation. The main window, the lock screen, the screen picker and every service run with context isolation, sandboxed and without Node.
• Permissions are refused by default. Camera, microphone and screen capture ask once per service; call apps can be granted them without asking.
• A service rail on the left, a title bar of the app's own with page navigation, a welcome page, and every service action on its right click.
• Workspaces: named groups of services with a switcher at the top of the rail.
• A dark theme that follows the desktop, or is chosen in Preferences.
• Unread counts that hold up: the page title as a fallback, WhatsApp counted from its own database, four snippets ported from ferdium-recipes, and an unread report that says where each count comes from.
• Spell checking, on by default, in the languages you write in.
• Screen sharing on Wayland, through the system's own picker.
• Google sign-in that no longer turns new accounts away.
• The catalogue is maintained here: ten modern services added, seven dead ones removed.
• A new mark: a border collie puppy, drawn to the GNOME icon guidelines, with a monochrome tray icon on Linux.

Install

The AppImage needs FUSE 2, which several distributions no longer install by default. On Fedora that is fuse-libs; on Debian and Ubuntu, libfuse2. Without it, run the AppImage with --appimage-extract-and-run.

Known limits

Linux only. Windows and macOS are configured but have not been built or tested.